Issue : 2 Article : 5
Didactic Toolkit for the Design, Management and Assesment of Resilient Farming Systems
Resilience is defined as the ability of a farming system to absorb disturbances and adapt to stress and change while retaining its productive structure and ability to yield. Thus, a “resilient” agroecosystem would be capable of providing food production, when challenged by severe drought or by excess rainfall. Conversely, vulnerability can be defined as the possibility of loss of biodiversity, soil, water or productivity by an agroecosystem when confronted with an external perturbation or shock. Vulnerability refers to the degree to which a system is susceptible to, and unable to cope with, adverse effects of climate variability and denotes a state of susceptibility to harm from exposure to stresses associated with environmental change due to the absence of capacity to adapt (Folke 2006).
Nowadays, agriculture is facing maybe one of its biggest challenges: Climate change. This methodological toolkit aims to aid farmers and technicians to a) better understand the principles and mechanisms that underlie the resiliency of farming systems and b) explain ways to implement agroecological management in order to enhance the adaptive capacity of farmers to unpredictable and severe climatic variability.
This tool allows users to better clarify their perceptions of climate change, use indicators to assess the vulnerability of their farms and improve their ecological resiliency via agroecological interventions that enhance the adaptive response capacity of famers.
The toolkit is intended to be used for:
• Conducting a rapid agroecological assessment of farms and their level of vulnerability
• Initiating a process of agroecological conversion to enhance the response capacity of farmers and thus improve the resiliency of their farming systems, and
• Monitoring the trajectory of the farms under agroecological conversion after climatic events such as hurricanes, rainstorms and/or drought.
The tool kit can be accessed in the following link:
http://foodtank.com/assets/files/Didactic_Toolkit_REDAGRESversionjuly10.pdf