Biodiversity and Peasant Agricultures in the Third World

Résumé 0

One of the main effects of the traditional « green revolution » was to drastically simplify the agro-ecosystems and to reduce exaggeratedly bio-diversity within cultivated areas. To the contrary, Third World farming communities have managed to develop and to perfect cropping and animal raising systems in line with the durable co-habitation of a wide range of both domestic and spontaneous varieties, species and races. Such is the case for Haitian and Burundian farm crop exploitations, for Southeast Asia agro-forestry systems and for Sudano-Sahelian (Africa) crops grown under tree cover. Those production systems, implemented by farmers whose best interest is not always to maximize the mathematical expectancy of work productivity, often make the most of carbon, nitrogen and mineral element cycles, while limiting the consumption of chemical fertilizers, fuels and phytosanitary products. As for caloric and proteinaceous yield per hectare, they have also proven to be of relative high efficiency