Sustainable Intensification, Community, and the Montpellier Panel: A Meta-analysis of Rhetoric in Practice in Sub-Saharan Africa

Anne Cafer,Hua Qin

doi:10.5304/jafscd.2017.073.008

Abstract

Agriculture-led economic development, an important policy driver in sub-Saharan Africa, requires both agricultural intensification and environmentally sustainable resource management. Sustainable Intensification (SI) provides a mechanism for achieving both. However, SI within an SSA context has yet to be widely examined in the scholarly literature; it has been confined instead to technical briefs and white papers. This meta-analysis, conducted in 2015, examines 58 articles that focus on SI in SSA published between 2001 and 2015 and listed in prominent research databases (EBSCOhost, Agricola, and Google Scholar). This analysis uses the 2013 Montpellier Framework for Sustainable Intensification (Agriculture for Impact, 2013) to examine, critique, and find avenues for improvement in research within this emerging body of literature. Generally, the literature adheres to major concepts within the Montpellier framework, with the exception of community. Despite the prominence of community within the Montepellier framework, incorporation of community processes was often accidental. This analysis also reveals that major components of SI, such as nutrition, food security, and income, are poorly operationalized and make an assessment of SI’s impact on socio-economic conditions and nutrition problematic. Based on this meta-analysis, the need for interdisciplinary engagement (a blending of biophysical and social scientists) is clear. Additionally, there is a demonstrable need for the inclusion of measurable concepts of community within SI processes or outcomes.

Highlights

Speaking, agricultural development has been a catchall for any effort to improve the wellbeing of agrarian people and places
Given the importance of community in discussing natural resource management and agricultural livelihoods, we examine how community is included in the scholarly literature on sustainable intensification (SI)
This study examined the presence of community, a component of the model located at the center with “farmer,” within the SI literature (Figure 1)

Summary

Introduction

Agricultural development has been a catchall for any effort to improve the wellbeing of agrarian people and places. Within a subSaharan Africa (SSA) context, agricultural development is focused largely on improving the efficiency of production systems, with a trend emerging to combine community and household well-being into agricultural productivity interventions To this end, sustainable intensification (SI), a process that combines improvements to agricultural productivity with improved livelihoods and increased resilience to shocks among agrarian households, has been emerging as a popular approach (Food and Agriculture Organization [FAO] of the United Nations, 2014). Given the importance of community in discussing natural resource management and agricultural livelihoods, we examine how community is included in the scholarly literature on SI In her address at the 2015 Association of International Agriculture and Rural Development conference, Terri Raney, chief editor and senior economist of The State of Food and Agriculture, a flagship report of the FAO, noted that “family farmers are the largest managers of natural resources” (Raney, 2015). For the purposes of this analysis, sustainability incorporates elements of sustained economic and social well-being while reducing environmental impact (Agriculture for Impact, 2013)

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Conclusion