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REAL stands for Rural Ecology and Agricultural Livelihoods. REAL Education is an integrated learning process in which school children explore what is happening on local farms, gain an understanding of ecology, and develop critical thinking skills with respect to environmental, health and social problems. REAL Education is now an international movement, [...]

More than half of the world’s cotton is produced by Asian farmers, the majority of them small landholders with plot sizes of less than one-half hectare. Within Asia, cotton production is diverse and this diversity manifests itself among the countries participating in the FAO-EU Integrated Pest Management (IPM) Programme for [...]

This manual encourages the agricultural sector, AIDS programmes and NGOs to assist farming communities in their efforts to build their resilience and reduce their vulnerability to HIV/AIDS.

The objective of this ecological guide is to provide general technical background information on eggplant production, supplemented with field experiences from the National IPM programmes connected to FAO’s Vegetable IPM Programme, and from related organizations active in farmer participatory IPM. The information in the guides is not specific for one [...]

El aplicar el enfoque ECA al MIP para árboles perennes ha requerido varias adaptaciones, incluyendo cambios en el contenido y duración de la ECA, y en los métodos empleados en el Análisis del Agro-Ecosistema (AAE). Este artículo está basado en nuestras experiencias con el proyecto Estado del Cultivo con MIP [...]

Over the past eight years, CARE-Bangladesh has been developing a set of sustainable agriculture projects to improve production in rice-based farming systems in this country. These efforts have contributed to an emergent programme to increase food security for poor and marginal farmers. The programme raises agricultural productivity by diversifying agroecosystems and optimizing yields, reducing costs [...]

This is a trainer's reference guide on crop development, major agronomic practices, disease and insect management, written for small-holders' tea cultivation in northern Vietnam. The guide will also be of interest to tea producers in other parts of the world who want to apply an ecological approach to crop [...]

From discussions with farmer groups that attended a Farmer Field School we learned that in many cases the groups are interested in continuing activities and studies. One of the areas that farmer groups are interested to study more is peanuts. In this field guide field studies and special topics on [...]

Various partners are working with farmers to strengthen local innovative capacity as a means of enhancing production and integrated management of potato in the Andes. Groups in Ecuador, Peru and Bolivia have used the Farmer Field School approach as a jumping-off point to tackle a range of challenges, most notably knowledge [...]