FAQs about ecoagriculture

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1. What is ecoagriculture?

2. Why is ecoagriculture defined at a landscape scale?

3. How does ecoagriculture relate to other approaches with similar objectives, such as sustainable agriculture and permaculture?

4. Where is ecoagriculture particularly important?

5. Why are agricultural areas so important for biodiversity conservation?

6. Why should farmers and rural communities be interested in ecoagriculture approaches, and what incentives exist for them to implement these approaches?

7. How can ecoagriculture strategies help improve global food supplies, support efforts to conserve biodiversity, AND improve rural livelihoods?

8. Why should conservationists be interested in promoting ecoagriculture approaches?

9. What land management practices help achieve ecoagriculture objectives?

10. What is the role of traditional and local knowledge in ecoagriculture?

11. How can ecoagriculture strategies contribute to achieving the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs)?

12. How do ecoagriculture strategies support the recommendations of the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (MEA)?

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1. What is ecoagriculture?

Ecoagriculture is a landscape-management approach that achieves three goals at a landscape scale: conservation and sustainable use of biodiversity and ecosystem services; sufficient food production; improved rural livelihoods.

The concept of ecoagriculture emerged from the recognition that in the 21st century, humans will place unprecedented demands on the world’s finite land base, seeking to increase global food production by 50 to 100% and improve living standards for billions of poor people, while simultaneously protecting wild biodiversity and the ecosystem services that sustain human life. These demands must be addressed together, and solutions must be based on land use systems that advance multiple goals in the same geographic space. Thus, ‘ecoagriculture’ was born.

Ecoagriculture advances the idea that wildlife conservation, agricultural production, and enhancement of rural livelihoods can be complementary activities, especially if they are undertaken at a landscape scale. Innovations in land management demonstrate that the tradeoffs traditionally perceived between conservation, food production, and rural livelihoods are not always accurate or necessary.

Ecoagriculture concerns itself not just with a diversity of agricultural systems but with entire mosaics of land use that also encompass forests, human settlements, coastal zones, and waterways. Taking into account the ecological systems that interact with agricultural systems is critical for identifying and fostering synergies between conservation and production. For example, a nature reserve may benefit nearby farms by providing clean water and natural pest control, while sustained high levels of production on farms in the landscape may alleviate pressure to expand agriculture into the nature reserve. The health of the nature reserve will also be affected by the type and intensity of the agricultural production happening at its borders; therefore, the management of the agricultural area must take conservation goals into account.

Thus, a key feature of ecoagriculture management is strengthened coordination and collaboration between land users and managers. Ecoagriculture can rarely be achieved by individual land managers, and depends upon collaboration between the diverse stakeholders who impact and manage the landscape.

The ecoagriculture concept was first documented by Jeffrey McNeely and Sara Scherr in their 2003 book Ecoagriculture: Strategies to Feed the World and Save Wild Biodiversity.

2. Why is ecoagriculture defined at a landscape scale?

A landscape is a cluster of local ecosystems with a particular configuration of topography, vegetation, land use, and settlement. The goals of ecoagriculture – to maintain biodiversity and ecosystem services, manage agricultural production sustainably, and contribute to improved livelihoods among rural people – cannot be achieved at just a farm or plot level, but are linked at the landscape scale. Therefore, to make impact, we must consider all of the elements of a landscape as a whole.

How a landscape is defined depends on the local context. Landscapes may be defined or delimited by natural, historical, and/or cultural processes, activities or values. Landscapes can incorporate many different features, but all of the various features have some influence or effect on each other. Landscapes can vary greatly in size, from the Congo Basin in west-central Africa where landscapes are often huge because there are vast stretches of apparently undifferentiated land, to western Europe where landscapes tend to be much smaller because of the wide diversity of topographies and land use activities occurring close to each other.

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3. How does ecoagriculture relate to other approaches with similar objectives, such as sustainable agriculture and permaculture?

The values and/or principles of ecoagriculture have much in common with existing concepts, such as sustainable agriculture, permaculture, agroecology, integrated natural resource management, organic agriculture, agroforestry, conservation agriculture, protected area management, and many others. In fact, ‘ecoagriculture’ landscapes often feature many of these approaches. Ecoagriculture draws heavily on these and many other innovations in rural land use planning and management. The landscape management framework defined by ecoagriculture has four particularly important characteristics:

• Large scale: Ecoagriculture moves beyond the management of individual farms and/or protected areas to help detect and plan for interactions among different land uses at the landscape scale. In addition, important attributes such as wildlife population dynamics and watershed functions can be meaningfully understood only at the landscape scale. Also, in recognition of the fact that short-term tradeoffs may lead to long-term synergies, ecoagriculture advocates conducting analyses over longer temporal scales than is commonly done.

