Agroecology implies a holistic redesign of farms and landscapes.

The Land and Water Division of FAO aims to create the enabling conditions for the adoption of agroecological practices.This implies identification of  factors that prevent farmers adopting these practices and integrated solutions to support them. This approach departs from the fundamental understanding that for farmers to sustainably manage their territory such as engaging in forest or riparian conservation, or restoration of degraded land, they need to be provided a variety of means to improve productivity while reducing the opportunity-cost of conservation and restoration.

Truly integrated approaches to landscape management are often hindered by a lack of integration among different funding streams, which, if integrated could allow for greater coherence among programmes and projects.

Mapping development initiatives in a certain territory can unveil multiple opportunities for synergies among different agents, with the potential for merging resources and agendas and providing beneficiaries with more holistic packages.

FAO offers a tool to map different funding options such as funds for land degradation neutrality and restoration of degraded lands, conservation, subsidies for adopting or moving away from certain practices, green public procurement, agribusiness development and rural credit programmes.

Each funding opportunity alone may not necessarily include environmental criteria, but these will still be embedded in an integrated package of actions combining better policies with better voluntary incentives.For over a decade, the Convention of Biological Diversity has been formally promoting integrated packages of action, meaning that a global requirement exists to adopt integrated and multidimensional approaches in biodiversity conservation.

The ambition of scaling up Agroecology – which is an inherently multidimensional task – could greatly rely on the combination of funding options available to build truly integrated territorial approaches.