Agro-ecological Farming: The Solution For a Possible Hunger Crisis (original) (raw)

The Contribution of Agro-ecology as a Solution to Hunger in the World: A Review

Asian Journal of Agricultural Extension, Economics & Sociology, 2019

Evidence from different studies has revealed a great contribution of agro-ecology in solving the world hunger sustainably. Agro-ecology addresses the problems and limitations of industrial agriculture such as inequalities, increased poverty and malnutrition rate, and environment degradation especially climate change; which are the roots causes of hunger in the world and hinder its eradication. In meeting these goals, agro-ecology raises the availability of food by augmenting yields considerably and increasing urban agriculture; it rises the accessibility of food by decreasing poverty; and upsurges the appropriateness of food by offering a food which is of high-quality nutritional, healthy and socially accepted or adopted. This farming system also contributes to water security and to the respect of the right to water and hygiene by lessening the pressure on water resources, growing the flexibility to water shortage and diminishing the frequency of battles among conflicting water uses...

REPORT REVIEW: Solutions for Sustainable Agriculture and Food Systems

By: Aynalem Tadesse Dada Agriculture, whether it is commercialized or self-sufficient, matters not. Worldwide, it solely and indispensably produces the most critical, irreplaceable and unobsoletable resource, food. With the advent of the Holocene-the last 10,000 years, agriculture played a tantamount role that cannot be exaggerated to meaningfully perpetuate and progress the species, Homo sapience. An understanding of the future fate that agriculture in general and that of smallholders is of a 'dire urgency' to the design of policies to achieve the international development goals and targets, given the fact that smallholders account for more than 75% of the feeders of the so-called developing world. The majority of the world's extremely poor live in rural areas and have livelihoods which are bound closely to smallholder agriculture as farmers, laborer, transporters, marketers, and processors of products and as suppliers of non-agricultural services to households whose income is principally agriculture-deriven. Smallholder agriculture is presently a key sustainer and a redeemer of the majority of the world's poorest people, so the dynamics of smallholder agriculture ought to be a central question for research and debates about development. The transformational vision of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development calls on all countries and stakeholders to work together to 'end hunger in all its forms' and prevent all forms of malnutrition by 2030. This fondly ambition can only be fulfilled if agriculture and food systems become sustainable, so that food supplies are stable and all people at all times have access to adequate, nutritious, stable and food to lead healthy and happy life. The present report, I review is full of substantially objective and scientific recommendations and comments-a comprehensive direction for the post-2015 Sustainable Development Goals of the United Nations. The report begins by narrating arrays of analytical, provocative and though questions that necessitate urgency in clearing the fuzzy and settling the turbulence of competing interests and, of course, blurred future of our time. The thought-provoking questions ranging from: …How to leapfrog from the dwindling and vicious to sustaining, virtuous and perhaps thriving agriculture, a quest to change the production and consumption behaviors of the evolving giants like China and India, … to administrative and legal requirements to monitor and make best use of the frontier technologies and biotechnology, challenging food baskets and consumer behavior, etc.' Acknowledging the range of challenges (population growth, change in consumption pattern-driven by rising incomes, land degradation, climate change, volatile/ever skyrocketing food prices, etc.) that agriculture food systems face, the report calls for most comprehensive and complex approaches geared towards addressing complex problems, that will bring change in the current agriculture to meet the rising demand, to contribute more effectively to the reduction of poverty and malnutrition, and to become more ecologically sustainable. For doing so, the report mainly capitalizes in introducing, instilling and inculcating the newer concept, Sustainable Agricultural Intensification (SAI)-the approach believed to contribute to the efforts of eradicating hunger and malnutrition, improving the environmental performance of agriculture. This new concept, indeed, needs interventions that are transformative and simultaneous along the whole chain of agricultural production and marketing-from farm to fork.

Sustainable Development of Agriculture

Sustainable Development of Agriculture, 1988

Food problems-the efficient production or procurement of food and its appropriate distribution among members of society-are problems endemic to mankind. Yet the nature and dimensions of these problems have been changing over time. As economic systems have developed, specialization has increased; and this has led to increased interdependences of rural and urban areas, of agricultural and nonagricultural sectors, and of nations. When the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA) began the Food and Agriculture Program (FAP) in 1976, we started with these objectives: (1) To evaluate the nature and dimensions of the world food situation. (2) To identify the factors that affect it. (3) To suggest policy alternatives at national, regional, and global levels: (a) To alleviate current food problems. (b) To prevent food problems in the future. To realize these objectives, FAP was organized around two major tasks. The first task was directed at national policy for food and agriculture in an international situation. Here, computable general equilibrium models were developed for nearly 20 major developed and developing countries and were linked together to examine food trade, aid, capital flows, and how they affect hunger, in addition to the effects of national government policies, which were also considered in detail. This approach, however, needed to be complemented by another approach that dealt with food production at the farm level. The second task, therefore, began in 1980 and was directed to the sustainability of agriculture, with detailed considerations of resources, technology, and environment. This task needed conceptual work as well as case studies to illustrate the major constraints in the sustainability of agriculture. This book presents the results of this second task. Yet another major exercise by Drs. Mahendra Shah and Gunther Fischer, in collaboration with FAD, is reported elsewhere. It has a different focus in that it deals with resource potential for agriculture in developing countries.