A/HRC/16/49 14. Agroecology is a coherent concept for designing future farming systems as it is strongly rooted both in science and in practice, and because it shows strong connections with the principles of the right to adequate food (Section III). It can be seen as encompassing – or closely related to – approaches such as “ecoagriculture”21 and “evergreen agriculture,”22 while the concepts of “ecological intensification” and “conservation agriculture” often follow certain agroecological principles. Agroecology is also linked to the “ecosystem approach to sustainable crop production intensification” recently supported by the FAO Committee on Agriculture (COAG).23 Discussion of the detailed differences among these concepts is beyond the scope of this report. 15. Crop breeding and agroecology are complementary. For instance, breeding provides new varieties with shorter growing cycles, which enable farmers to continue farming in regions where the crop season has already shrunk. Breeding can also improve the level of drought resistance in plant varieties, an asset for countries where lack of water is a limiting factor. Reinvesting in agricultural research must consequently mean continued efforts in breeding. However, agroecology is more overarching as it supports building droughtresistant agricultural systems (including soils, plants, agrobiodiversity, etc.), not just drought-resistant plants. A. Availability: agroecology raises productivity at field level 16. A wide panoply of techniques based on the agroecological perspective have been developed and successfully tested in a range of regions.24 These approaches involve the maintenance or introduction of agricultural biodiversity (diversity of crops, livestock, agroforestry, fish, pollinators, insects, soil biota and other components that occur in and around production systems) to achieve the desired results in production and sustainability. Integrated nutrient management reconciles the need to fix nitrogen within farm systems with the import of inorganic and organic sources of nutrients and the reduction of nutrient losses through erosion control. Agroforestry incorporates multifunctional trees into agricultural systems. In Tanzania, 350,000 hectares of land have been rehabilitated in the Western provinces of Shinyanga and Tabora using agroforestry;25 there are similar largescale projects developed in other countries including Malawi, Mozambique and Zambia.26 Water harvesting in dryland areas allows for the cultivation of formerly abandoned and degraded lands, and improves the water productivity of crops. In West Africa, stone barriers built alongside fields slow down runoff water during the rainy season, allowing an improvement of soil moisture, the replenishment of water tables, and reductions in soil erosion. The water retention capacity is multiplied five- to ten-fold, the biomass production 21 22 23 24 25 26 Miguel A. Altieri and Clara I. Nicholis, Agroecology and the Search for a Truly Sustainable Agriculture, cited above n. 18. D.P. Garrity et al., “Evergreen Agriculture: a robust approach to sustainable food security in Africa,” Food Security 2:3, 2010, pp. 197–214. Report of the 22nd Session of the Committee on Agriculture (COAG), Rome, 16-19 June 2010 (CL 140/3 (C 2011/17)). See Jules Pretty, “Agricultural sustainability: concepts, principles and evidence,” Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B, 363(1491), 2008, pp. 447-465. C. Pye-Smith “A Rural Revival in Tanzania: How agroforestry is helping farmers to restore the woodlands in Shinyanga Region,” Trees for Change No. 7, Nairobi, World Agroforestry Centre (ICRAF), 2010, p. 15. D.P. Garrity et al., “Evergreen Agriculture: a robust approach to sustainable food security in Africa,” Food Security 2:3, 2010, p. 200; K. Linyunga et al., “Accelerating agroforestry adoption: A case of Mozambique,” ICRAF Agroforestry Project, Paper presented at the IUFRO Congress, Rome, 12-15 July 2004. 7