Dear Colleagues,

Sustainable Development calls for a new agricultural approach to ensure sufficient, safe and nutritious food respecting human rights.The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) proposes agroecology as a key strategy for transforming the food system towards sustainable development, ensuring sufficient, safe and nutritious food whilst respecting human rights. Agroecology focuses on optimizing local and renewable resources to harness ecosystem benefits such as pest control, pollination, soil health, and erosion control whilst promoting biodiversity conservation and sustainable use. Minimizing harmful agrochemical inputs, re-localizing diets, and prioritizing marginalised and vulnerable sectors of society such as women, youth, and indigenous peoples are some of the key features of agroecology. Diversification of production systems to achieve healthy, nutritious, and secure diets whilst reducing food losses and waste and mitigating climate change and its effects are also crucial components of agroecology. Moreover, agroecology helps to prevent land degradation, restore degraded areas, and support inclusive producer organizations. Scaling up agroecology requires increased cooperation between productive sectors, social actors, and countries leading to sharing and co-creation of knowledge, solidarity, representation of concerns at the policy level, and responsible governance.

For this, it is important to collect the experiences of different agroecological approaches that have been implemented and consider their impacts. Research articles and reviews in this area of study are welcome. 

We look forward to receiving your contributions.

Dr. Nadia Adnan

Section Editor