Este volumen responde a importantes interrogantes relacionadas con la sustentabilidad de los sistemas productivos campesinos mediante la revisión y el análisis crítico de cinco estudios de caso representativos del México rural: la experiencia de los pequeños productores indígenas de café orgánico en Chiapas, el manejo comunitario de las selvas de Quintana roo, el desarrollo de sistemas agrosilvopastoriles en el Sur de Sinaloa, la producción de maíz de temporal en Michoacán y la difusión de abonos verdes y cultivos de cobertera en comunidades del Sureste de México. Se presenta asimismo una síntesis del marco de evaluación de sustentabilidad MESMIS, que se utiliza actualmente en varios países de Latinoamérica y que brindó el eje metodológico y conceptual para la realización de los estudios de caso. El lector encontrará en este libro la oportunidad poco común de acceder a un conjunto de estudios de caso que tanto individual como colectivamente, permiten generar importantes conclusiones metodológicas y prácticas sobre la sustentabilidad de los sistemas de manejo de recursos naturales. Es por esto una herramienta invaluable parra todos aquellos interesados en estudiar los retos y oportunidades para el manejo sustentable de los recursos naturales a nivel local, particularmente en el contexto específico de la producción campesina.

Agriculture has shaped our planet into the world we know, but its continued success is threatened by changing weather patterns. Climate change is a diverse, multifactorial phenomenon and the agronomic strategies we employ to combat its effects need to be case-specific, with significant regional differences. With two major sections, the first explaining the challenges posed by climate change and the second reviewing the current research avenues employed, this book combines detailed discussion of physiological plant responses with practical experience on crop stress management and breeding. Using a number of illustrative case studies, it discusses how the stresses resulting from climate change could be overcome by assessing, measuring and predicting environmental changes and stresses, and identifying opportunities for adapting to multifactorial change. A global effort to combine climate change science with policy is desperately needed. Climate change will continue to pose many challenges to agriculture in the future but by taking an integrative approach to predicting and adapting to change, this book will inspire researchers to turn those challenges into opportunities.

As the world transitions from an industrial society to an information society, agriculture has undergone a dramatic transformation. Food production in the 20th century was transformed by three revolutions: first mechanical, then genetic, and finally chemical. Now, in the 21st century, agriculture is going through at least two more revolutions: an information technology revolution leading to precision farming, and a biotechnology revolution leading to genetically engineered crops. Organized by Harvard University's David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies with the collaboration of the Scientific Committee for Problems of the Environment, this interdisciplinary volume examines the impact of a variety of new technological, social, and economic trends on the rural environment.