Agriculture is a core area of Mongabay’s coverage both because the world must find more sustainable ways to feed its human societies and because how it’s currently practiced is generally detrimental to forests, biodiversity, and the climate. Agroecology is the overarching term which encompasses such sustainable agriculture solutions that we cover, from organic farming to integrated pest management and agroforestry, a practice that incorporates trees and which sequesters at least 50 gigatons of carbon from the atmosphere. For reasons like this, agroecology is noted as a top climate solution by the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. And it’s not just individual farms or communities taking action to implement this long-term vision of a more harmonious agriculture: governments such as Wales have just announced a sustainable farming scheme that will help growers transition their farms away from harmful practices, while nations like India have had national policy in place for nearly 10 years to promote the adoption of agroforestry. The latter is far ahead of the U.S. in this regard, but for its part, this year major funding via the U.S. Department of Agriculture was used to boost agroforestry training and adoption. Foundations are also taking a leading role: this month, 24 large philanthropies announced an initiative calling for a tenfold increase in funding for transitioning to agroecology in order to address urgent global agricultural and environmental challenges. “These philanthropies have aligned around a shared ambition: to catalyze a transition to 50% regenerative and agroecological systems by 2040, and to…This article was originally published on Mongabay
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