The blurred boundaries of ecological, sustainable, and agroecological intensification: a review

International audienceAbstractThe projected human population of nine billion by 2050 has led to ever growing discussion of the need for increasing agricultural output to meet estimated food demands, while mitigating environmental costs. Many stakeholders in agricultural circles are calling for the intensification of agriculture to meet these demands. However, it is neither clear nor readily agreed upon what is meant by intensification. Here, we compare the three major uses, ‘ecological intensification’, ‘sustainable intensification’ and ‘agroecological intensification’, by analysing their various definitions, principles and practices, and also their historical appearance and evolution. We used data from the scientific literature, the grey literature, the websites of international organizations and the Scopus and FAOLEX databases. Our major findings are: (1) sustainable intensification is the most frequently used term so far. (2) The three concepts ecological intensification, sustainable intensification and agroecological intensification overlap in terms of definitions, principles and practices, thus creating some confusion in their meanings, interpretations and implications. Nevertheless, some differences exist. (3) Sustainable intensification is more widely used and represents in many cases a rather generalised category, into which most current farming practices can be put so long as sustainability is in some way addressed. However, despite its wider use, it remains imprecisely defined. (4) Ecological and agroecological intensification do introduce some major nuances and, in general, more explicitly stated definitions. For instance, ecological intensification emphasizes the understanding and intensification of biological and ecological processes and functions in agroecosystem. (5) The notion of agroecological intensification accentuates the system approach and integrates more cultural and social perspectives in its concept. (6) Even if some boundaries can be seen, confusion is still predominant in the use of these terms. These blurred boundaries currently contribute to the use of these terms for justifying many different kinds of practices and interventions. We suggest that greater precision in defining the terms and the respective practices proposed would indicate more clearly what authors or institutions are aiming at with the proposed intensification. In this sense, we provide new definitions for all three intensification concepts based on the earlier ones

A case study on the barriers and opportunities for the upscaling of short food supply chains : the perspective of stakeholders in Wallonia, Belgium.

Despite an increasing interest in short food supply chains in the last years, these have failed to go beyond niche market and are mostly reaching wealthy consumers and small scale farming holdings. In our industrialized agriculture systems, the scaling up of these alternatives to mid- and large-scale farming holdings and to larger groups of consumers is a main issue to spread the benefits of SFSCs. Nevertheless, important logistical and structural barriers are restraining them to access these markets. To find these out, we conducted in-depth interviews in a case study of representative stakeholders in Belgium to study the issues related to the creation of direct cooperation between mid- and large-scale farming holdings devoted to field crops and institutional catering. Our results show that on the one hand the mediation issues - the difference between the offer and the demand - are important barriers. To overcome these, stakeholders have to increase their understanding and communication of each other to federate around common projects, farmers would have to cooperate among them to offer a more stable and diverse range of products and institutional catering would have to become more flexible by training their staffs to new practices and invest in transformation material. On the other hand a certain context should also be in place; external actors should be involved to facilitate the process and governmental bodies could impose scope statement to create new markets

The COSY-project: Assessing sustainability of alternative food networks in Belgium

info:eu-repo/semantics/publishe

The COSY-food project: Assessing sustainability of alternative food networks in Belgium

info:eu-repo/semantics/publishe

The COSY-Food project: Assessing sustainability of alternative food networks in Belgium

info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublishe