Sustainable agriculture for poor farmers pushed

There are signs that a quiet revolution in the world food systems is starting to occur. Some sustainable highlights: Brazilian farmers – numbering 223,000 using green manure and cover crops of legumes and livestock integration have doubled yields of maize and wheat to four to five tons per hectare; Guatemalan and Honduran farmers – numbering 45,000– have used regenerative technologies to triple maize yields to some 2-1.5 tons/ha and diversity their upland farms. This has encouraged re-emigration back from the cities.

More than 300,000 farmers in southern and western India farming in dryland conditions are now using a range of water and soil management technologies that have tripled sorghum and millet yields to some 2-2.5 tons/hectare.

Some 200,000 Kenyan farmers who as part of various government and non-government soil and water conservation and sustainable agriculture programs have more than doubled their maize yields to about 2.5-3.3 tons/ha and substantially improved vegetable production through the dry season. Some small Mexican coffee farmers who have adopted fully organic production methods have increased yield by half.

A million wetland farmers in Bangladesh, China, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Sri Lanka, Thailand and Vietnam who have shifted to sustainable agriculture where group-based farmer-field schools have enabled farmers to learn alternatives to pesticides while still increasing their yields by about 10 percent.

Quietly, slowly and very significantly, sustainable agriculture is sweeping the farming systems of the world.

Put simply, sustainable agriculture is "farming that makes the best use of nature’s goods and services while not damaging the environment." It does this by integrating natural processes such as nutrient cycling, nitrogen fixation, soil regeneration and pest control into food production processes. It minimizes the use of non-renewable inputs (pesticides and fertilizers) that damage the environment and harm the health of farmers and consumers. It also makes better use of the knowledge and skills of farmers, thereby, improving their self-reliance and capacities.