In the face of escalating environmental challenges and growing concerns about food security, the agricultural industry is at a critical juncture. Conventional farming practices deplete natural resources, pollute the environment, and contribute to climate change. This unsustainable approach is jeopardizing the future of agriculture and endangering the well-being of communities worldwide. To address these pressing issues, an urgent need for transformative solutions that promote sustainability and resilience in agriculture. Emerging Technologies and Marketing Strategies for Sustainable Agriculture offers a compelling solution to the agricultural industry's challenges. The book demonstrates the transformative power of sustainable agriculture and marketing by showcasing inspiring case studies and innovative approaches worldwide. It provides practical insights and strategies for creating a more sustainable and resilient food system, empowering farmers, policymakers, educators, and consumers to make informed decisions and take action towards a more sustainable future.

Between 2013 and 2015, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) and the French National Institute for Agricultural Research (INRA) undertook a survey of innovative approaches that enable markets to act as incentives in the transition towards sustainable agriculture in developing countries. Through a competitive selection process, 15 cases from around the world provide insights into how small-scale initiatives that use sustainable production practices are supported by market demand, and create innovations in the institutions that govern sustainable practices and market exchanges. These cases respond to both local and distant consumers’ concerns about the quality of the food that they eat. The book evidences that the initiatives rely upon social values (e.g. trustworthiness, health [nutrition and food safety], food sovereignty, promotion of youth and rural development, farmer and community livelihoods) to adapt sustainable practices to local contexts, while creating new market outlets for food products. Specifically, private sector and civil society actors are leading partnerships with the public sector to build market infrastructure, integrate sustainable agriculture into private and public education and extension programmes, and ensure the exchange of transparent information about market opportunities. The results are: (i) system innovations that allow new rules for marketing and assuring the sustainable qualities of products; (ii) new forms of organization that permit actors to play multiple roles in the food system (e.g. farmer and auditor, farmer and researcher, consumer and auditor, consumer and intermediary); (iii) new forms of market exchange, such as box schemes, university kiosks, public procurement or systems of seed exchanges; and (iv) new technologies for sustainable agriculture (e.g. effective micro-organisms, biopesticides and soil analysis techniques). The public sector plays a key role in providing legitimate political and physical spaces for multiple actors to jointly create and share sustainable agricultural knowledge, practices and products.

An introduction to farmer participatory research; An overview of the projects used as examples in this manual; Participation: identifying the places, people, and procedures for research; Diagnosis of farmers conditions; Evaluation of current and new technological options; Assessing the impact of new technologies.

Low external-input technology (or LEIT) is an increasingly prominent subject in discussions of sustainable agriculture. There are growing calls for self-sufficient agriculture in an era experiencing diminishing returns from reliance upon expensive synthetic pesticides and fertilizers. There are many reasons to support strategies for low external input farming, including a concern for environmental sustainability, increased attention to resource-poor farmers and marginal environments, and the conviction that a better use of local resources in small-scale agriculture can improve farm productivity and innovation. But despite the increased attention to self-sufficient agriculture, there is little evidence available on the performance and impact of LEIT.This book examines the contributions and limitations of low external input technology for addressing the needs of resource-poor farmers. For the first time a balanced analysis of LEIT is provided, offering in-depth case studies, an analysis of the debates, an extensive review of the literature and practical suggestions about the management and integration of low external input agriculture in rural development programmes.

A move towards more flexible, sustainable agricultural practices is increasingly being seen as the way to address or avoid environmental and economic problems associated with existing, predominantly intensive, farming systems. Through case studies taken from around the world, this book examines the implications of adopting more ecologically sound agricultural practices, both at the level of individual farmers and at the level of larger-scale agro-ecosystems such as water catchments. The emphasis of the book is on human and social aspects, rather than on agronomic or economic considerations, focusing on the learning processes necessary for change to be implemented and, in turn, on the facilitation of that learning through participatory approaches and appropriate institutional support and policy structure.

This volume is a ready reference on sustainable agriculture and reinforce the understanding for its utilization to develop environmentally sustainable and profitable food production systems. It describes ecological sustainability of farming systems, present innovations for improving efficiency in the use of resources for sustainable agriculture and propose technological options and new areas of research in this very important area of agriculture.