A lot has happened since the first Agroecology Symposium took place in 2014.  The focus of international and local attention has clearly shifted from providing evidence on the validity of agroecological practices to enabling policies and legal frameworks. Thus, a perfect setting emerged for the launch of some refreshing publications that put policy reform at the heart of the debate.

The AgriCultures Network presented a collection of case “stories” and some pointed opinion pieces, drawing lessons for policy and practice from concrete experience on the ground. This special edition of Farming Matters is the result of a fruitful collaboration between the AgriCultures Network and IFOAM – Organics International. 

In the coming years the AgriCultures Network will continue to document and share groundbreaking experiences in the upscaling of agroecology, together with partners and allies. Having taken over the production of Farming Matters from ILEIA six months ago, the Network is now getting ready to produce it’s magazines in a renewed digital format. This makes it possible to share many more significant experiences, in a more targeted manner and with many more people. Right now we are still learning to use the new system; we are confident that in a few  months the digital platform will be a comfortable space for sharing.

We wish you an enjoyable reading experience!

Agroecology: a path towards the sustainable development goals 

The post A special edition of Farming Matters appeared first on Ileia.

Here is an update from ILEIA. Earlier this year we informed you about the closing down of ILEIA on July 1st 2017, which became inevitable due to an unexpected shortfall of funds. During the past seven months we have been working hard to hand over the ILEIA legacy to our colleagues in the AgriCultures Network (AN) and to many others. This process is still ongoing but our office in Wageningen is closed now. We thought you might be interested in receiving an update. Please share this message with people in your networks whom we may not have reached yet.

A vibrant Network and a new Secretariat
The AgriCultures Network has seized this moment as an opportunity to create a new Secretariat in Dakar and move ILEIA’s legacy into new spaces. The new Secretariat, hosted by IED Afrique, supports the AN Management Team in streamlining the Network transition in cooperation with the former board chair and director of ILEIA. The Network is preparing a perspective plan for the coming three years and is seeking funding for it. It welcomes new members and associates to join the Network.

Magazines of the future
The AN will launch a new digital magazine platform in 2018. This platform will build on ILEIA’s global magazine Farming Matters and on the strong local roots of the regional magazines. It will help the AN to reach more diverse audiences more frequently and at a lower cost. The AN’s team of editors, working across languages, cultures and continents, is getting set for the next step in the collective journey of knowledge building and sharing. The magazine will thus become an integral part of a broader strategy that links the systematisation of concrete agroecological experience with advocacy, education and science. We are all looking forward to this new adventure.

ILEIA’s library is moving to Northern Ghana
The ILEIA library collection, consisting of more than 12000 publications on sustainable and organic agriculture, food and agroecology, is all set for its journey from Wageningen to Northern Ghana. We agreed with Professor Millar, founder of Millar’s Open University (MOU) in Bolgatanga and an alumnus of Wageningen University, that MOU would be a great new home for ILEIA’s unique collection. Professor Millar expects a warm interest among students. The arrival of the library in Bolgatanga will be a good occasion to organise a seminar on the experiences in dryland farming in Ghana and other countries in the region, and to draw lessons for practice and policy. We have requested the Netherlands Embassy in Accra to support this initiative.

And for all people living outside Bolgatanga: we are presently updating ILEIA’s digital library. In the process we found a number of rare and interesting publications which are not yet digitally available. The Wageningen University library has kindly agreed to include some 25 of these publications in their digital collection. Thank you WUR for making these publications available to a wide audience!

Cultivate!
A new organisation Cultivate! has been started by some of ILEIA’s former staff. The aim is to build on ILEIA’s legacy, but with a stronger focus on Europe in a global context. Cultivate! sees a potential for a Europe-wide collaborative communication, learning and advocacy strategy for the amplification of agroecology and food sovereignty. The Cultivate! team plans to systematise successful initiatives in food and farming in order to draw lessons for practice and policy, connect different actors, support dynamic learning and use creative communication tools to share the resulting insights.

And finally…
Your encouraging reactions during the past half year made it clear to us that ILEIA has meant many positive things to many people. Over the years it has had a real impact on the lives of thousands of farm families, fieldworkers, scientists, students, consumers, policymakers and other citizens in different parts of the world. Thank you for sharing your diverse and interesting experiences!