• Emphasis on synergies: Ecoagriculture emphasizes both the need and the opportunity to foster synergies among conservation, agricultural production, and rural livelihoods. The ecoagriculture research and monitoring agenda seeks, in part, to identify and document these synergies.

• Emphasis on stakeholder Collaboration: Ecoagriculture can not be achieved by individual land managers. The management of ecoagriculture landscapes requires processes that support a variety of land managers (within the landscape) with diverse environmental and socio-economic goals to collaboratively develop coordinated conservation and production management approaches that collectively achieve conservation, production, and livelihood goals at a landscape scale.

• Importance of both conservation and agricultural production: Building on the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, ecoagriculture brings conservation fully into the agricultural and rural development discourse by highlighting the importance of ecosystem services in supporting continued agricultural production. Ecoagriculture also identifies the conservation of native biodiversity and ecosystems as an equally important goal in its own right. It also supports conservationists to more effectively conserve nature within and outside protected areas by working with the agricultural community and developing conservation-friendly livelihood strategies for rural land users.
  

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4. Where is ecoagriculture particularly important?

Ecoagriculture approaches are crucial in regions where: 

• Landscapes are highly degraded, and improved agriculture, livelihoods, and biodiversity all depend on ecosystem restoration. Many of the regions facing the greatest challenges in achieving the Millennium Development Goals coincide with those facing significant problems of ecosystem degradation. Since two-thirds of the world’s poor are dependant on subsistence agriculture for their survival, increasing their productive asset base and planning for the long term regeneration of the landscape upon which they depend will profoundly improve their quality of life, while fostering healthy and varied ecosystems.

• Local livelihoods depend upon agricultural activities in or around protected areas. The portrayalof a divide between conservationists, who wish to preserve land by setting it aside, and agriculturalists, who depend on landscape-derived products for a living, creates a false dichotomy

   

  between the two and is neither helpful nor necessary. With rising population rates and a decrease in productive land, rural actors already interact with land that is officially protected,and will increasingly do so. Whether these interactions are detrimental to the landscape, benign, or

  mutually beneficial will depend very much upon crafting a deliberate framework for landscape management.

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5. Why are agricultural areas so important for biodiversity conservation?

Agriculture is the most dominant human influence on earth. Nearly one-third of the world’s land area is heavily influenced by cropland or planted pastures. An even greater area is being fallowed as part of an agricultural cycle or is in tree crops, livestock grazing systems, or production forestry.

In addition, most of the world’s 100,000+ protected areas contain significant amounts of agricultural land. And over half of the most species-rich areas in the world contain large human populations whose livelihoods depend on farming, forestry, herding, or fisheries.

Agriculture as it is often practiced today threatens wild plant and animal species and the natural ecosystem services upon which both humans and wildlife depend. Over 70% of the fresh water withdrawn by humans goes to irrigation for crops, causing a profound impact on the hydrological cycles of ecological systems. Moreover, fertilizers, pesticides, and agricultural waste threaten habitats and protected areas downstream. Landclearing for agriculture also disrupts sources of food and shelter for wild biodiversity, and unsustainable fishing practices deplete freshwater and coastal fisheries.

Additionally, an increase in the planting and marketing of monoculture crops across the globe has decreased diversity in agricultural products, to the extent that many local varieties of fruits, vegetables, and grains have now become extinct. Given that demands on global agricultural production are increasing, it is imperative that the management of agricultural landscapes be improved to both increase productivity and enhance biodiversity conservation. Wild biodiversity increasingly depends on agricultural producers to find ways to better protect habitats, and agriculture critically needs healthy and diverse ecosystems to sustain productivity.

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6. Why should farmers and rural communities be interested in ecoagriculture approaches, and what incentives exist for them to implement these approaches?

Farming communities play a vital role as stewards of their ecosystems and biodiversity. Their dependence on their land and natural resources necessitates a conservation ethic. Agricultural productivity critically depends upon a range of ecosystem services. Wild species often also play an important role in providing livestock fodder, fuel, veterinary medicines, soil nutrient supplements and construction materials to farmers, as well constituting an essential element of cultural, religious, and spiritual practices. The dominance of agriculture in global land use requires that ecoagriculture approaches be fostered by rural producers and their communities on a globally significant scale. To do this, farmers need to be able to conserve biodiversity more consistently in ways that benefit their livelihoods. Experiences from around the world suggest that there are a number of incentives to encourage and enable farmers and their communities to preserve or transition towards ecoagriculture landscapes:

• Many management practices that improve ecosystem health also benefit farmers by reducing production costs, raising or stabilizing yields, or improving product quality. Intensive rotation grazing systems practiced in Europe, the United States, and Zimbabwe have been shown to reduce dairy production costs compared to stall-fed systems, while also reducing risks of land degradation and improving wildlife habitat.

