Sustainable Agriculture for Smallholder Farming Communities in Papua New Guinea

将农业生产与生物多样性保护相结合将是21世纪的主要挑战之一。发展中国家的小农在这个问题上发挥着关键作用。小农目前提供了全球至少70%的农业产出。他们需要增加产量以满足快速增长的人口对粮食的需求。然而，小农极易受到气候变化等干扰的影响。与此同时，农业已经对环境产生了重大的负面影响。大多数小农生活在地球上受威胁最严重的物种丰富地区，因此小农如何管理其环境对生物多样性状况至关重要。因此，问题是小农社区如何在保护环境的同时生产出养家糊口所需的粮食。要回答这个问题，我们需要了解农业和生物多样性之间的权衡，小农提高农业生产是否可行，以及如何实现平衡农业生产和生物多样性保护目标的可持续土地利用规划。到目前为止，大多数关于农业与生物多样性和集约化之间权衡的研究都是在温带发达地区的大型农场进行的。因此，目前发展中国家在小农农业系统方面存在重大的知识差距。此外，还需要开发参与式规划方法，供组织和从业人员用于与当地社区一起进行未来规划和适应性能力建设。本研究旨在通过调查如何在小农农业社区实现可持续农业来填补这些空白，并以巴布亚新几内亚的小农农业为研究案例。通过这样做，希望为促进小农农业社区可持续粮食安全的政策提供证据，并最终帮助建立一个没有饥饿的多样化世界。跨理事会优先事项和计划：环境和土地利用、全球粮食安全和与环境变化共存

Combining agricultural production with biodiversity conservation will be one of the main challenges of the 21st century. Smallholder farmers in developing countries play a key role in this issue. Smallholders currently supply at least 70% of the global agricultural output. They need to increase their production to meet the food demand of a rapidly growing population. However, smallholder farmers are highly vulnerable to disturbances such as climate change. At the same time, agriculture is already having major negative impacts on the environment. The majority of smallholders live in the most threatened species-rich regions on Earth, so how smallholder farmers manage their environment is of crucial importance to the state of biodiversity. Hence, the question is how smallholder farming communities can produce the food required to feed their families while safeguarding the environment. To answer this question we need to understand the trade-offs between farming and biodiversity, whether enhanced agricultural production by smallholders is feasible, and how sustainable land use planning that balances the objectives of agricultural production and biodiversity conservation can be achieved. So far most research regarding trade-offs between farming and biodiversity, and intensification has been performed on large-scale farms in temperate, developed regions. As a result, there are currently major knowledge gaps with regards to smallholder farming systems in the developing world. Besides, there is a need for the development of participatory planning methods that can be used by organizations and practitioners to engage in future planning and adaptive capacity building with local communities. This study aims to contribute to fill these gaps by investigating how sustainable agriculture in smallholder farming communities can be achieved, taking smallholder farming in Papua New Guinea as a study case. By doing so, the hope is to provide evidence for policies that promote sustainable food security for smallholder farming communities, and ultimately help to contribute to a diverse world with no hunger.BBSRC Priority Areas: Food, Nutrition and Health & Sustainably Enhancing Agricultural ProductionCross Council Priorities and Programmes: Environment and Land Use & Global Food Security & Living with Environmental ChangeAFS