Agroecology Knowledge Hub

Efficiency : innovative agroecological practices produce more using less external resources

Increased resource-use efficiency is an emergent property of agroecological systems that carefully plan and manage diversity to create synergies between different system components. For example, a key efficiency challenge is that less than 50 percent of nitrogen fertilizer added globally to cropland is converted into harvested products and the rest is lost to the environment causing major environmental problems.

Agroecological systems improve the use of natural resources, especially those that are abundant and free, such as solar radiation, atmospheric carbon and nitrogen. By enhancing biological processes and recycling biomass, nutrients and water, producers are able to use fewer external resources, reducing costs and the negative environmental impacts of their use. Ultimately, reducing dependency on external resources empowers producers by increasing their autonomy and resilience to natural or economic shocks.

One way to measure the efficiency of integrated systems is by using Land Equivalent Ratios (LER). LER compares the yields from growing two or more components (e.g. crops, trees, animals) together with yields from growing the same components in monocultures. Integrated agroecological systems frequently demonstrate higher LERs.

Agroecology thus promotes agricultural systems with the necessary biological, socio-economic and institutional diversity and alignment in time and space to support greater efficiency.

Database

Several innovative farming systems have been identified to promote global food and ecosystem security that better balance multiple sustainability goals. The most rapidly growing and contentious of these systems is organic agriculture. Whether organic agriculture can continue to expand will likely be determined by whether it is economically competitive with...
Journal article
2015
The FAO Regional Office for Asia and the Pacific organized a Multi-Stakeholder Consultation on Agroecology during the 24-26 November, 2016, in Bangkok. Following FAO's Symposium on Agroecology for Food Security and Nutrition in September 2014, FAO acted as a facilitator to enable debates and foster collaborations among a variety of...
Conference report
2016
The Oakland Institute today released 33 case studies that shed light on the tremendous success of agroecological agriculture across the African continent in the face of climate change, hunger, and poverty.
Case study
2015
Besides the severe health crisis, the COVID-19 epidemic also caused the global economy to contract at a rate not seen since the Second World War and led to a severe increase of poor and food-insecure people as well as a sharp projected decrease of production of agricultural goods in Southeast...
Policy brief/paper
2021
Groundswell International and Cultivate! publish this new briefing on how to upscale and outscale agroecology in the Sahel in West Africa.  The briefing starts from an integrated approach, combining agroecology with women’s self-empowerment, nutrition, equity and governance. It outlines concrete steps in three general strategies for how civil society organisations can successfully support processes to scale up...
Burkina Faso - Mali - Senegal
Policy brief/paper
2019