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117 Publikationen gefunden
Buchkapitel
Januar 2016
University of Bristol
Naomi Millner
In this chapter I focus on the development of agroecological knowledge systems in El Salvadorover the last twenty years, focusing on their capacity to generate and sustain post-colonial foodnetworks. Agroecology is the study of ecological processes that operate in agricultural productionsystems. First used in the early twentieth century, the term was popularized after World War IIwhen increasing awareness of the environmental consequences of industrializing agri-foodtechnologies led to the emergence of new networks and forums of knowledge production thatemphasised a systems perspective. In Central America such networks emerged throughwidespread critiques of Green Revolution technologies introduced during the 1960s, and wereconsolidated through the development of a farmer-to-farmer (campesino a campesino; CaC)model for testing and sharing traditional agricultural techniques. The CaC model of organizingagricultural production was mobilized on a significant scale in El Salvador during the 1980s,when the country was reeling from a twelve-year civil war. The model was adapted for theSalvadorian context, and has also been hybridized with external forms of organizing associatedwith conflict-resolution and international aid initiatives.!The analysis in this chapter relates to the development of such alternative food networks (AFNs)that emerged in multiple locations in El Salvador during the 1990s, as associated with thepractices of agroecology and, more specifically, permaculture. Permaculture is an agroecologicalapproach to food production that employs a systems perspective by focusing its interventions onthe points of interconnection between qualitatively diverse systems of biophysical, socio-economic and socio-cultural life. Permaculture is also a principle of environmental design thatstrives to establish ‘permanent agricultures’ or ‘permanent cultures’ – multi-species ecologies thatsupport their various human and non-human components through mutually enhancing feedbackloops and interactions. As in agroecology, traditional and indigenous agricultural techniques arestrongly valued in permaculture, although these are always tested experimentally against existingpractices. Permaculture as a term is less widespread than agroecology, though in contexts like El Salvador the two terms are highly complementary.
Artikel
Dezember 2015
Science Progress (2015), 98(4), 403 – 412
Christopher J. Rhodes
September 2015 saw the International Permaculture Conference1 held in London, followed by the Convergence, which occupied 6 days at Gilwell Park, on the Essex–London border, where its practitioners gave presentations and workshops on various aspects of permaculture, which is a sustainable design system intended to emulate the principles of living ecosystems. While it has been emphasised that such terms as sustainable development, and sustainable agriculture, are really oxymorons, since neither untrammelled growth nor our present form of industrial food production can be maintained in perpetuity, permaculture has a value-added factor that extends beyond what might be merely maintained or sustained, which is the quality of regeneration. All sustainable solutions are unsustainable over the longer term, if they are not also intrinsically regenerative.
Nature offers the ultimate example of a design that is both sustainable and regenerative, and it is logical to appeal to natural principles for solutions to many of our current problems. This is sometimes taken to mean that we need adopt more “simple” lifestyles, abandoning our technology in the process, but the reality is more complex. Within a broader perspective of regenerative design, permaculture identifies the elements of sustainable living which are harmonious with nature.
Discordant practices which lead, e.g. to soil erosion3, fret the environment, and are neither sustainable nor regenerative, but degenerative.
Artikel
Oktober 2015
Agroforest Systems 90, 385–394 (2016)
Agroscope
F. Sereke, M. Dobricki, J. Wilkes, A. Kaeser, A. R. Graves, E. Szerencsits & F. Herzog
Agricultural policy in Europe is moving towards greater support of multifunctional agriculture, such as agroforestry systems. However, modern farmers appear to be resisting this change. Trees in agricultural landscapes have been declining, despite increasing direct payments for their ecosystem services. To understand the drivers of farmer behaviour in Switzerland with regard to practicing agroforestry, we interviewed 50 farmers using a semi-quantitative and open ended questionnaire. In terms of potential motivations for adoption of agroforestry, most farmers gave highest scores to habitat ecosystem services, both for livestock and wildlife. Low scores were given to productivity, profitability and ecological direct payments. Farmers resisting adoption concluded that practising agroforestry would not have a positive impact on their reputation. They also attributed significantly lower scores to perceived behavioural control. We conclude that payments for ecosystem services will be unlikely to change farmers’ behaviour, as long as their expectations and knowledge are not appropriately addressed. Transdisciplinary co-production of agro-ecological knowledge could help to change their attitude.
