Exploring Agrodiversity

Exploring Agrodiversity PDF Author: H. C. Brookfield
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 023110233X
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 371

Get Book Here

Book Description
Small farmers are often viewed as engaging in wasteful practices that wreak ecological havoc. Exploring Agrodiversity sets the record straight: Small farmers are in fact ingenious and inventive and engage in a diverse range of land-management strategies, many of them resourcefully geared toward conserving resources, especially soil. Using case studies from Africa, Asia, Latin America, and the Pacific, this book provides in-depth analysis of agricultural diversity and explores its history.

Exploring Agrodiversity

Exploring Agrodiversity PDF Author: H. C. Brookfield
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 023110233X
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 371

Get Book Here

Book Description
Small farmers are often viewed as engaging in wasteful practices that wreak ecological havoc. Exploring Agrodiversity sets the record straight: Small farmers are in fact ingenious and inventive and engage in a diverse range of land-management strategies, many of them resourcefully geared toward conserving resources, especially soil. Using case studies from Africa, Asia, Latin America, and the Pacific, this book provides in-depth analysis of agricultural diversity and explores its history.

Voices from the Forest

Voices from the Forest PDF Author: Malcolm Cairns
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 113652228X
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 853

Get Book Here

Book Description
This handbook of locally based agricultural practices brings together the best of science and farmer experimentation, vividly illustrating the enormous diversity of shifting cultivation systems as well as the power of human ingenuity. Environmentalists have tended to disparage shifting cultivation (sometimes called 'swidden cultivation' or 'slash-and-burn agriculture') as unsustainable due to its supposed role in deforestation and land degradation. However, a growing body of evidence indicates that such indigenous practices, as they have evolved over time, can be highly adaptive to land and ecology. In contrast, 'scientific' agricultural solutions imposed from outside can be far more damaging to the environment. Moreover, these external solutions often fail to recognize the extent to which an agricultural system supports a way of life along with a society's food needs. They do not recognize the degree to which the sustainability of a culture is intimately associated with the sustainability and continuity of its agricultural system. Unprecedented in ambition and scope, Voices from the Forest focuses on successful agricultural strategies of upland farmers. More than 100 scholars from 19 countries--including agricultural economists, ecologists, and anthropologists--collaborated in the analysis of different fallow management typologies, working in conjunction with hundreds of indigenous farmers of different cultures and a broad range of climates, crops, and soil conditions. By sharing this knowledge--and combining it with new scientific and technical advances--the authors hope to make indigenous practices and experience more widely accessible and better understood, not only by researchers and development practitioners, but by other communities of farmers around the world.

Shifting Cultivation, Livelihood and Food Security

Shifting Cultivation, Livelihood and Food Security PDF Author: Christian Erni
Publisher:
ISBN: 9789251087619
Category : Food security
Languages : en
Pages : 415

Get Book Here

Book Description
The United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples was adopted by the UN General Assembly on 13 September 2007. Since then, the importance of the role that indigenous peoples play in economic, social and environmental conservation through traditional sustainable agricultural practices has been gradually recognized. Consistent with the mandate to eradicate hunger, poverty and malnutrition--and based on the due respect for universal human rights--in August 2010 the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations adopted a policy on indigenous and tribal peoples in order to ensure the relevance of its efforts to respect, include, and promote indigenous people's related issues in its general work. This publication is an outcome of a regional consultation held in Bangkok, Thailand in November 2013. It documents seven case studies which were conducted in Bangladesh, Cambodia, India, Indonesia, the Lao People's Democratic Republic, Nepal and Thailand to take stock of the changes in livelihood and food security among indigenous shifting cultivation communities in South and Southeast Asia against the backdrop of the rapid socio-economic transformations currently engulfing the region. The case studies identify external--macro-economic, political, legal, policy--and internal--demographic, social, cultural--factors that hinder and facilitate achieving and sustaining livelihood and food security. The case studies also document good practices in adaptive changes among shifting cultivation communities with respect to livelihood and food security, land tenure and natural resource management, and identify intervention measures supporting and promoting good practices in adaptive changes among shifting cultivators in the region.

From Slash-and-burn to Replanting

From Slash-and-burn to Replanting PDF Author: François Ruf
Publisher: World Bank Publications
ISBN: 0821352059
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 366

Get Book Here

Book Description
The most traditional and widely used farming systems in the humid upland tropics are based on fallowing and various forms of slash and burn agriculture. Their sustainability depends on the duration of the fallow. When fallow duration drops below the threshold of seven or eight years crop yield usually declines. A concept described as "forest rent". Given the plight of millions of farmers the development of upland agriculture has become increasingly important. This book reports the results of fieldwork conducted by the editors and other experts in some 40 regions of Indonesia from 1989 to 2001. It finds that some of the most successful improvements have been the result of innovations by the farmers themselves.

