Community planning is starting to include a broader food systems focus, spanning topics such as nutrition and health outcomes, sustainable farming practices, economic and social implications of local food production, distribution, and consumption. Together, these issues are a driving force for the passions of those seeking positive change in their communities through healthy food. The purpose of this book is to explore how and where local food and farms, as part of a local or regional food system, can positively impact both economic development and overall well-being of communities. Across North America, there are good examples of the ways in which innovative local food systems provide opportunities for: increasing job growth and entrepreneurship; retaining local farmers on their land while nourishing their community; and providing communities places to congregate, bond, and become closer-knit. Six such examples are highlighted, each illustrating a novel model offering unique contributions to community economic health and well-being. These important cases offer practitioners, advocates, academics, and students insight into how applications can be built or studied in their own communities.

Aquatic agricultural systems (AAS) are food production systems in which the productivity of freshwater or coastal ecosystems contributes significantly to total household nutrition, food security, and income in developing countries. The Consultative Group of International Agricultural Research (CGIAR) engages in research in development to address this challenge. The goal of the CGIAR research program on Aquatic Agricultural Systems (referred to in this paper as “the AAS program”) is to harness the development potential of aquatic agricultural systems to improve the livelihood security and well-being of an estimated 10 million by 2016 poor people who are dependent on these systems This working paper draws lessons from the target countries through a review of productivity interventions such as modifying habitats, harnessing underutilized productive resources, improving the integration of production commodities, supporting community-based natural resource management, and genetically improving strains. In total, this paper reviewed 20 productivity interventions.

Groundwater for Sustainable Livelihoods and Equitable Growth explores how groundwater, often invisibly, improves peoples’ lives and livelihoods. This unique collection of 19 studies captures experiences of groundwater making a difference in 16 countries in Africa, South America and Asia. Such studies are rarely documented and this book provides a rich new collection of interdisciplinary analysis. The book is published in colour and includes many original diagrams and photographs. Spring water, wells or boreholes have provided safe drinking water and reliable water for irrigation or industry for millennia. However, the hidden nature of groundwater often means that it’s important role both historically and in the present is overlooked. This collection helps fill this knowledge gap, providing a diverse set of new studies encompassing different perspectives and geographies. Different interdisciplinary methodologies are described that can help understand linkages between groundwater, livelihoods and growth, and how these links can be threatened by over-use, contamination, and ignorance. Written for a worldwide audience of practitioners, academics and students with backgrounds in geology, engineering or environmental sciences; Groundwater for Sustainable Livelihoods and Equitable Growth is essential reading for those involved in groundwater and international development.

Sustainable Livelihoods and Rural Development looks at the role of social institutions and the politics of policy, as well as issues of identity, gender and generation. The relationships between sustainability and livelihoods are examined, and livelihoods analysis situated within a wider political economy of environmental and agrarian change.

There is, in principle, no difference between the farm and the garden - same crop care, the value of soil nutrients, the strategic use of water and the knowledge that comes farm planting, transplanting, pruning and harvesting that best suits the productivity of the plants. Gardens feed people and their livestock, and provide the basis for a regular and reliable source of goods for sales at local markets. Changing weather patterns help with rotations, with the control of pests and diseases, with nutrient recycling and with the provision of employment and income.

This book is concerned with the question of how people in developing countries survive, and how their lives have been affected by the great changes since the Second World War. Throughout large parts of the developing world rural livelihoods are in crisis. Even in those parts of the third world where there has been growth of food output, that growth has rarely been translated into a commensurate expansion of livelihoods. Frequently, both economic stagnation and economic growth are translated into suffering for those who live in the countryside. Many people are aware that there is a crisis of livelihoods in sub-Saharan Africa, but the understanding of that crisis rarely transcends simple conceptions of food or environmental crisis or the inadequacy of states: the ubiquity of crisis is rarely comprehended. This book addresses the pressing question of rural poverty. It examines the diverse human implications of rural change, the various crises of rural livelihoods which arise from change, and the survival strategies of individuals and households. It describes the great processes of agrarian transformation which have fundamentally altered rural livelihoods in developing countries and identifies some of the dilemmas for public action which arise from agrarian transformation and the crises of rural livelihoods. The contributors draw upon a range of disciplinary approaches to the subject, including anthropology, sociology, economics, political economy, agricultural science, and development studies.

This Atlas presents the first national dataset on livelihoods and the farmers capacity to adapt to climate change in the Lao People's Democratic Republic. Maps included in the Atlas include the satisfaction of farmers’ basic needs, farmers’ access to the resources needed for innovation and the farmers’ capacity to translate innovation into action. The landscape characteristics mapped include attitudes towards livelihood-related change, economic activity, soil fertility, supporting infrastructure, food security issues, water security, institutional support and extension services, access to climate information through information and communication technologies (ICTs ), market access vis-a-vis production orientation, use of and access to agricultural inputs, livelihood diversification, and dependency on agriculture, including the rearing of livestock and fish. The dataset has been generated using an innovative method that combines participatory mapping and advanced data analysis, and which is, both in terms of technical standard and scientific innovation, state-of-the-art. The livelihood data is available online in the Land Resources Information Management System thanks to the work of two collaborating teams: "Applying seasonal climate forecasting and innovative insurance solutions to climate risk management in the agriculture sector in Southeast Asia” (De-Risk) project, implemented by CIAT; and the "Strengthening Agro-Climatic Monitoring and Information Systems (SAMIS)" project, implemented by FAO.