LEISA in perspective: 15 years ILEIA

Table of contents:

• Foreword
  1 - 2
  written by Stein W Bie
  Fifteen years is not long considering agricvulture has been practiced for some 10 000 years, but during the fisteen years of ILEIA's existence some 500 million people have come to our Blue PLanet and claime it their home. Today, the global human population approaches the 6 billion mark, a major biological success for any large species of mammal.
• ILEIA: project in development
  3 - 7
  In the later half of the twentieth century, unprecedented population growth threatens food security in the developing world. Farmers who, for generations, have relied on agricultural systems using low quantities of external input have been urged to adopt modern agricultural technologies to increase food supplies. Today, many small, subsistence and market-orientated farmers are unable to produce enough food or cash crops to meet their needs. In addition they are experiencing the negative effects of Green Revolution or high input agriculture (HEIA) strategies
• Chapter 1: In search of sustainability
  8 - 10
  The history of agriculture can be told as the history of the farmer\'s response to environmental and political change. The daily routine of securing land, seed, animals and labour to produce food, and the struggle to survive poor harvests, plague, drought and war are reflected in religious, cultural and literary traditions throughout the world. For generations farmers found increasingly sophisticated ways of co-operating and manipulating nature to get food and other agricultural products. Over time, distinct agri-cultures evolved that regulated people’s interaction with their spiritual, social and natural environment...
• Chapter 2: Processes that cause change and affect sustainability
  11 - 16
  In this chapter we will examine some of the macro processes that influence farmer-led autonomous agricultural development and affect sustainability. As farmers become more closely incorporated into national and international markets, radical changes take place at farm and community level. These affect farmers\' capacity and willingness to alter their agricultural practices. In economic analysis these effects are generally studied in terms of the production and financial costs and benefits of the more powerful groups involved. The economic effects on marginal farmers have not always been well analysed or externalised. As a result, the economic as well as the social and cultural marginalisation of important groups of male and female farmers and the degradation of the natural environment have continued unrecognised (Chambers 1983)...
• Chapter 3: Is agricultural intensification ecologically sustainable?
  17 - 21
  World food supplies are under pressure. Accelerated population growth means urgent measures are needed to secure present production, ensure the effective distribution of foodstuffs and increase future supplies. However, sustainable agriculture depends on halting ecological degradation and improving the quality of the natural resource base. Food production can be increased by extending farm land, intensifying agricultural productivity, or by increasing the amount of food crops in relation to total agricultural production. Most land with agricultural potential, however, is in use and most subsistence and small, market-orientated farmers are already concentrating on food crops. Therefore, to increase security, it is necessary to intensify agricultural production. This chapter focuses on the ecologically sustainable intensification option available to subsistence and small, market-orientated farmers.
• Chapter 4: Different expressions of LEISA
  22 - 26
  The macro processes discussed in Chapter Two have changed the conditions in which agriculturists operate and forced them to make adaptations. Over the years the ILEIA Newsletter has provided a glimpse of the way farmers, sometimes in co-operation with development organisations and research institutes, have tried to improve their livelihood and farming systems. However, although many of these adaptations involve approaches towards LEISA, there has been little analysis of these developments in respect to their contribution to sustainability.
• Chapter 5: Participatory learning, planning and action toward LEISA
  27 - 31
  Farmers everywhere experiment. They adapt, innovate and observe the results of their work. Creating knowledge in this way is an integral part of sustaining agricultural production. It is only recently that farmer-led processes of agricultural development have been superseded by formal scientist-directed agricultural research. Increasing numbers of researchers and development workers are acting as facilitators and equal partners in farmer-led agricultural development. They recognised that farmers must be able to adapt to continuously changing conditions and the needs of sustainability. Thus, it becomes critical to strengthening farmers\' ability to analyse, monitor, adapt and innovate
• Chapter 6: Building bridges to LEISA
  32 - 33
  As discussed earlier in this volume, there are three major reasons why LEISA should be furthered. By emphasising synergy and complementary in use of resources and knowledge, LEISA provides a response to unsustainable LEIA and HEIA production systems,promotes technologies that aim to intensify agricultural production, and emphasises the importance of empowering farmers and their communities in finding local solutions through participatory methodologies. (...)
• High potential hillsides - Soil conservation and recuperation in Mesoamerica
  34 - 36
  written by Roland Bunch
  A major movement of soil improvement has sprung into life on the hillsides of Meso-America during the last 30 years. The following article describes the SC and SR techniques that have made this movement possible in Meso-America (the area from Central Mexico through Nicaragua). It includes descriptions of the practices, how they have changed over time, analyses of their economic costs and benefits, and data on their sustained adoption or abandonment by small farmers.
• Traditional mulching practices in Burkina Faso
  37 - 39
  written by Fidele Hein
  In Burkina Faso, extension programmes implemented before the late 1990s for the country as a whole and the central plateau in particular, have demonstrated that investments intended for the intensification of agro-pastrol production systems have not been effective in meeting actual needs.
• The Farmer Field School as an arena for Farmer Participatory Research
  40 - 40
  written by Ann R Braun , Elske van de Fliert , Wiyanto
  This paper provides an example of how Farmer Participatory Research (FPR) can support Farmer Field School (FFS) development, and how FFS can provide an arena for participatory evaluation of technology. An analysis of opportunities and constraints to farmer participation in technology development and FFS as an extension model, are elaborated.
• More people, less erosion in Machakos, Kenya
  41 - 41
  In 1930, the population of the Machakos District in Kenya, the Akamba people, was about 250,000. Extensive livestock raising was combined with shifting culti-vation on small hand-cultivated plots of maize and other food crops. Frequent and unpredictable drou-ghts decimated food production and damaged the heavily grazed rangelands. Much natural woodland had been removed and replaced by sparse shrub- and grassland. Farm yields were low and thought to be declining, soil nutrients were depleted, the topsoil was being eroded away and livestock numbers were considered to be far in excess of carrying capacity. The official view was that the farming system was unsustainable, if not in terminal decline.
• List of Abbreviations and acronyms
  42 - 42
• References
  43 - 46