For over 13,000 years, farming has been about people constantly innovating and working with nature to create reliable ways to grow food and enhance well-being. But the past 200 years have seen a dramatic shift towards industrial agriculture. Heavy reliance on fossil fuels and mechanization became the norm, prioritizing quick growth over protecting natural resources. Today, a few large corporations dominate the supply of farming inputs such as chemical fertilizers, pesticides and … [Read more...] about Transforming Food Systems From the Ground Up: Our Theory of Change
Systemic Change
New Evidence of Impact: Agroecology as a Poverty Solution in Haiti
Since 2009, Groundswell International has been collaborating with Partenariat pour le Développement Local (PDL) in Haiti to strengthen farmers’ associations in the north of Haiti’s Central Plateau basin to regenerate their farmland and improve their lives. PDL has strengthened 14 peasant organizations, with over 9,900 farmers adapting agroecological farming strategies and spreading them farmer-to-farmer. These organizations also manage community savings & credit coops, seed banks, grain … [Read more...] about New Evidence of Impact: Agroecology as a Poverty Solution in Haiti
Addressing the Global Food Crisis Through Agroecology: A Series By Chris Sacco
Over the last few years, we have all grown accustomed to hearing about how our world is in the midst of one global crisis or another. While the COVID-19 pandemic had a large amount of our attention over the last couple of years, another looming crisis has been quietly and rapidly gaining traction: global food insecurity. As of 2020, 2.37 billion people globally did not have access to adequate food, an increase of 320 million people from the previous year. Over the course of the last few … [Read more...] about Addressing the Global Food Crisis Through Agroecology: A Series By Chris Sacco
Improving the resilience of rural communities in the Sahel through pro-equity agroecology interventions
Systematic transformation is essential to tackle inequity and build resilience In the Sahel, the vast gap in food security between poor and wealthy households shows that economic growth benefits are not reaching the most vulnerable, particularly women and children, within rural communities. Evidence indicates that to improve resilience, a progressive transformation of the entire Sahelian farming system to address climate change and land degradation is essential. The primary way to … [Read more...] about Improving the resilience of rural communities in the Sahel through pro-equity agroecology interventions
The Dry Corridor in Crisis
The Dry Corridor of Central America is in crisis. Extreme environmental degradation, increasingly unpredictable rainfall due to Climate Change, recurrent droughts, flooding, and other natural disasters threaten the lives and livelihoods of more than 10 million people living in this ecologically fragile region. AE+6 has proven to be an effective system for innovation and the spread of resilient agroecological practices through farmer experimentation and farmer-to-farmer … [Read more...] about The Dry Corridor in Crisis
From Crisis to Healthy Farming and Food Systems
By: Steve Brescia, Executive Director This article first appeared online in Springer Nature on May 18, 2020. It will appear in print in Agriculture and Human Values: Volume 37, Issue 3 in September 2020. In a few short months an urgent question has absorbed people around the world. How and when do we end the COVID 19 pandemic? The answers depend on what actions we take. They also depend on recognizing the profound connections between our human health and the health of our ecosystems, … [Read more...] about From Crisis to Healthy Farming and Food Systems