Problem Organic fruit growing often faces challenges like lack of water or nutrient availability, which in turn can have significant adverse effects on the health of the fruit tree and harvest. Solution Application of mycorrhizal fungi products to the soil during fruit growing can enable plants to absorb water and nutrients from the...

Agroecology and organ agriculture present promising alternatives to the current food system, supported by a growing body of evidence. Despite the potential of AE/O, their full benefits cannot be realised in most countries due to political and institutional barriers and lock-ins, including incentives and funding that favour “business as usual”...

Over the past 15 years, Zambia’s economic trajectory has fluctuated because of global and domestic factors. Despite its rich endowment in natural resources, Zambia has yet to fully leverage this potential for economic expansion. The agricultural sector, which engages over 70 per cent of the workforce, is recognized as a...

Agroecology is identified as an important solution to increase the sustainability of agricultural and food systems. Despite the increasing number of publications assessing the socio-economic outcomes of agroecology, very few studies have consolidated the scattered results obtained on various case studies. This paper provides new insights by consolidating evidence on...

Réduire l’écart entre les sexes sur le marché du travail, pour assurer l’émancipation économique des femmes. Bien qu’elles enregistrent l’un des taux de participation au marché du travail parmi les plus élevés, les femmes d’Afrique subsaharienne sont toujours confrontées à de nombreux obstacles qui limitent leur accès à un emploi...

Farmer-managed seed systems and the conservation of agrobiodiversity are increasingly recognized as important components of food and seed sovereignty. In contrast, hybrid, genetically modified (GM), and, increasingly, gene-edited crops continue to be promoted by Green Revolution proponents as a “climate smart” package that includes fertilizers, pesticides, purchased seeds, and links...

Les effets positifs de l’agroécologie dans le domaine agro-environnemental (santé des sols,biodiversité, lutte contre la crise climatique, non-contamination de l’environnement) sont souventmis en avant. Ils s’accompagnent d’effets positifs tout aussi importants dans le domainesocio-économique, comme en témoignent de nombreuses études réalisées dans divers pays duSud, dont plusieurs par des organisations...

Overreliance on a few main crops, as well as poor soil health, reduce yields, hinder achievement of food security and nutrition objectives, and increase agricultural vulnerability to climate change. To address this, the Vision for Adapted Crops and Soils (VACS), launched by the United States in partnership with FAO and...

Organic agriculture is practised in 188 countries, and more than 96 million hectares of agricultural land are managed organically by at least 4.5 million farmers. Global sales of organic food and drink reached almost 135 billion euros in 2022. The 25th edition of "The World of Organic Agriculture", published by the...

Climate-Smart Cocoa (CSC), a strategic offshoot of the wider Climate-Smart Agriculture, is gaining ground in Ghana, a cocoa export-dependent country. CSC is imperative, given the rapidly declining forests, prolonged periods of drought, pest and disease infestations, and fluctuating cocoa yields attributed to climate variability and change. Although many interventions are...

This ITPS soil letter emphasizes the urgent need for a comprehensive global soil monitoring system to address the challenges of increasing food demand due to population growth and soil degradation. With more than 800 million people suffering from malnutrition in 2021, and food production needing to increase significantly by 2050,...

The natural forest in southwest Ethiopia is progressively modified to coffee agroforest. To this effect forest composition and diversity is simplified to local preferred coffee shade trees. Woody plant species that are less managed require the conservation priority in coffee agroforest. The study aims at assessing diversity of plant species, investigating...

Developing policies to foster inclusive rural transformation processes requires better evidence on how climate change is affecting the livelihoods and economic behaviours of vulnerable rural people, including women, youths and people living in poverty. In particular, there is little comparative, multi-country and multi-region evidence to understand how exposure to weather...

The Women’s Empowerment Livestock Index (WELI) is tailored for areas where livestock farming is prominent, aiming to assess the impact of livestock interventions on women's empowerment. By identifying effective interventions, the index seeks to improve empowerment opportunities for women in the sector, thereby enhancing household livelihoods, nutrition, and gender equity....

The toolkit on nature-based solutions for comprehensive disaster and climate risk management (CRM-NbS Toolkit) aims to support countries in making nature-based solutions (NbS) an integral part of planning under the comprehensive disaster and climate risk management (CRM) approach considering both disaster risk reduction (DRR) and climate change adaptation (CCA) in...

El programa Mesoamérica sin Hambre AMEXCID-FAO ha concentrado importantes esfuerzos en apoyar al Gobierno dominicano en el desarrollo y la validación de herramientas metodológicas e instrumentos de planificación y coordinación que contribuyan al fortalecimiento de las capacidades institucionales para atender las necesidades de la agricultura familiar y la formulación e...

Women's empowerment is essential for achieving agricultural development goals like increasing productivity among smallholders, aligning with Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) 2.3 and 5. Agricultural collectives, including producer groups and farmer producer organizations (FPOs), offer promising avenues for empowering women and improving smallholder incomes. Research on this approach is growing, highlighting...

La mise au point d’une méthode automatique d’estimation des surfaces irriguées par les petits exploitants agricoles en Afrique aux abords des cours d’eau, à partir d’outils libres et de données satellitaires gratuites, reste un défi majeur à cause de la diversité des cultures qui y sont pratiquées, de l’étroitesse des...

The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) is negotiating a new climate finance goal, the New Collective Quantified Goal (NCQG), to set future climate finance scales and ambitions. This is vital as the previous goal set in 2009 will expire in 2024. Integrating gender equality into climate finance...

En Afrique de l’Ouest, face à la croissance rapide des villes et à une demande accrue de la part des consommateurs urbains et ruraux, les systèmes alimentaires fondés sur l’agriculture familiale renforcent déjà dans nombre d’endroits la capacité d’un pays ou d’une région à nourrir ses populations par la production...