FAO publishes guidelines to better grow food crops while preserving ecosystems

A new book published by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) on Monday takes a closer look at how the world's major cereals maize, rice and wheat can be grown in ways that respect and even leverage natural ecosystems.

Save and Grow refers to an array of techniques that share the trait of trying to capitalize on natural biological and ecosystem processes to "produce more with less."

Drawing on case studies from around the world, the new book illustrates how the "Save and Grow" approach to agriculture advocated by FAO is already being successfully employed to produce staple grains, pointing the way to a more sustainable future for farming and offering practical guidance on how the world can pursue its new sustainable development agenda.

"International commitments to eradicate poverty and tackle climate change require a paradigm shift towards a more sustainable and inclusive agriculture able to produce higher yields over the longer term," said FAO Director-General Jose Graziano da Silva.

The two recent landmark global agreements, the Sustainable Development Goals and the Paris Climate Change Agreement, only underscore the need for inclusive innovation in food systems, he adds.

According to the FAO, while the world's cereal harvests may be at record levels today, their productive base is increasingly precarious amid signs of groundwater depletion, environmental pollution, loss of biodiversity and other woes marking the end of the Green Revolution model.

Meanwhile, global food production will need to grow by 60 percent -- mostly on existing arable land and in the face of climate change -- to feed the future population in 2050.

Save and Grow is a broad-based approach to environmentally friendly, sustainable agriculture aimed at protecting and enhancing agriculture's natural resource base and reducing reliance on chemical inputs.

"The time has now come for ideas that have proven themselves in farmers' fields to be scaled up in more ambitious national programs," Da Silva said. Enditem