Portfolio | Agroecology Info Pool

SEKEM INITIATIVE

The SEKEM Initiative was founded as a comprehensive development initiative to address some of the most pressing issues affecting Egypt. SEKEM started on a 70-hectare plot of desert land and became the first entity to develop biodynamic farming methods in Egypt.

PREMIUM HORTUS

Premium Hortus is the first African greentech company for scaling up agroecology and sustainable development in West Africa. They are specialized in the e-commerce of agroecological products, organic production and producer support in Benin.

MESULA MERU SUSTAINABLE LAND LTD

MESULA was created to provide an opportunity to farmers that are willing to approach a new concept of crop production and livestock management. They converted more than 20 acres of land to organically managed farmlands with a special focus on pest management and soil fertility conservation, working only with small scale farmers. The company is reducing costs and distributing profits in an equal way to all the subjects involved.

SONEVA FUSHI

Soneva Fushi, a pioneering luxury eco resort, has developed a new sustainable system called “Eco Centro Waste to Wealth” to turn most waste into value and nutrients for the soil, such as compost, bio char, charcoal, mulches and soil conditioners. The resort follows the three R principles: Reduce – Reuse – Recycle.

THE BIG CARROT

The Big Carrot has grown into Canada's largest worker owned natural food market selling their products in two different locations near Toronto. They continue to set standards for quality and selection of natural foods while still maintaining the same democratic non-corporate agenda as when they first opened.

SHARED HARVEST ORGANIC FARM

Shared Harvest is a public-interested, service-oriented social enterprise devoted to the promotion of ecological agriculture and mutual trust between producers and consumers. The enterprise does not aim at maximizing profits, but rather aims at the comprehensive development of society, ecology and economy.

EOSTA

Moreover, Eosta works with major retailers and natural food stores in Europe, the United States, Canada, and the Far East. They provide full traceability of their products, provide extension services to farmers, promote true cost accounting, and build a sustainable market with consumers. This traceability allows buyers to make well–informed purchases at prices fair to producers, society and the environment.

CANOPY BRIDGE

Canopy Bridge works with a group of more than 25 chefs from Ecuador´s best restaurants, indigenous communities and conservation NGOs. They provide a so far missing link in the value chain for fresh Amazon products and ingredients. The focus is on products grown by the Kichwa people in highly diversified chakra agroforestry production units and aquaculture paiche, an Amazon fish species produced by the Ai-Kofán people.

BNP PARIBAS’ CSR

BNP Paribas, a French international banking group, is the world's 8th largest bank by total assets, with a presence in 72 countries. Since 2002, the banks corporate social responsibility (CSR) approach allows them to take part in building a sustainable future while promoting the group’s performance and stability.

ADAPTA GROUP

The MAIS program aims at training farmers on how to generate satisfactory incomes even during drought-intensive periods using alternative farming methods across value chains. The founders of the Adapta group have practical experience on working with farming families living in areas of high climatic vulnerability for more than a decade and engaged over 650 farmers. To enhance climate resilience, the MAIS program integrates the recovery of ecosystem services with agricultural production while additionally promoting gender equality.

Sustainable Agriculture Tanzania

Sustainable Agriculture Tanzania (SAT) addresses social and environmental problems caused by environmentally-destructive and unsustainable farming practices. These problems lead to food insecurity, poverty and malnutrition resulting from environmental degradation through loss of top soil, water supplies and forests. SAT’s vision is to make sure the majority of farmers are using acknowledged agroecological methods to improve their livelihoods, conserve the environment and reduce pressure on natural resources.

1 Million Trees

1m Trees is a joint program by German NGO Fairventures Worldwide and the local foundation Borneo Institute in Central Kalimantan, Indonesia. The aim of the program is to revitalize deforested and degraded land with a successional multi-species agroforestry system. First it is about utilizing the soil-improving qualities of pioneer tree species to create a basis for the cultivation of fruit trees and vegetables. In a second step, the fertility of the area is further enhanced with compost and permaculture techniques.

