Controlled Environment Agriculture (CEA) is the production of plants, fish, insects, or animals inside structures such as greenhouses, vertical farms, and growth chambers, in which environmental parameters such as humidity, light, temperature and CO2 can be controlled to create optimal growing conditions.
If you are a research or innovation manager or a funder of innovation in the agrifood sector, in the private or public sphere, these Principles are for you. Investment in research and innovation today will shape the agrifood systems of the future. The choices that you make during an innovation process will affect the future benefits and drawbacks of the innovations you help to create: for example, what types of people gain and lose, and what the effects are on the environment. Too often, these choices are not made consciously, and important issues are overlooked until it is too late.
A huge increase in investment for innovation in sustainable agri-food systems (SAS) will be critical for meeting the objectives of the UN Sustainable Development Goals and the Paris Climate Agreement.
Brazil has transformed from being a net food importer, to one of the largest agricultural exporters in the world. The country is now one of the top global funders of agricultural innovation, with a special emphasis on funding R&D for sustainable agriculture. While food insecurity and environmental challenges exist in many parts of Brazil, social programs and funding in innovation have helped those in need.
The CGIAR is the leading global agriculture research institution working towards creating sustainable agricultural practices a reality through research and innovation. The CGIAR 2030
To meet the growing demand for food in the Global South in a sustainable manner, current funding in agricultural innovation will need to be increased exponentially. Some estimates suggest up to USD 320 billion annually is required to help meet the UN SDG Goals for food and agriculture by 2030. Current levels of funding for agriculture and agricultural innovation fall far short of this and hence efforts to induce more funding for these goals, including through the use of new financing instruments1, is critical going forward.
The only specialized multilateral development institution focused exclusively on rural development, IFAD has successfully used agriculture as a means of poverty reduction – contributing ~USD 22 billion in funding to date1. About 90% of IFAD's portfolio is focused on Low to Middle Income (LMI) countries. IFAD stands out with its nutrition and gender-sensitive lenses coupled with investments in climate-resilient agriculture – mainstreaming nutrition, gender, and climate change work in agriculture.
As calls for bolstering environmental services on croplands have grown more insistent during the past two decades, the search for ways to foster sustainable, reduced input agriculture has become more urgent. In this context authors re-examine by means of a meta-analysis the argument, first proposed by Robert McC. Netting, that small scale, mixed crop – livestock farming, a common livelihood among poor rural peoples, encourages environmentally sustainable agricultural practices.
In developing regions with high levels of poverty and a dependence on climate sensitive agriculture, studies focusing on climate change adaptation, planning, and policy processes, have gained relative importance over the years. This study assesses the impact of farmer perceptions regarding climate change on the use of sustainable agricultural practices as an adaptation strategy in the Chinyanja Triangle, Southern Africa.
Small-scale farmers in the Brazilian Amazon collectively hold tenure over more than 12 million ha of permanent forest reserves, as required by the Forest Code. The trade-off between forest conservation and other land uses entails opportunity costs for them and for the country, which have not been sufficiently studied. We assessed the potential income generated by multiple use forest management for farmers and compared it to the income potentially derived from six other agricultural land uses.