We feel sad to say farewell to ILEIA as an organisation but we are glad that its legacy is alive and kicking. “Sometimes it is good to move on and start a new chapter and find new spaces”, said one of our friends. With gratitude we hand over the ILEIA legacy to our colleagues in the AgriCultures Network and to other friends and allies in different parts of the world. Our special thanks go to the many farmers and fieldworkers who shared so many insights with us over the years. We also thank Sida (Swedish International Development Agency) which supported us financially for over a decade but had to end the funding relationship with ILEIA due to the refugee crisis in 2015-2016. Lastly, we thank the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs for giving ILEIA the space to identify, share and amplify practical experiences in agroecology and family farming over a period of more than twenty-five years. There are many more inspirators, allies, authors, champions, farmer philosophers, former ILEIA staff, interns, volunteers, board members and funders whom we would like to thank; they are too many to name them all.

We look forward to seeing you again, in a new constellation!

With warm regards,

for ILEIA…
Edith van Walsum (former director) em.van.walsum@gmail.com
Bram Huijsman (former chair of the Supervisory Board) bramwerk65@gmail.com
www.ileia.org

for the Agricultures Network…
the AN Management Team:
Bara Gueye baragueye@iedafrique.org
Paulo Petersen paulo@aspta.org.br
KVS Prasad leisaindia@yahoo.co.in
www.agriculturesnetwork.org

The post Update from ILEIA appeared first on Ileia.

Turkey

Food versus the big city of Istanbul by Sevgi Ortaç

South Korea

Food sovereignty: taking root in women’s knowledge by Hyo Jeong Kim

Italy

Human-centered agriculture fighting exploitation and racism by Ibrahim Diabate, Nino Quaranta

Argentina

Educating peasant youth to defend their freedom by Belén Arenas

Global

Interview with Ramona Duminicioiu: “Food sovereignty is about peasants’ rights” by Tomas Uhnák

Northern Europe

Farmers in focus: Building food sovereignty around fresh fish by Elisabeth S. Olsen

The post BUILDING FOOD SOVEREIGNTY appeared first on Ileia.

Food has not been the focus of climate change discussions as much as it should have been. (...)  We can still act and it won’t be too late”   

Barack Obama, 26 May 2017.¹

Of course, Barack Obama can speak more freely now that he’s not in the White House with the agribusiness lobby breathing down his neck. But he is right in that the climate–food connection has been largely absent from the climate discussions – at least in the official circles. This issue of Farming Matters focuses on this connection. It shows how the industrial food system is a main culprit when it comes to the climate crisis, and illustrates how agroecology and food sovereignty offer solutions by addressing the root causes of this crisis – political, social and environmental.

The latest studies calculate that the global food system – from farm to fork – is responsible for at least one third of all greenhouse gas emissions, a figure that seems to increase with the release of each new report.² GRAIN puts the figure closer to 50%, and stresses that it is the industrial food system which is mostly responsible for this.³ Besides not feeding the people with enough healthy, culturally appropriate and sustainably produced food, the industrial food system is also leading us down the path of a global environmental crisis, of a scale and impact that humanity has never faced before.

Agriculture is supposed to be about turning the energy provided by the sun into food and fibre. But the corporate-driven global food system mostly relies on fossil energy: for chemical fertilizers and pesticides, mechanisation of the farm, pumping water for irrigation, etc.

Deforestation driven by ever expanding commodity crop plantations, soil erosion driven by unsustainable practices, transport, processing and freezing of food produced in places far away from where it is consumed, and the tremendous energy waste in the increasingly centralised corporate retail and supermarket systems aggravate the problem. Each of these emit huge amounts of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.

Despite the obvious connection between the industrial food system and the climate crisis, and the obvious potential that agroecology and food sovereignty offer to turn the tide, these links are nowhere to be seen in any of the governmental climate negotiations. Instead, government officials seem to be betting on financial carbon markets and other corporate-driven ‘solutions’ that get us in deeper trouble. As Michel Pimbert explains, these false solutions include ‘Climate-smart Agriculture’ initiatives which merely conform to the dominant industrial food and farming system and are working against a truly transformative agroecology . REDD+, carbon markets and biofuel policies are additional examples of false solutions that work against agroecology and food sovereignty. In another article, GRAIN shows how industrial meat and dairy production is encouraging over consumption of meat with a disastrous impact on the climate and human health.

It doesn’t need to be this way. A radical shift towards food sovereignty would go a long way in solving the climate crisis: agroecological practices would massively build back organic matter (carbon) into the soils and largely eliminate the need for chemical fertilizers, and a focus on local markets and fresh produce would reduce the need for long distance transport, freezing and processing. Agrarian reforms aimed at supporting small scale food producers rather than promoting plantation farming would give back the land to those who produce food rather than those who produce commodities and help stop deforestation in the process.

