Sustainable agriculture

Context

Ensuring adequate nutrition worldwide is increasingly proving to be a challenge. On the one hand, the population continues to grow while, on the other hand, natural resources are limited. Climate change and the decline in biological diversity are making it more of a challenge to ensure adequate, balanced nutrition and to combat poverty. Adapted forms of agriculture are becoming increasingly important, also with a view to achieving the goals of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. 

What we now need to do is to make agricultural systems more robust while at the same time increasing productivity by orienting agriculture more towards principles of agricultural ecology.

Overall, people have in recent years become more aware of the great importance of ecologically, socially and economically sustainable food production. However, international cooperation actors are not yet sufficiently incorporating the latest knowledge and strategies in this area into national and international political processes and programmes.

Objective

Approaches towards strengthening sustainable agriculture, while taking account of climate change, are mainstreamed in political processes and programmes of international cooperation actors.

Approach

The project provides content-related advice for the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ) with regard to formulating policies and developing strategies in the area of sustainable agriculture.

It is aimed at international cooperation actors who promote sustainable agriculture at a policy level or actively develop and implement programmes to strengthen this area. Alongside BMZ, they include regional and national partners, regional and global international cooperation projects and the professional public.

The project supports international cooperation actors and their partner institutions through various skill building measures (such as training courses and exchange formats). In addition, it develops innovative studies and manuals, tests agricultural methods and incorporates these methods into knowledge platforms and networks. The advisory services make it easier for BMZ to shape policy discussions and processes relating to sustainable agriculture within national and international committees. Intensive knowledge management, advisory services for programmes abroad and involvement in networks promote the dissemination of approaches that are environmentally friendly, socially acceptable and adapted to climate change.