Assessing farming systems in transition to agroecology

Agroecology: principles and strategies for designing sustainable farming systems

The concept of sustainable agriculture is a relatively recent response to the decline in the quality of the natural resource base associated with modern agriculture (McIsaac and Edwards 1994). Today, the question of agricultural production has evolved from a purely technical one to a more complex one characterized by social, cultural, political and economic dimensions. The concept of sustainabi...

Assessing the effect of the time since transition to organic farming on plants and butterflies

1.Environmental changes may not always result in rapid changes in species distributions, abundances or diversity. In order to estimate the effects of, for example, land-use changes caused by agri-environment schemes (AES) on biodiversity and ecosystem services, information on the time-lag between the application of the scheme and the responses of organisms is essential.2.We examined the effects...

Agroecology and Sustainable Food Systems

Understanding Crop Management Decisions for Sustainable Vegetable Crop Protection: A Case Study of Small Tomato Growers in Mayotte Island J. Huat, C. Aubry & T. Dore a CIRAD, UPR Hortsys, Montpellier, France b Africa Rice Center, Cotonou, Benin c INRA, UMR Sadapt, Paris, France d AgroParisTech, INRA, UMR 211, Thiverval-Grignon, France Accepted author version posted online: 24 Mar 2014.Published...

Agroecology: Environmentally Sound and Socially Just Alternatives to the Industrial Farming Model

Out-Migration and the Transition from Farming to Non-Farming in Chitwan, Nepal

Seung Yong Han Introduction The purpose of this study is to assess the effect of out-migration at the household level on the decision to transition from farming to non-farming in the context of the socioeconomically changing agricultural region, Chitwan, Nepal, over 10 years between 1996 and 2006. In the face of social and economic changes in a region where agriculture is the main business, out...