Nurturing the soil, cooling the planet

The food–climate intersection is rooted in the earth. The expansion of unsustainable agricultural practices over the past century has led to the destruction of between 30-75% of the organic matter in soils on arable lands, and 50% of the organic matter on pastures and prairies. This massive loss of organic matter is responsible for a large part of the current CO₂ excess in the earth’s atmosphere. But the good news is that the CO₂ that we have sent into the atmosphere can be put back into the soil simply by restoring and supporting the practices that small farmers have been engaging in for generations. This has the potential to capture more than two thirds of the current excess CO₂ in the atmosphere.⁴

Nicholls and Altieri provide plenty of examples outlining the role of diversity, soil organic matter and soil cover in reducing farmers vulnerability to climatic shocks. Another article documents the efforts being made in the United States to learn from farmers’ innovative practices developed to take care of the soil. Increased intensity and frequency of drought is becoming a more common phenomena in many parts of the world. Soil and water conservation that promotes ecological resilience has been a key strategy for farmers in Haiti to continue producing food. But, these Haitian farmers also know that building resilience is not just an ecological question, and they are also challenging state power and defending their rights. The struggle against the climate crisis is also a question of equality and justice.

Climate justice

Those who are most gravely affectedly climate change are those who are the least responsible for it. Shalmali Guttal asserts that: “The struggles of local communities against forced evictions, industrial agriculture, extractive industry and large dams, and to protect their lands, territories, seeds and breeds are all struggles for climate justice.” Today, small farmers are squeezed onto less than a quarter of the world’s farmlands, but they continue to produce most of the world’s food.

Over the past 50 years, a staggering 140 million hectares – the size of almost all the farmland in India – has been taken over by four crops grown predominantly on large plantations for industrial purposes: soybeans, oil palm, rapeseed and sugar cane. The global area under these and other industrial commodity crops, is set to further grow if policies don’t change.

All too often alliances between states and corporations conspire to promote market-driven ‘development’ that undermines small scale producers’ rights to land and natural resources. In the context of climate change and natural disasters, ‘disaster capitalism’ exacerbates this kind of dispossession and permanent displacement of people. For example, in the Philippines, the devastation caused by Typhoon Yolanda, was used to defeat farmers who had been resisting land grabbing for decades before the disaster struck.

The pages in this magazine demonstrate how small scale farmers bear some of the biggest burdens brought about by the crisis, yet, the agroecology that many practice and the food sovereignty that many strive for provide a pathway to cool the planet and feed its people. We won’t be able to stop the climate crisis until this is recognised and accepted by those in power. Obama is right when he says that we can still act and it won’t be too late. But it has to involve challenging the corporate food system and putting agroecology and small scale farmers first again.

GRAIN (grain@grain.org) is an international non-profit organisation that works to support small farmers and social movements in their struggles for community-controlled and biodiversity-based food systems.

Jessica Milgroom (j.milgroom@ileia.org) and Madeleine Florin (m.florin@ileia.org) both work at ILEIA.

References

1 https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2017/may/26/barack-obama-food-climate-change
2 Climate Change & Food Systems: Assessing Impacts and Opportunities. Meridien Institute 2017
3 Food sovereignty: five steps to cool the planet and feed its people. GRAIN 2014
4 Earth matters – Tackling the climate crisis from the ground up GRAIN, October 2009

The post Editorial: Agroecology getting to the root causes of climate change appeared first on Ileia.

Through a series of beautifully shot images and their accompanying stories, the project joins the dots between global issues and their impact on our food systems, from climate change, to the loss of biodiversity to the devastating effect of the extractive industries.

Led by the Gaia Foundation, the project brings together an international team of over 40 world-renowned photographers, NGO’s and civil society groups with the aim of reaching out to a mainstream audience and debunking the myth that we need an industrial food system or quick fix technologies like GM to feed a growing global population.

We Feed the World, has given Farming Matters a preview of the work, which will be launched in London in March 2018, before touring a number of international locations. The images capture 50 extraordinary communities, across six continents, who are using an array of agroecological methods to produce food. Here, we present four case studies, from four different continents,
of climate-resilient food systems that are successful in finding creative solutions to deal with changing weather patterns and other social and political threats.

The Gaia Foundation is working with La Via Campesina, GRAIN, Groundswell International, Global Greengrants, Samdhana, the African Food Sovereignty Movement, the International Tree Foundation, Sahel Eco and communities around the world to produce the We Feed the World exhibition. They would welcome new partners and support from those working to promote agroecology.

