Ecoagriculture

Eco friendly agriculture describes landscapes that support both agricultural production and biodiversity conservation, working in harmony together to improve the livelihoods of rural communities.

While many rural communities have independently practiced eco-agriculture for thousands of years, over the past century many of these landscapes have given way to segregated land use patterns, with some areas employing intensive farming practices without regard to biodiversity impacts, and other areas fenced off completely for habitat or watershed protection. A new eco-agriculture movement is now gaining momentum to unite land managers and other stakeholders from diverse environments to find compatible ways to conserve biodiversity while also enhancing agricultural production.

The term "eco-agriculture" was coined by Charles Walters, economist, author, editor, publisher, and founder of Acres Magazine in 1970 to unify under one umbrella the concepts of "ecological" and "economical" in the belief that unless agriculture was ecological it could not be economical. This belief became the motto of the magazine: "To be economical agriculture must be ecological."

Eco-agriculture is both a conservation strategy and a rural development strategy. Eco-agriculture recognizes agricultural producers and communities as key stewards of ecosystems and biodiversity and enables them to play those roles effectively. Eco-agriculture applies an integrated ecosystem approach to agricultural landscapes to address all three pillars—conserving biodiversity, enhancing agricultural production, and improving livelihoods—drawing on diverse elements of production and conservation management systems. Meeting the goals of eco-agriculture usually requires collaboration or coordination between diverse stakeholders who are collectively responsible for managing key components of a landscape.

Eco-agriculture uses the landscape as a unit of management. A landscape is a cluster of local ecosystems with a particular configuration of topography, vegetation, land use, and settlement. The goals of eco-agriculture—to maintain biodiversity and ecosystem services, manage agricultural production sustainably, and contribute to improved livelihoods among rural people—cannot be achieved at just a farm or plot level, but are linked at the landscape level. Therefore, to make an impact, all of the elements of a landscape as a whole must be considered; integrated landscape management is an approach that seeks to achieve this.

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Wikipedia