Artikel
Juli 2015
K. Morel, C. Guégan, F.G. Léger
In industrialized countries, innovative farmers inspired by holistic permaculture principles claim to be able to design market gardens based on manual labour alone. We carried out a case study on one of these farms to assess the extent to which this approach could make it possible for a commercial organic market garden to be viable without motorization. Our work showed that these market gardeners implemented a wide range of strategies that embraced ecological, technical and commercial dimensions to increase their production on a small cultivated area, as well as the added value of such a production. On a cultivated acreage of 1,061 m2, it was possible to create a monthly net year round income of between € 898 and 1,571, depending on sales and investment levels. These incomes were generated with an average workload of 43 h week-1. Such economic performances demonstrated that these initiatives can be viable. However, in our case study, market gardeners excluded consumer staples cultivated by hand, such as potatoes. Further investigation should be carried out about the way manual and motorized market gardeners can collaborate at a local scale to fulfill consumersRSQUO requirements.
Masterarbeit
September 2014
Wageningen University
Alexis de Liedekerke de Pailhe
Nowadays, our global agricultural sector is confronting with two important challenges. On one hand, many argue that agriculture has to be intensified to increase food production in order to meet the total demand of a growing global population, expected to reach 9 billion by 2050. On the other hand, agricultural practices should preserve the environment, the very basis of our food production. A priori, one might expect farmers to be unable to face these two challenges at the same time, as many regions in the world have shown examples of a depletion of environmental resources directly linked with agricultural development. In that sense, how could farmers produce more and at the same time have less impact on their land? Ecological intensification of agriculture aims at meeting these two challenges simultaneously. It seeks the maximization of primary production per unit area without compromising the ability of the system to sustain its productive capacity (FAO, 2009).
Ecological intensification and its objective of maximisation is especially relevant on agricultural fields surrounding cities. Indeed, since 2006, more than half of the global population is urban (World statistics, 2014) and completely rely on the agricultural sector for its food consumption. Also, with emerging fossil fuel shortages in the South as in the North, food transport might soon become a relevant economic factor. Consequently, it seems wise to grow as maximum food as possible close to the urban demand and to design more resilient food chains and therefore ensure food security in the long run. Another reason which makes ecological intensification and the fact of growing more food on less land desirable around cities is the strong economic pressure on the price of land in these areas. On top of that, there is an increasing demand for fresh organic and locally grown products, especially fruits and vegetables, in certain cities of Western countries such as Paris or Brussels. Obviously, for these reasons, being able to produce more vegetables per square meter provides a great advantage for the producer located around such cities.
For several decades, there have been different actors working for the development of ecological intensification. For instance, since 1972, in North America, the movement Ecology Action and its colleagues have been researching and developing Grow Biointensive®, a high-yielding, sustainable agricultural system that emphasizes local food production and is based historically on intensive gardening systems (Ecology Action, 2014). This system is a source of inspiration for many backyard gardeners and for some commercial small scale farms.
Artikel
April 2014
Agronomy for Sustainable Development
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Rafter Sass Ferguson & Sarah Taylor Lovell
Agroecology is a promising alternative to industrial agriculture, with the potential to avoid the negative social and ecological consequences of input-intensive production. Transitioning to agroecological production is, however, a complex project that requires diverse contributions from the outside of scientific institutions. Agroecologists therefore collaborate with traditional producers and agroecological movements. Permaculture is one such agroecological movement, with a broad international distribution and a unique approach to system design. Despite a high public profile, permaculture has remained relatively isolated from scientific research. Though the potential contribution of permaculture to agroecological transition is great, it is limited by this isolation from science, as well as from oversimplifying claims, and the lack of a clear definition. Here, we review scientific and popular permaculture literature. A systematic review discusses quantitative bibliometric data, including keyword analysis. A qualitative review identifies and assesses major themes, proposals, and claims. The manuscript follows a stratified definition of permaculture as design system, best practice framework, worldview, and movement. The major points of our analysis are as follows: (1) Principles and topics largely complement and even extend principles and topics found in the agroecological literature. (2) Distinctive approaches to perennial polyculture, water management, and the importance of agroecosystem configuration exceed what is documented in the scientific literature and thus suggest promising avenues of inquiry. (3) Discussions of practice consistently underplay the complexity, challenges, and risks that producers face in developing diversified and integrated production systems. (4) The movement is mobilizing diverse forms of social support for sustainability, in geographically diverse locations. (5) And scholarship in permaculture has always been a diverse marginal sector, but is growing.