Argentina

Now in their seventies, Remo and Irmina Kleiner look like an unlikely pair of revolutionaries, but these now doting grandparents spent over ten years on the run and were forced to give birth to two of their four children in the jungle, after speaking out about the rights of peasants in a dictator-led Argentina….Read more

Burkina Faso

Tindano Pabadou leads a women’s growing co-operative in the village of Bassieri, in the far east of Burkina Faso. The women here speak their minds and make decisions about how to share the harvest and spend the money it brings. Tindano has even paid for a new house for her family with the proceeds from her share of the co-operative….Read more

USA

Some years ago, Californian farmer, Mas Masumoto faced a life changing decision – the heritage peach trees his father had planted were still producing beautiful, juicy peaches but they weren’t the perfect looking red variety the supermarkets wanted….Read more

Indonesia

It took community leader Maria Loretta quite a bit of searching to even find the first sorghum seeds that have turned this 30 hectares of land in Likotuden into one of the most productive growing areas in East Flores….Read more

The post Photo essay: We feed the world appeared first on Ileia.

Elizabeth and Paul Kaiser are farmers in California, USA.  They are two of many food producers across the globe who have a proven track record as innovators, researchers, and educators in their fields.

As small scale farmers running a biodiverse and economically successful agricultural business, they are exploring meaningful solutions to the climate challenges currently threatening the future of their farm, and more broadly, our food systems.

Rainfall is highly variable in California and farmers are noticing more and more climate extremes as a result of climate change. Paul describes his experience: “The unique thing about California is that while they say we have an average rainfall, California almost never gets its average. We’re in an unusual place in that we usually get double the average or half the average and that’s been our ‘normal’ for hundreds of years.” And yet, in terms of climate change, Paul notes that, “now, we are definitely seeing even worse conditions and more extremes.”

MESA’s Farmer Network

MESA is a non-profit organisation that connects sustainable farming leaders through participatory education, intergenerational mentorship, and multicultural exchange. Our grassroots network is comprised of over 1450 farmers, researchers, activists, and innovators dedicated to social change in the food system. We combine hands-on applied learning with online education and work with hundreds of experienced farmers as well as with new farmers dedicated to advancing agroecology.

Elizabeth and Paul have been experimenting with practices to manage their increasingly variable weather patterns. For instance, Paul describes their experience with straw mulching. Ten years ago they weren’t mulching their soil during the summer but over the past couple of years, with hotter conditions, it’s become a necessity to preserve soil moisture, keep the soil temperature down, and ultimately produce a crop.

Like Elizabeth and Paul, a growing number of farmers and ranchers around the world are integrating agroecological principles onto their farms, including reducing dependence on fossil fuels, increasing crop and livestock diversity, building soil health, creating local markets, and providing stable living-wages. These farms have shown greater adaptive capacity to climate variability.

While Elizabeth and Paul have managed to adapt, some farmers have been harder hit. This is the case for María Inés, a third generation farmer from Guerrero, Mexico who came to California in the 1980’s as a migrant farm worker and now manages an organic farm and restaurant with her family. In February 2017, she lost her entire crop due to massive flooding. “Everything was destroyed and I had to start over,” María explained. She is also using agroecological principles to increase soil health, diversify her income, and build local markets, but lacks the resources to make highcost investments and infrastructure improvements due to her lack of legal documentation in the US and land ownership. The overlapping and intersectional challenges faced by diverse farmers across the US, whether caused by immigration status, class, race, gender, or other factors, have very real ecological, social, political, and economic impacts. Recognising this is an essential step towards effectively addressing the root causes of farmers’ vulnerability to climate change.

Capturing lessons learnt and challenges faced by these farmers through their experimentation across their many different contexts is highly valuable, and one reason why farmer-driven research is so important to deal with the climate crisis.

Citizen Science

Citizen science is often defined as the involvement of the public in scientific research. This can include localised, communitydriven research or broader, global investigations. Together with the general public, citizen science integrates the experience and expertise of educators, scientists, data managers, and others to collect and analyse data relating to the natural world.

In a world increasingly dominated by big data, combined with the current United States administration promoting climate denial, it is more important than ever to amplify the living knowledge of small scale farmers. This is one of the motivations behind a participatory action research and farmer citizen science programme that MESA is driving. Moreover, with their programme, MESA aims to fill the large gap in appropriate technologies that support on-farm monitoring of climate change adaptation strategies for small scale farmers, and address some of the intersectional challenges that they face.

