Details:
  • Moderator - Dr Popular Gentle Bhusal, Environment Advisor to Rt. Hon. PMO]
  • Clifford Amoah Adagenera KANBAOCU. financial cooperative to support investments in diversification - (20 minutes)
  • Mr. Thakur Bhandari, Chairperson, FECOFUN: Forest based collective enterprise models: Learnings from Forest Farm Facility
  • David Cahuana, General Manager - Central de Cooperativas el Ceibo RL., Bolivia: ‘Business strategies used by El Ceibo to ensure the protection of agrobiodiversity in cocoa plantations’ (20 minutes)
  • Ms. Sita Pandey, Munaa krishi limited, Nepal: Agrobiodiversity based Market and opportunities for investment and innovation by private sector in Nepal (20 minutes)
  • Summary of the session
Objectives:
  • To showcase innovations in how FFPOs and IPLC groups diversify commercial production to maintain and incentivize agrobiodiversity.
  • Income generation is an important concern for smallholder FFPOs and IPLC groups – but linking any single crop to value added processing and commercial markets can drive an expansion of that one crop at the expense of agrobiodiversity and longer-term resilience. 
  • This session will explore innovative models through which local organizations diversify commercial production, aggregating, processing and selling on multiple products from multiple diverse smallholdings or communal territories.

It will look at business unusual examples of how FFPO and IPLC’s develop and mobilize finances for enterprises that overcome challenges of social, environmental, and economic complexity – paying particular attention to how to deliver required market quantities and qualities across diverse markets from a broad and varied membership.

“To bring people together to share innovative traditional and scientific knowledge on how FFPOs and IPLC organizations can advance agroecological practices, agrobiodiverse planting materials and climate smart business and finance models that enrich nature and nutrition”

Frequently Asked Questions

Agrobiodiversity (agricultural biodiversity) is ‘the subset of biodiversity found within agroecosystems (agricultural ecosystems), including the variety and variability of animals, plants, micro-organisms and wild foods at the genetic, species, and ecosystem levels, which are necessary to sustain key functions of those agroecosystem’. It is a key component of agroecology and has multiple benefits including: food security and livelihood resilience, nutritional and health benefits, the provision of biomass energy and household materials, preservation of biocultural heritage, and the maintenance of ecosystem services including climate change mitigation.

Agroecology is the ‘the application of ecological approaches to agriculture’. It aims to employ management practices that use nature’s own cost-efficient processes to benefit production, ecological integrity of farms, and climate change adaptation. The practices are embedded in traditional knowledge and ever evolving local innovations that use renewable resources (nutrients, biomass, water) efficiently, thus decreasing the need for external resources such as agrochemicals.  In addition, agroecology promotes diversification of production and products, minimizing harm to nature and improving nature’s functionality in the benefit of production.

It is from 9-12 April, 2024

The conference is happening at Hotel Grande, Pokhara.

ORGANIZERS AND PARTNERS

The Forest and Farm Facility (FFF) is a partnership between FAO, IIED, IUCN, and AgriCord, strengthening Forest and Farm Producer Organizations for improved livelihoods and climate-resilient landscape