Agricultural bio-diversity creates climate change resilience (#journal)

 The role of agricultural biodiversity in strengthening resilience to climate change: towards an analytical framework

Traditional agricultural communities manage biodiversity at various scales, creating dynamic landscape mosaics of fields, gardens and ecosystem patches. Agricultural biodiversity and associated traditional knowledge are essential to the climate change resilience of these landscapes, but their roles are overlooked by researchers and policy makers. A review of 172 case studies from around the world shows that agricultural biodiversity contributes to resilience through a number of, often combined, strategies. These practices are examined to identify indicators of resilience in agricultural landscapes. The indicators are a first step in the development of a framework for assessing and building climate change resilience, intended both for local communities and for the scientists working closely with them.

Breed your own! Participatory hybrid breeding (#journal)

The potential of participatory hybrid breeding

This article explores the potential of involving smallholder farmers in hybrid development for their low-external input farming systems. The authors developed a conceptual model of the procedures, based on five simple assumptions, for a participatory maize breeding programme in southwest China, from 2000 to 2012. It is shown that farmers’ early involvement in hybrid development during the pre-breeding stage, including broadening the base populations with farmer-maintained local landraces, supported co-evolution of the genetic resources in farmers’ fields.

 

Organic farming improves developing world livelihoods (#journal)

Can organic and resource-conserving agriculture improve livelihoods? A synthesis

Organic agriculture initiatives have been common in the tropics for decades, but surprisingly few data are available on their performance. This synthesis examined 31 documented cases of African and Latin American farmers converting from conventional or organic-by-default systems to ORCA that assessed their impact on livelihoods. Yield improved in 19 of 25 cases, food security improved in seven of eight cases, and net income improved in 19 of 23 cases. However, it is not possible to generalize from these results due to the small sample, selection bias and inconsistent methods and definitions across the cases.

Special issue on supermarkets and global food supply (#journal)

Symposium on the Changing Role of Supermarkets in Global Supply Chains (8 articles)

We all know that supermarkets have a huge effect on what we eat and how it is farmed, produced and transported, and this special issue of Agriculture and Human Values presents eight articles looking at specific aspects of supermarket power. These include consideration of the way supermarkets are driving agricultural restructuring, the action of ombdusmen in limiting supermarket power, the role of private equity, the private food standards that supermarkets impose on suppliers and the connection of food supply chains to dietary ill-health.

The moral footprint of eating meat (journal)

The moral footprint of animal product

Most ethical discussions about diet are focused on the justification of specific kinds of products rather than an individual assessment of the moral footprint of eating products of certain animal species. However, the common “all or nothing” discussions between meat-eaters, vegans and vegetarians bypass very important factors in assessing dietary habits. This article argues that if we want to discover a properly assessed moral footprint of animal products, we should take into consideration not only life quality of animals during farming or violation of their rights but also their body weight, life time in farms and time efficiency in animal products acquisition. Without these factors, an assessment of animal products is much too simplified. This thesis that some animal products are much worse than others can be justified on common moral grounds.

The gift economy and the slow food movement (#journal)

The logic of the gift: the possibilities and limitations of Carlo Petrini’s slow food alternative

 

The majority of literature on Slow Food focuses on the organization or actors involved in the movement. There is a dearth of material analyzing Carlo Petrini’s aspiration to make “freewill giving a part of economic discourse.” This essay corrects the literature gap through historicizing and critiquing Petrini’s alternative to global capitalism while rooting it in actually existing practices. In doing so, this essay seeks to expand discussion of the gift economy within the alternative food movement while amending many of the theoretical, historical, and political problems embedded within Petrini’s work.

Incorporating ethics in sustainability indexes (book)

Measuring and Evaluating Sustainability

 The indexes used by local, national, and international governments to monitor progress toward sustainability do not adequately align with their ethical priorities and have a limited ability to monitor and promote sustainability. This book gives a theoretical and practical demonstration of how ethics and technical considerations can aid the development of sustainability indexes to overcome this division in the literature and in aid sustainability initiatives.
Measuring and Evaluating Sustainability develops and illustrates methods of linking technical and normative concerns during the development of sustainability indexes.