Farming for services in Africa: Ecology and justice are the foundation for a greener revolution

Background/Question/Methods: People are at the core of agriCULTURE, their knowledge, aspirations and views. A social-ecological-systems framework is essential to understand and engage in research on agriculture. We are committed to this approach, and explore itsconsequences in Africa where a second ‘green revolution’ is in the process of unfolding. There is widespread agreement on the requirement to produce morefood in Africa, in an environmentally sound manner; what remains contentious is how, and the role and agency of people, particularly the smallholder farmers that are the vast majority of African citizens.

Results/Conclusions: Through our experiences with engaged agroecology in Malawi and Rwanda we explore contrasting approaches to a green revolution. On the one hand, country policies have promoted fossil-fuel dependent approaches to consolidated, maize-based farming. This has led to production gains, with limited attention to nutrition, food security or other ecosystem services. In contrast to this commodity based approach, we have collaborated with national partners in Malawi and Rwanda on participatory action research that promotes agrobiodiversity, nutrition education and farm family capacity building. We present evidence from the field of the value of working with farm communities as research partners. A broad range of ecosystem services, and local empowerment, are the outcomes of this agroecology approach, in contrast to a narrow focus on increasing staple crop yields.