Submitted by Dijana Maric on Fri, 13/09/2013 - 16:29
This seminar has been cancelled due to unforeseen circumstances.
14 October 2013, 14.00-17.00
Seminar on Sustainable Agriculture Intensification
Judge Business School , Trumpington Road, Cambridge, CB2 1AG
The seminar is being led by the Tropical Agriculture Association, with co-sponsorship by the Cambridge Conservation Forum (CCF), in collaboration with the Zoology Dept of Cambridge University and the Cambridge Humanitarian Centre (as part of their Global Food Futures Year).
The world is facing many threats, not least the need to feed an ever more demanding human population. Modern technologies are encountering environmental and economic constraints, with decelerating gains in crop productivity. There is a need for convergence of agricultural and environmental sciences, represented by the emerging community of practice and scientific underpinnings known as agro-ecology. Two agro-ecological bodies of knowledge and practice, both driven more by farmers' experience and innovation than by formal scientific investigation, have emerged over the past 10-20 years: the System of Rice Intensification (SRI) and Conservation Agriculture (CA). These enable producers to raise food production with lower cost and less dependence on agrochemical inputs, also reducing energy and water requirements. Presentations will be made by Dr Norman Uphoff (professor of Government & International Agriculture at Cornell University and leader of the SRI-Rice Group and Dr Amir Kassam (FAO and Reading University). Drs Uphoff and Kassam have given leadership for SRI and CA in countries around the world. They will discuss the basic principles of these agro-ecological concepts and practices and give evidence that these approaches can reorient agriculture, in both more- and less-developed countries, to achieve greater productivity with sustainability, within the expected changed conditions due to climate change. Adequate time will be available for discussion and refreshments will be available at the Judge cafeteria.
Please contact Keith Virgo (eastanglia_convenor@taa.org.uk) and Ben Phalan (btp22@cam.ac.uk) if you are interested in attending.