Agroforestry - The Future of Global Land Use

Agroforestry - The Future of Global Land Use PDF Author: P.K. Ramachandran Nair
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 9400746768
Category : Technology & Engineering
Languages : en
Pages : 549

Get Book Here

Book Description
This volume contains a solid body of the current state of knowledge on the various themes and activities in agroforestry worldwide. It is organized into three sections: the Introduction section consists of the summaries of six keynote speeches at the 2nd World Congress of Agroforestry held in Nairobi, Kenya, in 2009; that is followed by two sections of peer-reviewed thematic chapters grouped as “Global Perspectives” (seven chapters) and “Regional Perspectives” (eleven chapters), authored by professional leaders in their respective agroforestry-related fields worldwide. A total of 130 professionals from institutions in 33 countries in both developing and the industrialized temperate regions of the world contributed to the book as chapter authors and/or reviewers. Thus, the book presents a comprehensive and authoritative account of the global picture of agroforestry today.

Indonesia in Transition

Indonesia in Transition PDF Author: Chris Manning
Publisher: Zed Books
ISBN: 9781856499248
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 412

Get Book Here

Book Description
Indonesia enters the new millennium at a time of transition. It has experienced several crises - in particular the economic crisis of 1997-98, a severe intensification of its environmental degradation, and more recently the East Timor crisis, the ongoing Aceh demand for independence, the change of government from the autocratic Soeharto regime to one democratically elected and under the leadership of President Abdurrahman Wahid, and the outbreak of a number of violent communal conflicts. These crises were separate but have interlinked social and political dynamics. This major volume is the first wide-ranging analysis of recent developments. It analyses the social and political dimensions of reformation: poverty and income, environment and livelihood, civil society and legal institutions, and Islam and politics. Contributors include Indonesian and Australian scholars from a range of social science disciplines.

Domesticating Forests

Domesticating Forests PDF Author: Geneviève Michon
Publisher:
ISBN: 9789793198224
Category : Agroforestry
Languages : en
Pages : 208

Get Book Here

Book Description


Agroecological Innovations

Agroecological Innovations PDF Author: Norman Uphoff
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1136571981
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 331

Get Book Here

Book Description
The world's food supply needs to rise significantly, yet both arable and water supplies per capita are decreasing. Not only are modern agricultural methods beyond the reach of those suffering the greatest food insecurity but they are also ecologically damaging, relying upon fossil energy and chemical inputs. This volume offers a collection of innovative and diverse approaches to agricultural development. Documented in 12 case studies, these approaches are reliant upon greater knowledge, skill and labour input, rather than larger capital expenditure. They are shown to increase yield substantially, sometimes doubling or tripling output. This volume presents the concepts and operational means for reorienting agricultural efforts towards these more environmentally friendly and socially desirable approaches in the developed as well as developing world.

Sustainable Intensification

Sustainable Intensification PDF Author: Jules N. Pretty
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1136529276
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 292

Get Book Here

Book Description
Continued population growth, rapidly changing consumption patterns and the impacts of climate change and environmental degradation are driving limited resources of food, energy, water and materials towards critical thresholds worldwide. These pressures are likely to be substantial across Africa, where countries will have to find innovative ways to boost crop and livestock production to avoid becoming more reliant on imports and food aid. Sustainable agricultural intensification - producing more output from the same area of land while reducing the negative environmental impacts - represents a solution for millions of African farmers. This volume presents the lessons learned from 40 sustainable agricultural intensification programmes in 20 countries across Africa, commissioned as part of the UK Government's Foresight project. Through detailed case studies, the authors of each chapter examine how to develop productive and sustainable agricultural systems and how to scale up these systems to reach many more millions of people in the future. Themes covered include crop improvements, agroforestry and soil conservation, conservation agriculture, integrated pest management, horticulture, livestock and fodder crops, aquaculture, and novel policies and partnerships.

Imperata Grassland Rehabilitation Using Agroforestry and Assisted Natural Regeneration

Imperata Grassland Rehabilitation Using Agroforestry and Assisted Natural Regeneration PDF Author: Kathleen S. Friday
Publisher: World Agroforestry Centre
ISBN: 9799553709
Category : Agroforestry
Languages : en
Pages : 172

Get Book Here

Book Description