the GlobalChangeBiology blog

Agroecology: a viable agricultural path for a planet in crisis. It is now clear that humanity needs an alternative agricultural development paradigm, one that encourages more ecologically, biodiverse, resilient, sustainable and socially just forms of agriculture. The basis for this new systems are the myriad of ecologically based agricultural styles developed by over a billion smallholders, family farmers and indigenous people on hundreds of millions of small farms which currently produce most of the global agricultural output for domestic consumption largely without agrochemicals. Agroecology is this paradigm: a dialogue between traditional agricultural knowledge and modern agricultural science that uses ecological concepts and principles for designing and managing sustainable agroecosystems in which external inputs are replaced by natural processes such as natural soil fertility and biological control. This book explains why agroecology is the most robust food provisioning pathway fo...

The GlobalChangeBiology project is part of the Joint Programming Initiative on Agriculture, Food Security and Climate Change ( FACCE – JPI ) funded by the European Union under the 7th Framework Program. The goal of FACCE – JPI is to achieve, support and promote integration, alignment and joint implementation of national resources under a common research and innovation strategy to address the diverse challenges in agriculture, food security and climate change. Partnering MACSUR , the first pilot action of FACCE – JPI that will start officially in June 2012 (see first newsletter ), the GlobalChangeBiology project will provide case studies on grape and olive systems in the Mediterranean Basin. The MACSUR project is a knowledge hub that brings together 73 research groups from across Europe and will provide a detailed climate change risk assessment for European agriculture and food security, in collaboration with international projects including the GlobalChangeBiology project . As...