It is in developing countries that some of the most significant progress towards sustainable agroeco
It is in developing countries that some of the most significant progress towards sustainable agroecosystems has been made in the past decade. The largest study comprised the analysis of 286 projects in 57 countries. In all, some 12.6 million farmers on 37 million hectares were engaged in transitions towards agricultural sustainability in these 286 projects. This is just over 3% of the total cultivated area (1.136 M ha) in developing countries. In the 68 randomly re-sampled projects from the original study, there was a 54% increase over the four years in the number of farmers, and 45% in the number of hectares. These resurveyed projects comprised 60% of the farmers and 44% of the hectares in the original sample of 208 projects. For the 360 reliable yield comparisons from 198 projects, the mean relative yield increase was 79% across the very wide variety of systems and crop types.
Source: Jules Pretty AGROECOLOGICAL APPROACHES TO AGRICULTURAL DEVELOPMENT1 November, 2006 (version 1) 1 This document is part of a series of contributions by Rimisp-Latin American Center for Rural Development (www.rimisp.org) to the preparation of the World Development Report 2008 “Agriculture for Developmentâ€. This work was carried out with the aid of a grant from the International Development Research Centre, Ottawa, Canada (www.idrc.ca). The contents of this document are the exclusive responsibility of the author. 2 University of Essex (Professor of Environment and Society, Dept of Biological Sciences), jpretty@essex.ac.uk.