Farming Matters magazine

Insects on a farm 

Our love/hate relationship with insects

Insects pollinate crops and work as natural predators in the field. Yet insects often have a negative reputation in agriculture, and billions of dollars are spent every year fighting them. The use of pesticides, a loss of habitats, the cultivation of exogenous species, all provide potential threats for insect populations: their effect is seen in, for example, the decline of bee populations. What are the implications of this for family farmers? Can they contribute to efforts restore insect populations?

Our March edition looks at these issues, focusing on the many ways in which small-scale farmers benefit from insects, and on the steps they take in order to increase these benefits.

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Read more about insects | bees | pests | pollination | integrated pest management

Opinion

Eric Holt-Gimenez thinks that the world's different food movements need to work together, aiming at "convergence in diversity"

Interviews

Regarding Rio+20, "we need to convince civil society of the urgency for a radical transformation", says Jean Marc von der Weid

Farmers in focus

Vincent Hugo is one of the members of the UWAMALE Irrigators Marketing Cooperative Society in Lekitatu, Tanzania

Learning about

Bees for Development has developed a series of educational and training materials about bees and beekeeping methods...

Agrobiodiversity

Agrobiodiversity @knowledged is a new program started by Hivos and Oxfam Novib.

From our readers

Our readers are telling us about their work, the ideas they are trying out, or about the situation in their country.

What are we reading?

Browse through the latest reports, books and many more publications added to our library.

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25 years ago

Issue 6 of the ILEIA Newsletter looked at organic farmers in Mexico. What has happened since?

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