strategy
Recognizing micro-environments in farming
Synonyms:
Investing in microenvironmental agriculturePlanning farm production at micro-scale
Description:
Typically, microenvironments (MEs) are ecologically specialized compared with their surroundings; concentrate soil, water and nutrients; are protected; and are physically, biologically and managerially complex and diverse. In third world agriculture, MEs often contribute to livelihoods and their sustainability by diversifying households' portfolio of sources of food and income, by intensifying, increasing and stabilizing production and decreasing risk, by storing and supplying reserves for bad times and contingencies, by reducing the need to migrate, and by providing sites for innovation and experiment. Implementation:
In knowledge, and in R & D to develop the considerable potentials of MEs in third world agriculture, farmers have several comparative advantages but scientists can help as consultants. As a precondition for long-term investment in MEs, farm families need clear and secure rights and tenure. Non-farming professionals can contribute through better observation and heightened awareness of MEs, and through reversals of location, learning, and role. A shift in extension from packages of practices to baskets of choices should enable farming systems and livelihoods to be more sustainable by becoming more complex and diverse. A challenge to non-farming agricultural professionals in the 1990s is whether they can make the quiet personal revolutions needed to support these changes. Broader:
RecognizingPromoting small-scale human societySupporting very small scale economic activities Facilitates:
Protecting family farmsFunding small scale farmingFinancing sustainable developmentPromoting agricultural innovation Facilitated by:
Promoting biointensive agricultureUsing local knowledge in planning agricultural industries Subjects:
Commerce → InvestmentIndustry → Production
Agriculture, Fisheries → Agriculture
Agriculture, Fisheries → Farming
Management → Planning
Environment → Environment
Type Classification:
E: Emanations of other strategies Related UN Sustainable Development Goals:
