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Articles

The Future of Family Farming – New opportunities
June 22nd, 2011

Tea is one of the agricultural products for which Nepal is famous. It is mostly grown in the eastern part of the country and is exported all over the world. Tea has been grown in the Ilam district since the 1860s, and today, as in the past, many women are involved in the process – … Read more

Editorial – Trees for life
June 22nd, 2011

Agroforestry is one of mankind’s best hopes to create a climate-smart agriculture, increase food security, alleviate rural poverty and achieve truly sustainable development”, write Dennis Garrity and Paul Stapleton in the theme overview for this issue. Agroforestry can produce impressive results, as several experiences confirm. In a recent (must-read) report, Olivier de Schutter, Special Rapporteur … Read more

More trees on farms
June 22nd, 2011

The size of the world’s forests is declining every year and yet, at the same time, the number of trees on farms is increasing. Over a billion hectares of agricultural land, almost half of the world’s farmland, have more than 10 percent of their area occupied by trees. Over 160 million hectares have more than … Read more

The TREES experience in São Paulo
June 22nd, 2011

We enjoy our individual interactions with farmers and often develop personal relationships with each one of them as they proceed through our training programmes, but we have found that we are more successful when we work with groups of people who want to develop agroforestry projects. It is more efficient to work with groups. It … Read more

An incompatible approach
June 22nd, 2011

Opinion: There is little to celebrate during this International Year of Forests, says Francisco Caporal International year of the forest 2011Because of its growing demand for inputs and energy, it is increasingly evident that the Green Revolution approach is environmentally unsustainable. But also, and most of all, it is unsustainable because it has an inherent … Read more

Rights and ownership: “It’s our forest”
June 22nd, 2011

Aiming to increase the area covered by forests, programmes like the Green India Mission are looking for the necessary funds and resources to help them reach the objective of reforesting millions of hectares. Yet money is not the only difficulty. For who owns these new forests? And who benefits from them? Setting up co-operative forests … Read more

Call for contributions: Land and land rights
June 22nd, 2011

Land is a scarce resource. Large-scale land acquisitions by governments and companies – also known as “land grabs” – allow them to secure food supplies or simply make a profit. The current and impending food crises are increasing pressures on the ownership of land and its use for agriculture. What are the implications of this … Read more

Provocation seminars: Going local
June 22nd, 2011

Making markets work for the poor is all about connecting small-scale farmers to niche export markets. Or is it? Participants at the provocation seminar “Making markets work for the poor: Contents and discontents”, held in Paris on 30 March, called on development agencies to turn their eyes away from export markets and take a closer … Read more

Farmers benefit by providing environmental services
June 22nd, 2011

More and more land in Africa is being cultivated, reducing the area covered by forests, the existing biodiversity, and affecting the water supplies of nearby cities. Could farmers produce the same services as forests do – at least partly? The World Agroforestry Centre is working to develop arrangements between farmers and private parties in a … Read more

Learning about … Planting trees, rooting awareness
June 22nd, 2011

“Agriculture is sustainable if it can attract future generations of young farmers”. These were the words that Edith van Walsum, ILEIA’s director, used to open the editorial in our previous issue. A similar idea lies behind The Green Wave, an initiative of the Convention on Biological Diversity. This is an international campaign involving schools in … Read more