Formed in 2007, Food Plant Solutions Rotary Action Group (FPS) creates science-based educational materials, which: identify highly nutritious local food plants, explain how to grow them in a sustainable, agroecological way, detail the nutritional value of the plants and describe why human bodies require those nutrients. The resources created by FPS allows people to better...

Implementation Guidance for Policymakers and Investors

This publication is a report of the proceedings of the ICSF ‘s Puducherry  Workshop, which focused on the FAO's Voluntary Guidelines for Securing Sustainable Small-scale fisheries in the context of food security and poverty eradication (SSG Guidelines). The workshop brought together 71 participants from 20 countries representing civil society organizations,...

The fishing community of the Sundarbans are the human group most at home in the mud-slush-water-forest environment of this famous mangrove estuary. Their skills, knowledge, and technique have developed in response to a challenging environment. Yet, of the countless studies on the various aspects of this eco-region, there are exceedingly...

A Participatory Study of the Traditional Knowledge of Fishing Communities in the Gulf of Mannar, India' is the first in a series of case studies undertaken by the ICSF to document the traditional knowledge of fishing communities dependent on marine and coastal resources in protected and conserved areas in different...

Traditional fishworkers have long been forced to adapt to the forces of nature, and they are now confronted with the  new threats of climate change, global warming, sea-level rise and ocean acidification. What will be the potential impacts of climate change on the already vulnerable and marginalized small-scale fishing communities...

The International Year of Family Farming (IYFF) has uncovered well-grounded resolve to place family farmers as protagonists in addressing a number of challenges we face, from eradicating hunger and poverty to conserving natural resources. Nothing comes closer to the sustainable food production paradigm than family farming. The diverse set of...

The United Nations declared 2014 the International Year of Family Farming. Although many forms of production were once family-based, agriculture is now one of the few that are still dominated by families. Because family farms are so prevalent, making them more productive could help combat poverty and hunger in many...

Globally, agriculture is facing enormous pressure to produce more food for growing population while it is increasingly getting affected by shrinking cultivable land area, water availability and climate change. With impressive economic growth, homogeneity of diets across countries has increased in the last 50 years and is pushing more and...

As part of our larger strategy to adapt smallholders in drylands to climate change, ICARDA’s science has sharpened its focus on producing more with less in irrigated and agropastoral systems, and sustainably intensifying cereal-based rain-fed production systems through research platforms in Egypt, Ethiopia and Morocco.

In the literature on sustainability of agriculture, both labourers and workers are conspicuously absent. Here, the sustainability of agriculture has been defined in terms of whether the farm household in question is able to yield an energy surplus when its members and the animals in its possession are obtaining an...

Indian agriculture was transforming from a cereal-based production system toward high-value crops (HVC) during the 1990s. However, food security concerns resurfaced during the first decade of the 21st century, and the policy environment tilted in favor of cereal-based production systems, especially rice and wheat. This paper revisits an earlier study...

Recent efforts to develop rice cultivars with drought-tolerance (DT) traits have resulted in the release of several varieties that demonstrate significant resilience to drought stresses. This paper addresses the previously unanswered question of whether the private sector might play a future role in developing similar strains through applications of advanced...

This book documents a unique series of 19 case studies where agricultural biotechnologies were used to serve the needs of smallholders in developing countries. They cover different regions, production systems, species and underlying socio-economic conditions in the crop (seven case studies), livestock (seven) and aquaculture/fisheries (five) sectors. Most of the...

Agricultural mechanization is a crucial input to agricultural crop production. It is frequently very capital intensive, compared to other (usually annual) inputs and it has repercussions on the efficiency of all other inputs used in crop production, including seeds, fertilizer, water, and time/labour. It is also much more complex in...

Government development programmes and policies in fisheries are focused on the problems and needs of men though women are known to dominat the post-harvest sector in artisanal fisheries and are involved, to varying degrees, in pre-harvest and harvest activities. A lack of women’s participation in decision-making bodies within communities, fishworkers’...

This issue of Caravan presents some successes of the collaboration of scientists and other stakeholders from ICARDA and national partners, where participatory research with local communities and women’s groups in particular, has reaped a range of benefits through an integrated systems approach. These examples demonstrate a path forward for sustainably...

This workshop 'Women Fish Vendors in Mumbai', was a platform to analyze issues facing women fish vendors in Mumbai and to discuss, based on their proposals, strategies that may be adopted to secure their livelihoods. Held on 3rd December, 2012 the workshop brought together representatives of the Maharashtra Fisheries Department,...

Folleto que describe quienes son agricultores pequeños y familiares, su importancia en relación a la sostenibilidad y los múltiples beneficios que ellos generan.

Despite the increasing attention given to organic supply chains over the past decade, there are still significant market opportunities to pursue. The demand for organic products in developing countries continues to grow and price premiums for organic certified products are available, albeit not comparable with those of a decade or...