A study exploring the emergence of the three main definitions of agroecology: FAO, the Nyéléni Declaration and of the High Level Panel of Experts (HLPE) of the Committee on World Food Security

This report explores what helps or hinders the success of “Dynamic Agroecological Systems” (DynAEs) across Europe. These are farms, networks, and community initiatives putting agroecology into practice — using nature-based, socially inclusive, and economically fair approaches to food and farming.

In an attempt to halt and reverse biodiversity losses, the European Commission has proposed a new regulation, the Nature Restoration Law (NRL). It could become a cornerstone of Europe’s ambitions to restore biodiversity and ecosystem services for decades to come

Efficient environmental policies are urgently needed globally, to combat critical challenges including climate change, biodiversity losses, water scarcity and land degradation. But there is an increasing tendency of some actors to contest environmental protection policies, often using misinformation or pseudo-scientific claims. It is critical that scientists weigh in on such public debates, to provide an unbiased assessment of the science, and help prevent erroneous arguments from influencing decision-making.

Highlights:

We analyse how agroecological principles were mobilised in five case studies.

We propose a new eight-category framework to categorise barriers and enablers.

Different equilibria occurred between agroecosystem and food-system level principles.

Cooperation networks were always reported among the enablers for scaling out.

Policy response needs to go beyond on-farm support and look downstream and upstream.

Agroecology is a new area of knowledge with an emerging body of experience linking experiments, research and action-oriented innovations targeting enhanced food systems’ resilience, environmental and socio-economic sustainability at the farm, organisational and institutional levels.

Highlights:

A spatially-explicit approach to evaluate and prioritise LF restoration.

Clustering landscape characteristics help identify priority areas for LF restoration.

94.4% of Brandenburg's landscapes fall short of the 10% landscape feature target.

Focusing on low-production areas at local scale can help reach the 10 % target.

Farmers’ acceptance and landscape characteristics are vital for successful adoption.

This paper presents a conceptualization of radical food democracy (RFD) which links the diverse economies approach of Gibson-Graham with Tully’s notion of diverse citizenship. Despite its invaluable contribution to theorizing the role of alternative food networks (AFNs) in transforming unsustainable industrial food systems, the diverse economies scholarship has been criticized for essentializing the autonomy of alternative economic practices - hence risking to confound emancipatory social change with punctuated forms of “local,” “quality,” “organic certified” products, which nevertheless remain embedded in market-mediated capitalist relations, and displacement and/or deferral of negative impacts. 

Climate change will increase average temperatures and the frequency and intensity of summertime droughts; those shifts will in turn affect forage production in grassland-based livestock farms. Farmers will accordingly likely have to implement adaptation strategies to cope with the effects of climate change. 

Effects of Legumes and Fertilizer on Nitrogen Balance from Intact Leys and After Tilling for Subsequent Crop

Diversification of grassland-based systems is highly valued in agroecology, organic farming and other forms of regenerative agriculture. For lowlands, mountain and Mediterranean areas, we illustrate that diversification of grassland types, livestock species, products and farm labour allows coping with market, climatic and workforce-related risks. 

Unpredictable climate patterns have become a part of every farmer's life, requiring them to adapt their practices with increasing frequency. This is certainly the case in the highly productive Romanian Plain, where the frequency, intensity, and duration of heatwaves and drought have increased over the past 20 years.

Agroecology has been proposed as an answer to the current global agri-food system crises. Transformation to agroecological agri-food systems can be enhanced through collaboration between societal agroecological initiatives and scientists in reflexive arrangements. 

Meta-analysis of agroecology’s impact on biodiversity and climate change mitigation. Agroecological interventions increase biodiversity of all studied functional groups.

Using plant diversity to reduce vulnerability and increase drought resilience of permanent and sown productive grasslands

Until now, most research relating to animal production based on agroecological principles has been conducted at farm scale only, meaning the potential of understanding its impact at societal and food system level has been underexplored.