Integrated community food production: a compendium of climate-resilient agriculture options
This compendium of best practices brings together practical ecologically sound and nutrition-sensitive approaches to improving the productivity of backyard, community and family farms. With the increasing awareness of the importance of safe and healthy diets, there is a resurgence of interest in these complementary pathways to household level food security Many of these ideas are not scale neutral and therefore best done on small scale systems. The opportunities for diversification and intensification are often greater in these backyard and family centered systems. Most of these small scale production systems can quickly be transformed to chemical-free systems of production. This compendium highlights ways of producing food with a small carbon foot print. Diverse systems of food production are environmentally sound and as long as climate change remains a threat, there will be a role for these systems. Moreover, as long as a third of the population (in developing countries) remains poor, and malnourishment prevails, there will be a special role for community level food production. This compendium features one hundred simple ideas each of which, in a small way, can contribute to climate-smart and nutrition-smart ways of producing food.