Poverty is not just about a lack of money. Poverty is also about people’s capability to deal with situations of shock or stress – whether social, economic, political or physical. Current farming practices through overuse and abuse of natural resources have reduced the ecosystem’s capacity to generate sustainable yields. In addition to this declining yields and degraded resources, small farmers face additional challenges of rising prices and climate change making them more vulnerable and less capable to escape poverty. In this issue, we have included a few initiatives which show that small farmers, given an opportunity and support, can not only improve their livelihoods and break the cycle of poverty but can also become critical agents of transformation in the society.
Content
5 Eco-farming addresses hunger, poverty and climate change
Olivier De Schutter
9 Poverty reduction through sustainable agriculture
K Subramanian, S Justin, T Johnson and K Vijayalakshmi
12 Women breaking out of poverty
Landesa
15 Collective action, multiple benefits : A case of a social enterprise model
Pramel Gupta
18 Interview: Olivier De Schutter : “Agroecology and the right to food”
Margriet Goris
20 Bio-diverse integrated farms Means for reducing rural poverty
Purnabha Dasgupta, Rupak Goswami, Md Nasim Ali,Sudarsan Biswas and Subhrajit K Saha
24 Few steps towards a plentiful tomorrow
Sanjay Joshie and Joystu Dutta
28 Back to Nature
Biswamohan Mohanty
30 International encounters on Family Farming and Research – Some reflections
K V S Prasad
31 From poverty towards hope Case of successful poultry enterprise by women
PRADAN
35 Breaking barriers
Annie Bergman