In the least favored regions of the world, food production per capita remains at the same level as in the 1960s. There are many reasons, from a purely agronomic perspective, for such disparities. New inputs from science can support indigenous knowledge for landscape restoration and ecological intensification.
Land degradation is no longer a local problem. Increasing land scarcity means that smallholder farmers in Africa may find themselves competing for land in a global market that has seen an exponential rise in foreign investment in soil and water or ‘land grabbing’. Conversion of new lands contributes to climate change. What are we doing about it?
For this year's World Food Day, themed “Sustainable Food Systems for Food Security and Nutrition", we're asking you: What do you think a sustainable food system looks like?
The First World Irrigation Forum in Mardin, Turkey, gives us a chance to take stock on how irrigated agriculture is performing and its role in meeting future demands for food. In agricultural water management, we often appear to be talking about the same issues as three decades ago...
Over the past month, this blog has highlighted WLE’s approach to agricultural development through an ecosystem services lens. This post highlights blogs featured throughout the month on ecosystem services.
The world is facing the dual challenge of sustainably providing enough nutritious food for more than 9 billion people while conserving the natural resource base upon which we are all dependent.
The Volta exemplifies a number of tradeoffs in building dams at a range of scales. The WLE Volta Scoping Study that recently took place along a transect from Accra in Ghana to Kaya in Burkina saw many of these tradeoffs in evidence.
The influence of the intergovernmental Mekong Basin Commission to manage the river is hobbled by its absence of the biggest and most upstream country on the river – China. This time we are in Africa, with Zambia the only country that hasn't joined the commission.
We are celebrating the launch of WLE's Ecosystem Services and Resilience Framework with a month long focus on ecosystem services, provided from natural and human-modified ecosystems, starting with the blog posts surrounding the Ecosystem Services Partnership conference.
The CGIAR Research Program on Water, Land and Ecosystems (WLE), would like to engage partners and readers of the Agriculture and Ecosystems Blog in a debate on how we unite agricultural production, poverty reduction and environmental sustainability. To start the debate, Andrew Noble, Program Director for WLE, explains why we need a farming revolution...
