A recently released UN report says that moves by small-scale farmers in developing countries to ecological agriculture (agroecology) can double food production within 10 years in the poorest regions of the world.

The report was presented by Olivier de Schutter, the UN special rapporteur on the right to food, and is based on an extensive review of recent scientific literature and the outcomes of an international expert seminar on agroecology that was held last summer in Belgium. The report shows that agroecology, if sufficiently supported, can double food production in entire regions within 10 years while mitigating climate change and alleviating rural poverty.

Stockholm Resilience Centre researcher Elin Enfors working with resilience perspectives on agroecosystems in Eastern Africa. Photo by Jerker Lokrantz/Azote

What is agroecology?

In a nutshell agroecology is the application of ecological theory to study, design, manage and evaluate agricultural systems. Agroecology is a systems perspective as it considers interactions of biophysical, technical and socioeconomic components of the farming systems. It enhances soils productivity and protects the crops against pests by relying on the natural environment such as beneficial trees, plants, animals and insects. In a sense it is the polar opposite of "modern" intensive agriculture which is intensive in pesticide and fertilizer use and is heavily reliant on fossil fuels. One of the champions of agroecology is renowned Berkely Professor Miguel Altieri.

The de Schutter report

So far, the evidence for agroecology has been dismissed as being very shaky and difficult to scale up from small, local successes. However the report presented by Olivier de Schutter shows an average crop yield increase of 80% in agroecology projects from 57 developing countries, with an average increase of 116% in African projects. More specifically recent projects conducted in 20 African countries demonstrated a doubling of crop yields over a period of 3-10 years.

“Conventional farming relies on expensive inputs, fuels climate change and is not resilient to climatic shocks. It simply is not the best choice anymore today,” De Schutter stresses. “A large segment of the scientific community now acknowledges the positive impacts of agroecology on food production, poverty alleviation and climate change mitigation -- and this this is what is needed in a world of limited resources. Malawi, a country that launched a massive chemical fertilizer subsidy program a few years ago, is now implementing agroecology, benefiting more than 1.3 million of the poorest people, with maize yields increasing from 1 ton/ha to 2-3 tons/ha.”

Resilience and agroecology

In many ways, the concepts of resilience and agroecology share many similar features such as an underlying systems perspective. Indeed, many current innovative projects to improve the sustainability in agroecosystems are actually applying the resilience perspective. For example resilience promotes the use of innovative farming practices to increase the adaptive capacity of farmers in developing countries (see some of the work by centre researcher Elin Enfors). I also saw parallels between what is said in the report and some of the key findings of the social-ecological transformation discourse (which has its roots in the resilience framework). For example the UN report cites Cuba as an example of how change to agroecology on a larger national scale is possible, as the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 led to supplies of cheap pesticides and fertilisers being cut off. Yields began rising in Cuba following this transformation after a downturn in the 1990s as farmers adopted more eco-friendly methods. Transformation, as discussed by resilience scholars and practitioners, basically refers to a social-ecological systems switching from an unsustainable to a sustainable pathway. Political crises have often been highlighted as windows of opportunity for transformation to occur - and thus the Cuban example fits in nicely with this theory, at least when not subject to deeper scrutiny.

The full report is available here: http://www2.ohchr.org/english/issues/food/annual.htm

For information on the mandate and work of the Special Rapporteur, visit: www.srfood.org