Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
collate such data for those areas of the globe
where data are currently missing.
like, for example, zero tillage in combination
with specific herbicides.
Actors
National scale
At the national level, the best entry point
should include ministries involved not
only in agriculture and forestry but also in
environmental management. Cross-sectorial
ministry coordination is essential; thus, C
sequestration can involve directly or indir-
ectly different environmental issues, eco-
nomic aspects and legislative necessities
(food regulation, certification and labelling,
and C footprinting). National focal points of
the different international agreements should
also be involved. Fortunately, in most coun-
tries, they are already linked with ministries.
At the national scale, most consumers
in developed countries are already con-
cerned by the notion of C footprinting. For
instance, policies and legislation are being
implemented in buildings, energy and trans-
portation, but C footprinting of agriculture
and food products is still in its infancy, with
many debates concerning methodologies
and communication to the public.
A major issue concerns land-use change
(LUC) and whether LUC should be recog-
nized as playing a major role in GHG emis-
sions associated with products. LUC includes
direct LUC (dLUC), occurring in the study
area itself, and indirect LUC (iLUC), occurring
outside the study area but resulting from
changes within the study area. Including
iLUC in environmental assessment involves
many different assumptions about the socio-
economic relationships between different
areas. Several methodologies for quantify-
ing the share of dLUC and iLUC are cur-
rently being proposed and discussed as part
of the debate of bioenergy approaches that
focuses on the impacts of changes and the
relationships between production systems
(Brander
et al
., 2009).
In addition, the national development
or cooperation agencies could have a role
to play (e.g. US Agency for International De-
velopment (USAID), Deutsche Gesellschaft
für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ),
the French Development Agency (AFD),
Advocates and institutions
Local scale
Local entry points to identify innovative
practices, to advocate for their dissemin-
ation or simply to raise awareness, range
from individual farmers (including those
sometimes referred to as champion farmers)
to unions of farmers at different adminis-
trative and geographical scales. For in-
stance, in Africa, there has been in the past
two decades an important development of
farmers' organizations. These organizations
have established five regional larger net-
works in Africa (Plate 6): the Union Magh-
rébine des Agriculteurs (UMAGRI); the
Réseau des Organisations Paysannes et de
Producteurs de l'Afrique de l'Ouest (ROP-
PA); the Eastern Africa Farmers Federation
(EAFF); the Plateforme Sous-Régionale des
Organisations Paysannes d'Afrique Centrale
(PROPAC); and the Southern African Con-
federation of Agricultural Unions (SACAU).
As it might be difficult to reach scattered
farmers, a key issue at the local level is
therefore to find a suitable entry point. That
is where organizations, cooperatives and
value chain federations constitute key insti-
tutions as farmers' aggregators at the local
level. Those organizations can also permit
linkage with national and international
levels; thus, such organizations often repre-
sent thousands of farmers or regional net-
works of federations of farmers, which may
represent over several million farmers.
Until now, however, local farmers' organ-
izations have rarely included soil-quality
concepts in their communications to farm-
ers, despite a growing awareness of some of
them. A major distortion of this awareness
(in Europe at least) is that farmers often
receive 'technical' support from high-value
income sellers promoting improved seeds
or pesticides often linked to specific agricul-
tural practices requiring high levels of inputs;
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