To diversify or not to diversify, that is the question. Pursuing agricultural development for smallholder farmers in marginal areas of Ghana

Bellon, Mauricio R.; Kotu, Bekele Hundie; Azzarri, Carlo; Caracciolo, Francesco

doi:10.1016/j.worlddev.2019.104682

Cited by 142 publications

(107 citation statements)

References 51 publications

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“…Despite the surge in empirical analyses linking agricultural production (diversity) and dietary diversity (e.g., Sibhatu and Qaim, 2018;Bellon et al, 2020) there is still a distinct lack of tools that can be used to perform (CSA) assessment using all of this information. A new review by Nicholson et al (under review) analyzed agricultural production models in a repeat of earlier work (e.g., van Wijk et al, 2014;Stephens et al, 2018) and noted the lack of integration of food security and nutritional knowledge into agricultural assessment tools.…”

Section: Pillar 1: Food Securitymentioning

confidence: 99%

Improving Assessments of the Three Pillars of Climate Smart Agriculture: Current Achievements and Ideas for the Future

Wijk

Merbold

Hammond

et al. 2020

Front. Sustain. Food Syst.

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In this study we evaluate Climate Smart Agriculture (CSA) assessment tools with regard to their suitability for covering not only biophysical but also socioeconomic aspects of CSA, focusing on smallholder household level in Low and Middle Income Countries (LMIC). In this opinion piece we give a concise overview of the most recent developments in measuring key indicators and metrics for the three pillars of CSA (food security, adaptation, and mitigation) and give our opinion on how we think this would allow for improvements in the current state of assessing CSA in a smallholder farming context. Our assessment shows that all tools reviewed here have a biophysical lens while looking at productivity, and largely ignore potential social (e.g., food security, gender) and economic (poverty) aspects of the sustainability of intensified production. Mitigation was also analyzed in all approaches but few tools go beyond greenhouse gas emissions to analyse environmental sustainability (for example water quality, soil health, ecosystem services) more generically. Climate change adaptation was the CSA pillar with the weakest representation within the approaches reviewed here. Based on an overview of recent advantages in work focusing on CSA our key recommendations are (i) to make better use of recent advances in indicator development for sustainability assessments, including work on quantification of water and land footprints in relation to farm management; (ii) to use household level analyses to quantify pathways from productivity toward food security and improved nutrition as well as descripting drivers of adoption of adaptation options; and (iii) to use recent advances in system specific quantification of greenhouse gas emissions through both LMIC focused modeling and empirical work.

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Section: Pillar 1: Food Securitymentioning

confidence: 99%

Improving Assessments of the Three Pillars of Climate Smart Agriculture: Current Achievements and Ideas for the Future

Wijk

Merbold

Hammond

et al. 2020

Front. Sustain. Food Syst.

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“…Agroecological transitions should equally enhance socio-economic resilience. Through diversification and integration, producers reduce their vulnerability should a single crop, livestock species or other commodity fail (Dumont et al 2013;Bellon et al 2020;Bowles et al 2020). By reducing dependence on external inputs through enhanced reliance on biological processes underpinning soil health and the regulation of pests and diseases (Tscharntke et al 2005;Barrios et al 2012b;Dumont et al 2013), agroecology can reduce producers' vulnerability to economic risk (Schipanski et al 2016;Feliciano 2019).…”

Section: Resiliencementioning

confidence: 99%

The 10 Elements of Agroecology: enabling transitions towards sustainable agriculture and food systems through visual narratives

Barrios

Gemmill-Herren

Bicksler

et al. 2020

Ecosystems and People

164

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The magnitude and urgency of the challenges facing agriculture and food systems demand profound modifications in different aspects of human activity to achieve real transformative change and sustainability. Recognizing that the inherent complexity of achieving sustainability is commonly seen as a deterrent to decision-making, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) has approved the 10 Elements of Agroecology as an analytical framework to support the design of differentiated paths for agriculture and food systems transformation, hence facilitating improved decision-making by policymakers, practitioners and other stakeholders in differing contexts at a range of levels on a number of scales. Biodiversity, consumers, education and governance are identified as promising entry points to build a structured process using visual narratives that rely on the 10 Elements of Agroecology to graphically dissect prospective social-ecological transition trajectories. We illustrate such applications with examples from agroforestry worldwide, public food procurement in Brazil and the United States of America, and agroecology education vis-à-vis secure access to land in Senegal. Nexus approaches are used to highlight and examine salient interactions among different sectors and entry points, and to develop visual narratives describing plausible theories of transformative change towards sustainable agriculture and food systems.

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“…The basic principle is to remove the conditions that favor the growth and reproduction of pests [3] . Crop rotation can also break the life cycle of weeds, pests and pathogens with limited mobility and narrow host ranges [23] . Crop diversification has always been regarded as an environmentally-friendly model.…”

Section: Field Scalementioning

confidence: 99%

Designing Diversified Cropping Systems in China: Theory, Approaches and Implementation

2021

Front. Agr. Sci. Eng.

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To diversify or not to diversify, that is the question. Pursuing agricultural development for smallholder farmers in marginal areas of Ghana

Cited by 142 publications

References 51 publications

Improving Assessments of the Three Pillars of Climate Smart Agriculture: Current Achievements and Ideas for the Future

Improving Assessments of the Three Pillars of Climate Smart Agriculture: Current Achievements and Ideas for the Future

The 10 Elements of Agroecology: enabling transitions towards sustainable agriculture and food systems through visual narratives

Designing Diversified Cropping Systems in China: Theory, Approaches and Implementation

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