Farmer-centred learning

Over the past five years, MESA has begun engaging with farmers like Elizabeth, Paul and María to develop farmer-led participatory action research and citizen science across the United States. The programme is bringing together producers, scientists, researchers and educators. Participants include those who are part of a 18-member farmer advisory council, as well as a research and advisory team of scientists with experience in participatory research from UC Berkeley, UC Davis, UC Santa Cruz, University of Hawaii, University of Vermont, and Oregon State University.

One of the initiatives is the development of the open-source Farm-Centered Learning Network which gives farmers the chance to share knowledge, stories, celebrate successes, generate discourse and collect on-farm data through interactive, multimedia online courses. A first On-Farm Climate Resilience course with webinars, self-assessments, monitoring, and mapping will launch in 2017.

A toolbox

Research to develop a set of tools for farmers is running alongside the learning initiative. The tools aim to assess, map, and track on-farm indicators selected by the farmers such as species and variety diversity, soil fertility, carbon sequestration and to see how they are correlated with specific management practices on the farm, and track climate resilience. MESA’s research and advisory teams are developing these together. Eventually, the information generated with the tools will be shared with the broader network of farmers, supporting collective decision making and amplifying awareness around climate-resilient practices.

We have received positive as well as constructive feedback from farmers and scientists on the process for developing the tools so far. Now that trust and commitment between farmers and scientists has been established, the next step is to further develop and test the climate resilience data tracking features. The climate resilience priorities of farmers across the MESA network will guide the selection of the most appropriate indicators, helping develop useful tools for farmers, by farmers.

Leah Atwood, Ana Cecilia Galvis, Natalia Pinzón Jiménez and Paul Rogé are members of the MESA team.

E: mesa@ mesaprogram.org

The post Advancing on-farm climate resilience with citizen science appeared first on Ileia.

Various authors, 2016. Transnational Institute, 16 pages.

Small scale food producers and consumers, including peasants, indigenous peoples, hunters and gatherers, family farmers, rural workers, herders and pastoralists, fisherfolk and urban people – the frontline communities – are increasingly confronted by the grabbing of natural resources and systematic violations of human rights. Already pushed to the fringe, these communities additionally face the increasingly frequent natural disasters and impacts of climate destruction that are caused by climate change. The purpose of this report is to amplify the voices of frontline communities and to share the political messages of the 16 social movement leaders with the masses who form the base of social movements all over the world. More than twenty groups from across the globe have contributed to the writing of the report.

Agroecology: the bold future of farming in Africa

Michael Farrelly, G. Clare Westwood & Stephen Boustred (Eds.), 2016. AFSA & TOAM, 88 pages.

There is an avalanche of evidence coming from almost everywhere in the world that agroecology works; this is Africa’s contribution. This compilation of successful stories of agroecology makes a strong statement demonstrating that Africa can feed itself through caring for its environment, using its rich cultural knowledge, and supported by relevant science and technology. The case studies address themes including: food for nutrition and health; increasing incomes, improving livelihoods; regeneration, restoration and biodiversity; valuing local knowledge and innovation; and tackling climate change and building resilience. Next to the case studies, the synthesis-style contributions from Million Belay, Elizabeth Mpofu and Lim Li Ching, to name a few, make a strong connection between local case studies and global impacts.

Comic book: Together we can cool the planet

La Via Campesina, Grain, 2016. 22 pages.

Based on the video, Together we can cool the planet!, co-produced by La Vía Campesina and GRAIN in 2015, they created a comic book to support training activities of social movements and civil society organisations around climate change. This comic book looks at how the industrial food system impacts our climate and also explains what we can do to change course and start cooling the planet. The refreshing combination of fun graphics with minimal text delivers a clear message: it is peasants and small farmers, along with consumers who choose agroecological products from local markets, who hold the solution to the climate crisis.

Climate change and food systems: Assessing impacts and opportunities

Meredith Niles, Jimena Esquivel, Richie Ahuja, Nelson Mango, et al., 2017. Meridian Institute, 83 pages.

This report was prepared to coincide with the Global Alliance for the Future of Food’s second international dialogue. It reviews key literature about how food and agriculture affect climate change and how climate change is affecting food systems. It illustrates how a food systems approach to climate change adaptation and mitigation can drive positive changes and inform decision making to avoid unintended effects from narrowly targeted interventions. This report aims to offer practical steps for immediate action while new research, decision-support tools, governance mechanisms, and their efforts are pursued to support the broader transformation that is urgently needed for sustainable food systems and achieving the Sustainable Development Goals.

Planning and implementing climate change responses in the context of uncertainty

Susannah Fisher, Ben Garside, Marissa Van Epp et al., 2016. IIED, 44 pages.