QUITO: PARTICIPATORY URBAN AGRICULTURE PROJECT

The Participatory Urban Agriculture Project (AGRUPAR) was initiated in 2002 within the Municipality of Quito. The project targets the most vulnerable people of the city through supporting self-production of organic food and by promoting urban agriculture as a livelihood and a powerful strategy for food security. With the overall goal to generate employment and improve family incomes, AGRUPAR promotes the selling of surplus through local marketing projects called “bioferias”

Agro-Ecological Transition in the South

CIRAD identified agroecology as one of its top research priority, focusing on how agro-ecological systems function and assessing their capacity as credible alternatives to conventional production models. CIRAD's work on agroecology encompasses several organizational levels – plant, cropping system, farm, rural organization, value chain and territory. Three key research topics were identified: making use of biodiversity, designing systems and supporting transition.

Collaborative Crop Research Program

The Collaborative Crop Research Program (CCRP) funds participatory, collaborative research on agroecological intensification, bringing smallholder farmers, researchers, and development professionals together to create technology to improve nutrition, livelihoods, and productivity for farming communities. The CCRP provides grants to local and national grantees participating in communities of practice.

Soils, Food and Healthy Communities

SFHC works to empower smallholder farmers in Malawi to build sustainable, healthy and resilient communities. Farmer-led, participatory research based on ecological approaches is the most important component of the approach. This includes strengthening local indigenous knowledge and democratic processes to address inequalities in Malawi.

National Framework for Organic Farming in Bhutan

The government presented the National Framework for Organic Farming in Bhutan in 2007. Based on the framework, the National Organic Programme under the Ministry of Agriculture and Forests has developed and promoted organic farming to produce safe and healthy food for local consumers as well as for other markets. Investments are being made for capacity building, technology transfer, and market linkages. Additionally, unique affordable certification systems have been conceptualized and piloted.

Successional Agroforestry System

The Ecotop Foundation joins with farmers to implement successional agroforestry systems (SAFS), integrating different trees and crops based on natural succession dynamics. Crops and trees are grouped as pioneers, secondary or primary species, depending on their life cycle, to form a composition in which all stories (spatial) and all phases (temporal) are occupied, maximizing density and diversity. This results in soil regeneration, organic matter accumulation, improved microclimate and pest management.

Agroecology Plus6

Groundswell International and its partner organizations in West Africa (ANSD in Burkina Faso; Sahel Eco in Mali; and Agrecol Afrique in Senegal) implemented the “Agroecology Plus Six” (AE+6) program. The two year initiative aimed at assessing the spreading of agroecological practices across the Sahelian region. The programme generated practical strategies and lessons that can be applied to build resilience of small-scale farmers in the drylands.

Zero Budget Natural Farming (ZBNF)

ZBNF has a dual character: It is a peasant movement and a compilation and dissemination of farming methods. It promotes an inclusive farming system, where the soil or the farm provides all the needed nutrients for an effective and healthy food production. A precondition for the approach proposed is that farmer’s should own land, at least one cow and have access to some kind of irrigation. Based on that are the four pillars of farming methods, which increase efficiency and sustainability of the food production.

Cuba’s Agroecological Revolution

In response to severe economic and political crisis in Cuba, a mass-based farmers movement has been transforming their productive systems by applying the principles of agroecology. Through this so-called agroecological revolution, the small farm sector in Cuba is achieving ever higher levels of production with lower costs, particularly foreign exchange costs, as compared to industrial chemical-intensive monoculture farming systems.

Climate Resilient Sustainable Agriculture for Adaption to Climate Change in the Gambia

ActionAid, in collaboration with the Gambian Ministry of Agriculture and local farmer groups, address the issue of resilience in eighteen villages in three districts of Gambia. The project aims at streamlining of agroecological approaches for smallholder farmers to adapt to climate-induced shocks and to reduce vulnerabilities.

Brazil’s National Plan for Agroecology and Organic Food Production

The Brazilian National Plan for Agroecology and Organic Production (PLANAPO) is the main instrument to implement the Brazilian National Policy for Agroecology and Organic Production (PNAPO). It aims to improve the quality of life of the population by widening and consolidating actions towards a sustainable rural development and by increasing the consumption of healthy food.

Denmark’s Organic Action Plan

The overall goal of the Action Plan is to double the organically cultivated area by 2020, measured from the 2007 level. In order to achieve this ambitious goal, engaging the relevant stakeholders in Denmark was perceived as an essential factor. The government of Denmark wanted the public sector to lead the way. Therefore, one objective was to transition from conventional to organic production on publicly owned land. The second objective was to support public sector kitchens to go organic.

