A beekeeper with a colonized hive must remember that the success in keeping bees depends on the exercise of his knowledge of colony organization. Three practices of colony management are discussed in greater detail in this entry. The first part gives a step-by-step description of how to divide a very...

Honeybees that nest in the open produce far less honey than those confined in enclosures. There are good reasons for this. Colonies in the open are exposed to predators and therefore have to employ numerous workers as guards to fight intruders. They have to consume large quantities of honey, which...

Climate change scenarios predict negative impacts on agriculture in the southern Mediterranean regions. Preparedness for increasingly frequent droughts requires a good knowledge on how chronic water shortages may affect production and cropping systems. This work investigates recent variations in agricultural production and in cropping practices in Tunisia as induced by...

In this issue of BAOBAB, we focus on the importance of indigenous knowledge as a key for sustainable agriculture. This knowledge has the potential to play an important role in conserving natural resources, finding food alternatives and reducing the use of chemicals in production of materials. In this issue partnerships...

This issue of Baobab focuses on access to water for sustainable agriculture and livelihoods, its management and policies, or lack of them, which can regulate its effective and efficient use. In a region that highly relies on rainfall for food production, a lot needs to be done in agricultural water...

Human activities have helped to speed up the process of desertification in Burkina Faso. In order to curb this scourge and its disastrous consequences, the NGO “TERRE VERTE” has, since 1989, carried out a rural development project referred to as bocage perimeter, (“Wegoubri” in the Mooré language). This new concept...

Bees are the most important pollinators in Europe. We studied bee assemblages on 7 pairs of extensively and intensively grazed sites in three lowland grassland types in Hungary. No chemicals were applied on the grasslands. The bees were collected using sweep net surveys and 1 m wide transect surveys in...

This report was submitted to SNV Zimbabwe in December 2007, revised in 2009, and documents the experiences of twenty-five companies contracting smallholder farmers in Zimbabwe to produce cotton, tobacco, paprika, sugar cane, vegetables, sorghum and various seed and legume crops in a hyperinflationary environment. The only company contracting farmers to...

This is a story about how FAO assisted groups of farmers in five farming communities in the moist savannah zone of South Western Burkina Faso to enhance their crop-livestock systems through Conservation Agriculture (CA) practices, including crop diversification, using an innovative farmer discovery process, to bring about agricultural intensification and...

The FAO Glossary on Organic Agriculture in English, French and Spanish contains 401 concepts and definitions, where appropriate, which have been selected from FAO and international documents and publications on Organic Agriculture, as well as from the proceedings of meetings of experts discussing Organic Agriculture and Food Security issues. The...

Is low greenhouse gas emission (GHG) agriculture possible? Is it, in fact, desirable? In seeking answers to these two basic but extremely relevant questions, this study examines current farming practices, and incorporates scientific databases from longterm field experiments as case studies for low GHG agriculture. Further, the study examines the...

The aim of this document is to describe the potential of organic agriculture to sequester carbon and to meet the requirements of carbon accounting systems, including factors such as carbon permanence, leakage and additionality. Furthermore, the document discusses the suitability of measurement and verification methodologies to agriculture systems, including an...

"El concepto y la práctica del manejo integrado de plagas (MIP) constituyeron un avance importante en el desarrollo del control de las plagas que afectan los cultivos. Como es sabido, el MIP ha sido una alternativa a las medidas unilaterales utilizadas en la agricultura convencional que aplica plaguicidas sin tomar...

Problem statement: The most pressing problem for Bangladesh agriculture is the current state of gradual decreasing of soil fertility, stagnating crop yields and declining productivity in a range of food crops. According to crop production scientists, Integrated Soil Fertility (ISF) and Nutrient Management (NM) is an advanced approach that can...

This manual has been prepared by the Group on Agriculture of the FAO Regional Office for Latin America and the Caribbean. The purpose of this work is to spread the basic concepts of Good Agricultural Practices (GAP) in order to: guide the production systems towards a sustainable agriculture and ecologically...

A majority of the farmers in Nebbi district practice subsistence farming which heavily rely heavily on indigenous knowledge and technologies (IKT). What was found during the Nebbi Development Area Network member organizations assessment that household members are have less than 50% adoption rate of improved agronomic and livestock management practices...

Majority of the people in Nebbi district are unhealthy. They suffer largely from otherwise preventable diseases which are caused by unsafe water and sanitation conditions. The health burden herein is enormous: lost productive days, medical cost, school absenteeism, and low esteem. Yet, this situation, taken as a norm emanate in...

Cet Agrodok se concentre sur la fabrication et l’utilisation du compost. Le Chapitre 8 décrit une recette pour la fabrication de fumier liquide et des extraits de compost. Il s’agit ici des engrais organiques facilement réalisés pour un apport rapide des substances nutritives aux plantes. Bokashi constitue un autre type...

Grasslands with legumes, as the basic source of nitrogen, should play an essential part in organic agriculture systems. The proportion of grasslands of the total area of all types of organic croplands in Poland in 2002 highlights its importance (>45% of the total 41 thousand ha) (Zastawny et al., 2003)....

Land and water for agriculture are scarce natural resources hence the promotion of good land management has taken center stage in Zambia. This study attempts to measure the factors that could be associated with the adoption of conservation farming practices considering that farmers have multiple practices to choose from and...