Significant uncertainties around future climate change challenge the implementation of policies and programmes. Mobilising action that can respond to climate change and be flexible enough to learn from new experiences as well as adapt to unknowns is difficult, given traditional short-term timeframes, sector silos and the predominantly top-down nature of planning cycles. Process-driven approaches, such as social learning, offer a more flexible approach to tackling climate uncertainties. These approaches place the emphasis on building the capacity, knowledge, evidence and stakeholder relationships necessary to support first shortterm and then longer-term decision making and action.

The Great Climate Robbery: How the food system drives climate change and what we can do about it

Henk Hobbelink (Ed.), 2015. Grain.

This book stems from the mounting data that shows how the industrial food system is a major driver of climate change and how food sovereignty is critical to any lasting and just solutions. With governments, particularly those from the main polluting countries, abdicating their responsibility to deal with the problem, it has become ever more critical for people to take action into their own hands. Changing the food system is perhaps the most important and effective place to start. The various articles on climate change selected for this book provide readers with solid information about how the industrial food system causes climate change, how food and agribusiness corporations are getting away with it and what can be done to turn things around. This book aims to help readers to better understand the ways in which corporations seek to increase their control over the food system so that this control can be more effectively challenged.

The post Mind Books and films appeared first on Ileia.

Global agricultural production is already being affected by changes in rainfall and temperature thus compromising food security. Official statistics predict that small scale farmers in developing countries will be especially vulnerable to climate change because of their geographic exposure, low incomes, reliance on agriculture and limited capacity to seek alternative livelihoods.

Although it is true that extreme climatic events can severely impact small farmers, available data is just a gross approximation at understanding the heterogeneity of small scale agriculture, ignoring the myriad of strategies that thousands of small farmers have used, and still use, to deal with climatic variability.

Observations of agricultural performance after extreme climatic events reveal that resilience to climate disasters is closely linked to the level of on-farm biodiversity. Diversified farms with soils rich in organic matter reduce vulnerability and make farms more resilient in the long-term. Based on this evidence, various experts have suggested that reviving traditional management systems, combined with the use of agroecological principles, represents a robust path to enhancing the resilience of modern agricultural production.

Diverse farming systems

A study conducted in Central American hillsides after Hurricane Mitch showed that farmers using diversification practices (such as cover crops, intercropping and agroforestry) suffered less damage than their conventional monoculture neighbours. A survey of more than 1800 neighbouring ‘sustainable’ and ‘conventional’ farms in Nicaragua, Honduras and Guatemala, found that the ‘sustainable’ plots had between 20 to 40% more topsoil, greater soil moisture and less erosion, and also experienced lower economic losses than their conventional neighbours. Similarly in Chiapas, coffee systems exhibiting high levels of diversity of vegetation suffered less damage from farmers to produce various annual crops simultaneously and minimise risk. Data from 94 experiments on intercropping of sorghum and pigeon pea showed that for a particular ‘disaster’ level quoted, sole pigeon pea crop would fail one year in five, sole sorghum crop would fail one year in eight, but intercropping would fail only one year in 36. Thus intercropping exhibits greater yield stability and less productivity decline during drought than monocultures.

At the El Hatico farm, in Cauca, Colombia, a five story intensive silvo-pastoral system composed of a layer of grasses, Leucaena shrubs, medium-sized trees and a canopy of large trees has, over the past 18 years, increased its stocking rates to 4.3 dairy cows per hectare and its milk production by 130%, as well as completely eliminating the use of chemical fertilizers. 2009 was the driest year in El Hatico’s 40-year record, and the farmers saw a reduction of 25% in pasture biomass, yet the production of fodder remained constant throughout the year, neutralising the negative effects of drought on the whole system. Although the farm had to adjust its stocking rates, the farm’s milk production for 2009 was the highest on record, with a surprising 10% increase compared to the previous four years. Meanwhile, farmers in other parts of the country reported severe animal weight loss and high mortality rates due to starvation and thirst.

Intercropping enables farmers to produce various
crops simultaneously and minimise risk in the 
process.

Enhancing soil organic matter 

Adding large quantities of organic materials to the soil on a regular basis is a key strategy used by many agoecological farmers, and is especially relevant under dryland conditions. Increasing soil organic matter (SOM) enhances resilience by improving the soil’s water retention capacity, enhancing tolerance to drought, improving infiltration, and reducing the loss of soil particles through erosion after intense rains. In long-term trials measuring the relative water holding capacity of soils, diversified farming systems have shown a clear advantage over conventional farming systems. Studies show that as soil organic matter content increases from 0.5 to 3%, available water capacity can double.