• Farming communities are especially motivated to conserve biodiversity and ecosystem services critical to their own livelihoods and cultural, spiritual, or aesthetic values. To protect their access to local water sources and medicinal plants, for example, farmers in western Kenya have mobilized to protect threatened forests in and near their communities. And in some agricultural landscapes in West Africa, “sacred groves” are the principal remaining areas of native forest.

• Farmers are seeking new income opportunities from product markets that value supplies from biodiversity-friendly production systems. More than 80 eco-certification programs now provide opportunities for farmers to receive higher prices for products produced with environmentally friendly practices.

• Farmers can gain new income opportunities from payments for ecosystem services provided by non-farm beneficiaries of their ecological stewardship. These opportunities include carbon emission offset payments for carbon sequestration in soils and trees and water quality protection, among others.

• Farmers are seeking ways to comply with the goals of environmental regulation, in ways that also maintain or improve their agricultural livelihoods. In the US, farmers in the Chesapeake Bay watershed are incorporating perennial vegetative buffer strips around stream banks, which provide habitat niches for birds and wildlife, to both help meet water quality regulations and to diversify their output.
  

7. How can ecoagriculture strategies help improve global food supplies, support efforts to conserve biodiversity, AND improve rural livelihoods?

Strategies to deliver agricultural productivity and biodiversity conservation often appear to be conflicting, involving significant trade-offs. Economic and market policies often present disincentives for farmers and communities to practice ecoagriculture. Government subsidies to maximize agricultural production have driven the conversion of landscapes to expansive monocultures, with the accompanying loss of critical biodiversity habitat such as wetlands and field borders. While diversified agricultural systems are often desirable for generating biodiversity benefits, sustaining the economic viability of such production systems requires markets for multiple products – and these markets may still be poorly developed.

However, new evidence of ecoagricultural practices and systems indicates that opportunities for synergy are far greater than had been previously imagined by most agricultural and biodiversity practitioners and policy-makers. Of the 36 ecoagriculture cases highlighted in the McNeely-Scherr book (2003), 24 increased productivity and 10 increased biodiversity with no reduction in productivity. In 28 of the 36 cases, farm income increased with the introduction of ecoagriculture systems, and income impacts were neutral in five cases.

Where potential conflicts between strategies to deliver agricultural productivity and biodiversity conservation are identified, a comprehensive search for synergies should always be made before one set of interests is asked to sacrifice its objectives to meet those of another. In some circumstances, it is possible to make relatively simple interventions that can strategically benefit biodiversity – for example, by focusing on activities with producers in ecologically sensitive areas of the landscape. When there are no simple solutions available, negotiations can sometimes lead to compromises
that minimize costs or provide acceptable compensation to those who must sacrifice some of their objectives. In many farming systems, viable long-term solutions will require new agricultural, ecological, market and policy research and investment to develop more integrated approaches and more diverse product markets.

 

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8. Why should conservationists be interested in promoting ecoagriculture approaches?

Traditionally there has existed a divide between conservationists, who want to set land aside for the protection of wild biodiversity, and agriculturalists, who want to use land for production. Because more than half of all plant and animal species exist principally outside protected areas – mostly in agricultural landscapes – there is a great need to close the gap between conservation efforts and agricultural production. For example, conservation of wetlands within agricultural landscapes is critical for wild bird populations. Such species require initiatives by and with farmers. Ecoagriculture provides a bridge for these two communities to come together.

9. What land management practices help achieve ecoagriculture objectives?

Agricultural landscapes that aim to achieve the objectives of ecoagriculture – enhanced biodiversity conservation, increased food production, and improved rural livelihoods – should be managed in ways that protect and expand natural areas and improve wildlife habitats and ecosystem functions, in

collaboration with local communities to insure their benefit. Specific land management practices that may be incorporated include:

• Plan and manage protected areas together with local farming, pastoralist, and forest communities in their landscapes. Community-conserved areas on lands owned by farmers and pastoralists are important for ecosystem-wide management of biodiversity. The more ownership/engagement these communities have in the management of protected areas, the more successful the landscape will be overall in contributing to the three goals of ecoagriculture.

