Delineating the Multifunctional Role of Agroecological Practices: Toward Sustainable Livelihoods for Smallholder Farmers in Developing Countries

Abstract

Agroecological practices have increasingly been recognized as major development alternatives that could ensure rural people's basic needs while enhancing the ecological capacities grounding their livelihoods. This paper explores the multifaceted dimensions of agroecological practices that could potentially address the compelling livelihood necessities of less advantaged smallholder farmers in developing countries. It is argued that, despite its claim to uphold interdisciplinary approaches, agroecology as a scientific discipline has originally been led by ecologists and agronomists, with interdisciplinary collaboration largely limited to anthropologists. The concept of agricultural multifunctionality is proposed to help address the existing limitations in agroecology and thus overcome the conventional chasm between ecological research and social realities in agroecology-based development.

KEYWORDS:

• agroecology
• agroecological practices
• agricultural multifunctionality
• sustainable agriculture
• sustainable livelihoods
• smallholder farmers
• developing countries

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

An earlier version of this paper was presented at the Association of American Geographers Annual Meeting, April 17–21, 2007 in San Francisco, CA. We are very grateful to Stephen Brush for his constructive review. We are also indebted to Robert E. Mazur, Francis Owusu, Jan Flora, Mike Duffy, Gail Nonnecke, and Teresa Downing-Matibag, for their valuable comments. Finally, many thanks go to an anonymous reviewer for helpful suggestions to improve the paper.

Notes

1. The condition is even more validated by the estimate that about 1.9–2.2 billion people (29 to 34 percent of the world population) have no access to modern agricultural technology (Altieri, 2002; Francis et al., 2003).

2. Although the term multifunctionality is often used with terms such as diversification and pluriactivity interchangeably, there are degrees of distinctions among these terms. Pluriactivity refers to the combination of agricultural and non-agricultural activities performed by the farmer or members of the farm household, thus pointing to the significance of non-agricultural resources. Diversification refers to the workplace whereby the scope of products and services produced and sold is enlarged. When diversification refers to non-agricultural activities, the term is combined with pluriactivity. On the other hand, multifunctionality refers to the various functions of different activities performed in both agricultural and non-agricultural sectors for meeting multiple societal demands (Van Huylenbroeck and Durand, 2003).