At the same time, organically-rich soils usually contain symbiotic mycorrhizal fungi, such as vesicular arbuscular mycorrhizal (VAM) fungi, which are a key component of the soil microbiota, influencing plant growth and soil productivity. Of particular significance is the fact that plants colonised by VAM fungi usually exhibit significantly higher biomass and yields compared to non-mycorrhizal plants, under water stress conditions. Mechanisms that may explain VAM-induced drought tolerance, and increased water use efficiency involve both increased dehydration avoidance and dehydration tolerance.

Managing soil cover

Protecting the soil from erosion is also a fundamental strategy for enhancing resilience. Cover crop mulching, green manures and stubble mulching protects the soil surface with residues and inhibits drying of the soil. Mulching can also reduce wind speed by up to 99%, thereby significantly reducing losses due to evaporation. In addition, cover crop and weed residues can improve water penetration and decrease water runoff losses by two to six times.

The challenge is to identify the responses that are sustainable, and to upscale them

Throughout Central America, many NGOs have promoted the use of grain legumes as green manures, an inexpensive source of organic fertilizer and a way of building up organic matter. Hundreds of farmers along the northern coast of Honduras are using velvet bean (Mucuna pruriens) with excellent results, including corn yields of about 3 tonne/ha, more than double the national average. These beans produce nearly 30 tonne/ha of biomass per year, adding about 90 to 100 kg of nitrogen per hectare per year to the soil. The system diminishes drought stress, because the mulch layer left by Mucuna helps conserve water in the soil, making nutrients readily available in periods of major crop uptake.

Today, well over 125,000 farmers are using green manures and cover crops in Santa Catarina, Brazil. Hillside family farmers modified the conventional no-till system by leaving plant residues on the soil surface. They noticed a reduction in soil erosion levels, and also experienced lower fluctuations in soil moisture and temperature. These novel systems rely on mixtures for summer and winter cover cropping which leave a thick residue on which crops like corn, beans, wheat, onions or tomatoes are directly sown or planted, suffering very little weed interference during the growing season. During the 2008-2009 season, when there was a severe drought, conventional maize producers experienced an average yield loss of 50%, reaching productivity levels of 4.5 tonne/ha. However the producers who had switched to no-till agroecological practices experienced a loss of only 20%, confirming the greater resilience of these systems.

Building social resilience

Undoubtedly, crop diversification represents a viable long-term strategy for farmers experiencing erratic weather. More diverse agroecosystems are more resilient to extreme climatic events, thus significantly reducing farmers vulnerability. Adding copious amounts of organic matter into soils is particularly strategic when confronting droughts as SOM increases water holding capacity and biological activity which enhances water use efficiency. Managing cover crops and green manures protects soil from erosion but also adds biomass, which in turn contributes to increased levels of SOM.

Clearly, agroecological strategies that enhance the ecological resiliency of farming systems are a necessary, but not sufficient, condition to achieve sustainability. Social resilience, defined as the ability of groups or communities to adapt to environmental stresses, must go hand in hand with ecological resilience. To be resilient, rural societies must have the ability to buffer disturbance with agroecological methods adopted and disseminated through self-organisation and collective action. Reducing social vulnerability through the extension and consolidation of social networks, both locally and at regional scales, can further increase the resilience of agroecosystems. The vulnerability of farming communities depends on the development of the natural and social capital that gives farmers and their systems resilience against climatic (and other) shocks (see figure on page 39). This adaptive capacity resides in a set of social and agroecological conditions that influence the ability of individuals or groups, and their farms, to respond to climate change in a resilient manner. This capacity to respond to changes in environmental conditions exists to different degrees within communities but the responses are not always sustainable. The challenge is to identify the responses that are sustainable, and to upscale them, enhancing the reactive capacity of communities to deploy agroecological practices that allow farmers to resist and recover from climatic events. Social organisation strategies (solidarity networks, farmer to farmer exchanges, community food and seed saving, etc.) used by farmers to cope with the difficult circumstances imposed by such events, are key component of socio-ecological resilience.

Clara Ines Nicholls (nicholls@berkeley.edu) is the president of SOCLA, Sociedad Científica Latino Americana de Agroecología and Regional coordinator of REDAGRES, Red IberoAmericana de Agroecología para el Desarrollo de Sistemas Agrícolas Resilientes al Cambio Climático.

Miguel A. Altieri (agroeco3@berkeley.edu) is Professor of Agroecology at University of California, Berkeley.

This is an updated version of the article that was first published in Farming Matters 28.2 in June 2012.

