Image Books Traditional Mexican Agriculture This book offers a holistic study of traditional Mexican agriculture, examining how it has changed according to environmental, climatic, geographical, social and cultural conditions. It sets out practices and knowledge that can inform sustainable agroecological systems. Read
Image Books Managing Soils and Terrestrial Systems This book gives an overview of how soils and terrestrial systems function and can best be managed. TABLE readers may be particularly interested in the book’s coverage of agricultural soils, pesticides, agriculture on soils affected by salt, organic farming, grazing systems, soil erosion, organic pest management, manure management, and agricultural runoff. Read
Image Essay Beyond the label: assessing the spectrum of practices in French organic vegetable farming Antonin Pépin is a PhD candidate at the French National Institute for Agricultural Research (INRAE) and at the Technical Centre for Fruits and Vegetables (CTIFL). His research focuses on environmental assessment of French organic vegetable farms using the Life Cycle Assessment method. He has an agronomist background and has worked for an environmental NGO and for an organic waste treatment industry. You can reach Antonin at antonin.pepin@ctifl.fr. Hayo van der Werf works at the French National Institute for Agricultural Research (INRAE). His research focuses on the multicriteria assessment of the environmental impacts of agri-food systems. He mainly uses the life cycle assessment methodology and is most interested in assessing of organic agriculture production systems. Read
Image News and resources Redefining farming as land stewardship This blog post by Caroline Ashley of Forum for the Future argues that we need to reframe our ideas about what farming is: away from the idea of farmers as producers of a specific crop, and towards a concept for farming as land stewardship with farms receiving multiple income streams including payments for ecosystem services. Read
Image Journal articles The future of farming: Who will produce our food? This paper, co-authored by TABLE’s Ken Giller, looks at trends in farming systems and land ownership to explore who the farmers of the future might be, with a focus on the future of smallholder farming. Read
Image Books The Ninth Revolution: Transforming food systems for good This book outlines historical revolutions in the global food system and calls for the global food system to become more diverse in many aspects, including crop species, production systems and farming cultures. Read
Image Journal articles Divergent perceptions of agricultural biodiversity This paper surveys farmers and environmental scientists in Germany and Austria on their attitudes towards biodiversity-friendly management practices for agriculture. It finds significant differences between the attitudes of these different stakeholder groups. The motivation for the study was to examine why farmers rarely use certain biodiversity-oriented management practices despite growing scientific evidence for their benefits. Read
Image Journal articles Ecological deskilling from uptake of modern seed varieties This paper, based on research with smallholder maize farms in South Africa, argues that the introduction of modern seed varieties (including hybrid and genetically modified seeds) can contribute to “ecological deskilling” and undermine food sovereignty. Read
Image News and resources Cookbook for systems change: Nordic innovation strategies The Nordic Food Policy Lab has produced an online “Cookbook for systems change”, co-authored by former Table colleague Marie Persson. Using a “mission-based” approach, the Cookbook sets out strategies that can be used to trigger food systems innovation. It is primarily aimed at national and regional government innovation bodies, but also discusses the role that entrepreneurs, civil society and researchers can play. Read
