To feed the world’s burgeoning population now and into the future, a sustainable intensification of agriculture will be necessary. Experts quoted in a new article on the "Capacity for Development" website of the European Commission point out that agriculture must raise yields on the same amount of land with less water and fewer inputs while at the same time mitigating and building resilience to climate change.
To achieve such intensification, it will be necessary to train farmers in techniques such as agroforestry, conservation agriculture and fertilizer micro-dosing.
Patrick Worms, senior science policy adviser at the World Agroforestry Centre (ICRAF), says in the article and accompanying video clip, that farming methods such as evergreen agriculture and farmer-managed natural regeneration are “high performance, yet easy and cheap to implement.”
Sir Gordon Conway, ecologist and Professor of International Development at Imperial College London, says sustainable intensification of agricultural productivity should, in addition, “increase the natural capital of the land.”
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Read full story with videos of Sir Gordon Conway and Patrick Worms: Training Farmers in Agroecology: A Sound Investment to Fight Hunger
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Related articles:
Evergreen in action: Food security and environmental health for Africa’s farmers
Mitigation and adaptation: a perfect marriage made on farms
Farmers managing underground forests to re-vegetate their lands
External links:
Plant perennials to save Africa’s soils (PDF article in Nature)
