Based on a review of its history, its present structure and its objective in the future, agroecology is defined as an integrative discipline that includes elements from agronomy, ecology, sociology and economics. Agroecology’s credentials as a separate scientific discipline were measured against the norms of science, defined by Robert King...

Securing food and a livelihood is inextricably linked to the exploitation of the natural resources base (land, water and forest) in Ethiopia, where over 85 percent of the population lives in rural areas and depend on smallholder agriculture. The pressure of intense human activity and improper farming and management practices...

This leaflet covers the main aspects of soil compaction in Conservation Agriculture. Conservation agriculture optimizes soil structure for reduced-cost, sustainable cropping systems that maximize the use of rainfall and irrrigation water for improved and more guaranteed productivity. The overall outcome is the more productive soil system that obtains the best from...

La pobreza rural constituye uno de los mayores problemas de América Latina y del Caribe. En América Central la incidencia de la pobreza alcanza a casi la mitad (49.9%) de la población. En 1999, 17,5 millones de centroamericanos tenían ingresos por debajo de la línea de pobreza y 9.3 millones...

El Centro Andino para la Formación de Líderes Sociales, CAFOLIS, inició formalmente sus actividades en el mes de septiembre del 2003, sin embargo, su nacimiento obedece a un proceso que arrancó en el año 2000 y se nutre de la larga experiencia de sus integrantes en procesos de educación popular...

Este documento es el resultado de una investigación encargada para evaluar las implicaciones del acuerdo sobre los aspectos de los derechos de propiedad intelectual relacionados con el comercio (ADPIC) y del Convenio sobre la Diversidad Biológica (CDB). También elucida las implicaciones de ambos acuerdos para el acceso a los recursos...

The Gambian government, with the assistance of donors, is involved in the promotion of the local milk and dairy products sub-sector. The farming system in this country is characterised by the predominance of mixed crop-livestock production. The cattle stock is mainly composed of N’Dama, a breed described as a low...

Fishing is arguably the world's most dangerous vocation, reporting the highest rate of occupational fatalities among industries, made only worse by declining fish prices, overfished waters and shortened fishing seasons. As fishermen are forced to move farther away from shore in search of scarce resources, the dangers they face are...

This is the proceedings of the Indian Ocean Conference "Forging Unity: Coastal Communities and the Indian Ocean's Future". The conference as an important opportunity to explore the idea of an ‘Indian Ocean community’ by bringing together representatives from all frontiers of the Indian Ocean (with the exception of the Middle...

In the last few years Croatian economy is restructuring through the processes of market liberalization and closing to EU, which is demanding some significant changes. Agriculture is in the process of reforms on the basis of CAP (Common Agricultural Policy) policies of the EU, and those changes are producing different...

This paper reviews marine biodiversity, coastal communities' traditional ecological knowledge systems (TEKS) and the biodiversity they have conserved, and the industrial exploitation of marine genetic resources; it then analyzes TRIPS and the CBD as applied to marine biodiversity, and the implications of TRIPS and CBD for both coastal States and...

Subsistence agriculture is closely linked to a low level of economic development. We find it both in today's less developed countries and in the early stages of industrialised countries. Typically, subsistence agriculture is characterized by a low-external input level and low productivity (per land and/or per labour). In these situations...

Survey results indicate that on the whole, individual farms in transition countries are far from pure subsistence operations. The majority of farms categorized as individual – household plots and independent peasant farms – sell at least some of their output. The proportion of output sold by these farms is quite...

The transformation of the political and economic systems in Eastern Europe and the Former Soviet Union (FSU) was driven by the desire to combine political freedom with improved living conditions. Market-oriented reform is the essence of transformation for the former socialist planned economies. However, considerable segments of Eastern European and...

Bulgaria began the transformation of its agricultural sector early in the reform process. The chosen path of land reform was radical and aimed at restoring the status quo enjoyed half a century ago. The outcome of this slow and complicated process was a very fragmented structure of land ownership and...

The People, Land Management and Environmental Change (PLEC) project is a largely farmer-driven demonstration project consisting of five ecosystem clusters and spread over eight countries: Ghana, Guinea, Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, China, Papua New Guinea and Brazil. PLEC was initiated in 1992 by the United Nations University (UNU) as an international...

From the point of view of promises made ten years ago, the transition of the food sector of many Central and Eastern European Countries (CEECs) is considered weak and somehow disappointing (MACOURS and SWINNEN 2000). The development of the agricultural sector as the domestic raw material producer for food processing...

In this paper we discuss the developmental perspectives of subsistence agriculture in the wider framework of structural change within an entire economy. We put forward the proposition that subsistence agriculture in Southeastern Poland must largely be understood and interpreted as one single stage of a mid- to long-term process that...

Romanian Agriculture went through major transformations after the political changes of December 1989, due especially to the structural reorganization of land ownership. Agrarian reform started in 1990 with the liquidation of the socialist cooperatives and regulated by the new land ownership law (No. 18/1991), along with a whole series of...

Subsistence agriculture is a phenomenon that is presently encountered not only in developing countries, but also in the Central and Eastern European transition countries (CEECs). The various land reforms implemented in Eastern Europe have led to differences in the land tenure and farming systems and have influenced the access to...