Implementing Aquaponics in the Gaza Strip

Aquaponics is the combination of soilless vegetable growing (hydroponics) and fish farming (aquaculture) within a closed recirculating system that uses nutrient-rich wastewater from the fish tanks as an organic fertilizer for plant production. This removes both the need for chemical fertilizers as well the disposal of fish wastewater.

FARMER – RESEARCHER PARTNERSHIP, SANTA CRUZ, CALIFORNIA

This example is documenting how strawberry monocultures turned into sustainable agroecosystems through a 30-year farmer-researcher partnership. It all started with a research partnership between a farmer and a researcher for agroecological transition of the conventional monoculture strawberry production.

CLIMATE-RESILIENT “ECOVILLAGE” in Chololo, tanzania

The Chololo Ecovillage project adopted a holistic approach to meeting the multiple challenges facing the community in the context of climate change. Building on local knowledge, traditional practices and natural resources, it revolved around a package of agroecological practices or ‘technologies’, aimed at making the most of the limited rainfall, improving soil fertility, reducing farmers’ workload, and improving the quality of local seeds.

Regulation on Agroecology (RAGRECO)

In 2010, the local government of the canton de Vaud in Switzerland adopted a regulation on agroecology. These are legislative measures and regulations whose principal objective is to address the public economic and financial subsidies to farmers, with respect to agroecological objectives. Those objectives are focused on the maintenance of soil fertility and on the conservation of biodiversity and landscape diversity. The regulation fosters collective actions and promotes the conservation of rural cultural-natural heritage.

Food Security & Sovereignty in Las Segovias, Nicaragua

The Food Security and Sovereignty in Las Segovias Project is a collaboration between CAN and PRODECOOP, a coffee farmer cooperative organization. The project aims to improve food security and reduce seasonal hunger among 1500 smallholder coffee farming families in Northern Nicaragua. CAN engaged in a participatory planning process to define strategies based on recognized needs to establish year-round access to healthy food in participating rural communities.

Syprobio

SYPROBIO is active in three West-African countries and seeks to combine and strengthen the knowledge and creativity of researchers, technicians and local farmers to address problems related to food security and adaptation to climate change. They set up ten representative circles of concerted actors to find sustainable solutions in order to enhance resilience based on the principles of agroecology and prove that they work. Together they defined 27 innovative practices for on-farm research. Those innovations came from different domains like soil fertility, seed, plant health, cultivation and socio-economy.

EcoDry

The Centre for Agroecology, Water and Resilience (CAWR) at Coventry University is leading the project Eco-Dry that aims to enhance understanding and share knowledge on agroecological strategies to build the resilience of farming systems in dryland and drought situations that includes improved water management in general. The project brings together partners from the UK, Spain, Mexico, South Africa and Jordan.

Enhancing Resilience in Food Systems

In this research initiative, the ETH Zürich World Food System Center, the Sustainable Agroecosystems Group, the Climate Policy Group, and the TdLab aim to develop a practice-oriented toolkit to assess the resilience and outcomes in food value chains, and to support the design of interventions by decision-makers. Through a holistic vision of food systems, the toolkit generates a database of knowledge in resilience and helps to identify key points of actions.

Climate-Smart Villages

CSV aims to generate evidence at local scales of what climate-smart agricultural options work best, where, why, and how. They use this evidence to distil lessons learned for policy makers, agricultural development practitioners and investors from local to global levels. The main goal is to contribute to food and nutritional security and poverty reduction under climate change. Where possible, the programme also aims at reducing GHG emissions. On a local scale CSV helps smallholder farmers to adapt their agricultural practices to secure reliable food supplies and livelihoods.

Push-Pull Project

Push–pull is a polycropping innovation that provides integrated management of insect pests and soil fertility while making efficient use of natural resources to increase farm productivity by addressing most aspects of smallholders’ constraints. The technology involves intercropping cereal crops with legumes and planting forage grasses around this intercrop.

PROMOTION OF CASSAVA IN MALAWI AND ZAMBIA

Following the 1980s droughts, both Zambia and Malawi’s governments and specialized international agencies have successfully promoted cassava production in Malawi and Zambia in order to reduce drought vulnerability and dependency on maize monocropping. Since the 1980s, diversifying from maize and promoting cassava production increased smallholder productivity, reduced hunger during lean seasons and drought years.