References

Altieri, M.A. and C.I. Nicholls 2013 The adaptation and mitigation potential of traditional agriculture in a changing climate. Climatic Change. DOI 10.1007/s10584-013-0909-y Altieri, M.A., C.I. Nicholls, A Henao and M.Lana 2015 Agroecology and the design of climate change resilient farming systems. Agronomy for Sustainable Development. DOI 10.1007/s 13593-015-0285-2

Magdoff, F. and H. van Es. 2000. Bulding Soils for Better Crops. Sustainable Agriculture Network. Beltsville, M.A. 230 pp

Natarajan, M, and R.W. Willey, 1996. The effects of water stress on yields advantages of intercropping systems. Field Crops Research 13: 117-131

The post Perspectives: Agroecological approaches to enhance resilience among small farmers appeared first on Ileia.

As the United Nations Paris Climate Agreement comes into force, national governments are discovering that policies to reduce greenhouse gas emissions (GHGs) are conflicting with trade agreements. The success or failure of the Paris agreement will largely depend on which international commitments will take precedent: trade or climate?

Nearly 80% of countries’ plans to reduce GHGs under the Paris agreement include actions on agriculture. Most agricultural emissions are associated with an industrial model of agriculture designed to compete in global markets. Trade rules reinforce high GHG-emitting industrial production in many ways:

• They harmonise and weaken food safety rules between countries, including rules governing energy intensive pesticides and synthetic fertilizers, and veterinary drugs needed for confined animal production;
• Intellectual property rights provisions limit farmers and breeders from exchanging seeds, hindering seed breeding efforts for climate adaptation;
• They place restrictions on how governments can support farmers as part of strengthening national and local food systems that are more climate resilient and less energy intensive;
• They place restrictions on countries’ tariffs to protect their own farmers from cheap imports;
• Trade and investment rules are increasingly linked to ‘land grabs’ of agricultural or forest land for large scale industrial farming.

Regional free trade agreements often include provisions that allow foreign corporations to sue governments if the companies feel new regulations led to unfair treatment and undercut profits. Using such powerful provisions, corporations have challenged government policies that restrict oil pipelines, offshore drilling, and fracking.

Trade rules also limit governments’ ability to enact and expand energy policies that address climate change. Last year, the World Trade Organization ruled that India’s solar programme discriminated against foreign (in this case U.S.) solar panel producers. The WTO determined that India’s climate obligations did not protect it from trade rules.

As opposition to free trade agreements rises, a new approach is badly needed. This is particularly critical for agriculture, whih is especially vulnerable to climate change. Trade agreements should not be given legal priority over other global agreements. Our climate challenge demands trade rules that support international cooperation towards sustainability, starting with the urgent need to curb GHGs and support climate adaptation.

Ben Lilliston (BLilliston@iatp.org) is the director of corporate strategies and climate change at the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy.

The post How trade deals hurt the climate appeared first on Ileia.

Agroecology is about climate resilient family farming. What makes the strategies of agroecological farmers unique and resilient? In the December issue of Farming Matters in 2013, Jan Douwe van der Ploeg wrote an insightful article about ten qualities of family farming. With the help of his ‘ten qualities’ flower I will attempt a basic answer to this question.

Knowledge about agriculture and biodiversity: The family is a place for knowledge building. Family farmers share and build knowledge about crops, animals, trees, weather signals, seeds, insects, soils, risk management, and the landscape wherein they live. Men and women farmers hold different complementary knowledge. This knowledge does not exist in a vacuum, it is there because family farms exist. This knowledge is unfolding every day and is crucial for climate resilient farming.

Power balance: In the farm family there is cooperation and sometimes conflict. The aim of the farm family is to provide continuity over the generations. However, there may be a skewed division of labour, or unequal access to and control over resources between men and women, and between generations. Climate change can worsen imbalances and thus contribute to ‘resilience deficits’, i.e. farm families struggle to deal with crisis after crisis and land in downward spirals. It is crucial to invest in the resilience of family farmers as a core strategy in development, and to look for upward spirals to restore power balances within farm families.

Nexus between family, farm and agroecology: As Jan Douwe van der Ploeg says, the farm-family nexus is at the core of many decisions about the development of the farm. There is yet another connection here. The farm- family nexus provides an ideal setting for agroecological practices to be developed, tested and shared. Family farming and agroecology go well together. This does not mean that all family farms are agroecological or vice versa. But many stories published in Farming Matters over the years show that the ten qualities of family farming are coherent with the logic of agroecology.

Edith van Walsum (e.van.walsum@ileia.org) is the director of ILEIA.

The post Family farmers living with climate change appeared first on Ileia.