• Link unfarmed areas, forest fragments, and wetlands within agricultural landscapes to develop habitat networks and corridors that support and expand the range of wild species. This approach is particularly useful to migratory species, which can include pollinators and natural enemies of agricultural pests.
  

• Reduce or reverse conversion of natural areas to agricultural areas by improving the productivity of currently utilized agricultural, forestry, grazing lands and fisheries.
  

• Modify farming systems so they mimic natural vegetation and ecological processes. Integrating trees, shrubs, and grasses into agricultural production systems can improve ecosystem services across the whole landscape.

• Manage agricultural wastes to protect the surrounding ecosystem by encouraging shifts from input-intensive to ‘knowledge-intensive’ agricultural practices. These may include integration of crop, livestock, and nutrient systems; more precise application of organic and non-organic fertilizers; and crop rotations to improve soil fertility.

• Encourage soil, water, and vegetation management strategies that limit negative impacts on surrounding eocsystems. These practices include conservation tillage, improved fallow systems, onfarm crop or fertiliser trees, inter-cropping, and livestock diversification.

10. What is the role of traditional and local knowledge in ecoagriculture?

Many indigenous peoples and rural communities have developed, maintained, and adapted different types of ecoagriculture systems for centuries. Local farmers, pastoralists, fishers, forest users, and other community members are the foundation of rural land stewardship. Their knowledge, traditions, land use practices, and resource-management institutions are essential to the development of viable ecoagriculture systems for their landscapes.

The mainstreaming of ecoagriculture approaches will be crucially dependent upon mobilizing local communities to become leaders in ecoagriculture, as teachers and as advocates for political and institutional change. Communities facing similar challenges can share questions, ideas, and solutions

with each other. Local communities also need effective processes for sharing their expertise with national policymakers and the international community and thus play a more central role in settingecoagriculture objectives in policy and program development.

11. How can ecoagriculture strategies contribute to achieving the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs)?

The Millenium Development Goals (MDGs), eight ambitious targets which range from halving extreme poverty to halting the spread of HIV/AIDS and providing universal primary education, were put forth by the UN in 2000, to be achieved by 2015. Ecoagriculture strategies will be essential to

achieving the MDGs, particularly for hunger and poverty, water and sanitation, and environmental sustainability.

   

The Millennium Development Goals will not be reached without securing the ability of the rural poor to feed their families and gain income, while at the same time protecting the biodiversity and ecosystem services that sustain their livelihoods. Of the estimated 800 million people who do not

have access to sufficient food, half are smallholder farmers, one-fifth are rural landless, and one-tenth are principally dependent on rangelands, forests and fisheries. For most of them, reducing poverty and hunger will depend centrally on their ability to sustain and increase crop, livestock, forest, and

fishery production.

A key opportunity for enhancing progress towards the MDGs is investment in locally-driven land management approaches – such as ecoagriculture strategies – that build upon synergies between rural livelihoods, environmental sustainability, and food security.

12. How do ecoagriculture strategies support the recommendations of the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (MEA)?

The MEA concluded that the degradation and unsustainable use of ecosystem services is a significant barrier to achieving the Millennium Development Goals. Often this degradation is a cause of poverty, and it is likely to grow significantly worse over the next 50 years. Ecoagriculture strategies support a

number of the responses proposed by the MEA:

• Conserving or enhancing specific ecosystem services within agricultural landscapes ‘in ways that reduce negative tradeoffs or provide positive synergies with other ecosystem services.’

• 'Catalysing the further integration of ecosystem management goals within other sectors and within broader development planning frameworks’. Despite clear inter-connections between sectors, priority-setting and investment plans for rural development, agriculture, and biodiversity typically remain isolated, with a lack of coordination between ministries responsible for different elements of the same landscape.

• Investing in cross-sectoral institutions that support diverse stakeholders to manage landscapes. Ecoagriculture strategies encourage building and bolstering particularly those institutions equipped to support and enable transboundary management of protected areas, biodiversity corridors, watersheds and other shared ecosystems.

• Enhancing or, where necessary, restoring traditional and indigenous knowledge systems by placing community-based leaders at the center of capacity development and training initiatives, recognizing that ‘Effective ecosystem management typically requires “place-based” knowledge on the specific characteristics and history of an ecosystem.’
  

• Effective ecosystem management requires coordinated responses at multiple scales: Multistakeholder processes are required to facilitate broader participation in the negotiation of management agreements that reconcile multiple objectives, with respect to ecosystem, livelihood, and productivity goals.