Artikel
Juli 2013
INRA, Sylva Institute
Sacha Guégan, François Léger, Gauthier Chapelle & Charles Hervé-Gruye
In December 2011 a study of 3 years started at the Organic farm Bec Hellouin, to assess the possibility of creating a full-‐time activity by cultivating 1,000 m2 employing a permacultural organic market gardening approach. The principles that guide the implemented production methods form what has been called «the method of Farm Bec Hellouin», available on the Farm website. These methods include in particular:
• cultivating a small surface area;
• the virtual absence of mechanization of labor, interventions being made mostly manually;
• the intensification of production on said surface area;
• all on a site created by drawing on permaculture principles, principles that could lead to the creation of very diverse places.
Halfway through the study, it seemed important to analyze the data collected by us, in order to identify initial lessons. Emphasis was placed on the analysis of the results for the workload and turnover, as these are two important data with regard to the creation of an economic activity. From this point of view, the results presented in this report are very encouraging.
In one year, turnover generated was 32,000 euros, for a workload in the gardens of 1,400 hours.
This is in line with the initial hypothesis: 1,000 m2 cultivated in permacultural organic market gardening can create a full-‐time activity.
Finally, for this stage, it seemed interesting to compare four perspectives: the views of the scientific director of the study, François LEGER ; the engineer in charge of field control, Sacha GUEGAN ; a member of the Scientific Committee, Gauthier Chapelle ; and the head gardener in the study taking place, Charles Hervé-‐Gruyer.
Artikel
Dezember 2012
Science Progress (2012), 95(4), 345–446
University of Reading and Fresh-lands Environmental Actions
Christopher J. Rhodes
The study of soil is a mature science, whereas related practical methods of regenerative agriculture and permaculture are not. However, despite a paucity of detailed peer reviewed research published on these topics, there is overwhelming evidence both that the methods work and they may offer the means to address a number of prevailing environmental challenges, e.g. peak oil, climate change, carbon capture, unsustainable agriculture and food shortages, peak phosphorus (phosphate), water shortages, environmental pollution, desert reclamation, and soil degradation. What is lacking is a proper scientific study, made in hand with actual development projects. By elucidating the scientific basis of these remarkable phenomena, we may obtain the means for solving some of the otherwise insurmountable problems confronting humanity, simply by observing, and working with, the patterns and forces of nature. This article is intended as a call to arms to make serious investment in researching and actualising these methods on a global scale. Despite claims that peak oil is no longer a threat because vast resources of gas and shale oil (tight oil) can now be recovered by fracking (hydraulic fracturing) combined with horizontal drilling, the reality is that proven actual reserves are only adequate to delay the peak by a few years. Furthermore, because of the rapid depletion rates of flow from gas wells and oil wells that are accessed by fracking, it will be necessary to drill continuously and relentlessly to maintain output, and there are material limits of equipment, technology and trained personnel to do this.
Moreover, to make any sensible difference to the liquid fuel crisis, which is the most immediate consequence of peak oil, it would be necessary to convert the world’s one billion vehicles to run on natural gas rather than liquid fuels refined from crude oil, and this would take some considerable time and effort. The loss of widespread personalised transportation is thus inevitable and imminent, meaning a loss of globalised civilisation and a mandatory return to living in smaller localised communities. Permaculture and regenerative agriculture offer potentially the means to provide food and materials on the small scale, and address the wider issues of carbon emissions, and resource shortages. Since over half the World’s population lives in cities, it seems likely that strengthening the resilience of these environments, using urban permaculture, may be a crucial strategy in achieving a measured descent in our use of energy and other resources, rather than an abrupt collapse of civilization.
Artikel
Januar 1999
Scottish Forestry 53(1): 24-27.
Cranfield University
Paul Burgess
One advantage claimed for agroforestry is that it can bring onto farm land some of the biodiversity benefitsassociated with woodlands. The aim of this paper is to review recen t research in order to describe thepotential impact of agroforestry systems on the diversity of plants and animals on Br itish farms. The reviewsuggests that the introduction of silvopastoral systems can lead to an increase in the diversity ofinvertebrates and perhaps birds on grassland farms. The introduction of silvoarable systems can also lead toan increase in the diversity of airborne arthropods, small mammals and possibly birds on arable farms;however the effects on arable pests are likely to be mixed.