Inventing a new form of agriculture

While boosting agricultural production is still a major concern, the agricultural model founded on the intensive, massive use of pesticides, chemical fertilizers, water and fossil fuels is now in question. It is both a necessity and a challenge to break with a form of agriculture that contrives to make biological systems ever more artificial and standardized. To do this, agriculture needs to base itself on ecological processes that serve to regulate pest populations, reduce pollution, make better use of scarce resources such as water, or improve ecological services (carbon storage, biodiversity, etc): this is what is known as ecological intensification.

CIRAD's expertise and know-how, presented in this set of sheets on ecological intensification, are of use in designing sustainable production systems that save on inputs and are more environmentally friendly, in developing varieties better suited to their environment, in inventing new pest and disease control techniques, and in understanding how nature functions so as to make use of its resources without destroying it:

Integrated pest and disease control

Farming systems

Environnement, adaptation des sociétés et des agricultures

Update date: 25/04/2012