| Cover | 1
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| Contents | 2-3
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| Editorial: Celebrating diversity | 4-5
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| ILEIA editorial team |
| This first jubilee issue deals with a theme that is at the heart of small farmer logic: diversity. it expresses itself in many ways. There are diverse landscapes and ecosystems, diverse ways of life, ... |  |
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| Theme overview - Small-scale farmers: the key to preserving diversity | 6-8
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| Coen Reijntjes |
| The small farm sector is of tremendous importance for developing countries. It merits much more support than it has received in recent decades, especially in this time of growing economic and ecologic... | |
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| Diversity and efficiency: the elements of ecologically intensive agriculture | 9-10
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| Fernando Funes Monzote, Santiago Lopez-Ridaura, Pablo Tittonell |
| A six-year study in Cuba has shown that increasing a farm’s diversity, for example with a mixed crop-livestock system, increases its overall productivity, energy efficiency and nutrient management. Eq... | |
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| Making the most of underutilised crops | 11-12
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| Hannah Jaenicke, Nick Pasiecznik |
| Spreading risks is an essential means to reduce vulnerability, especially for already vulnerable people. Increasing the use of underutilised crops is one of the better buffers to help farmers diversif... | |
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| Underutilised trees offer hope for tribal communities | 12-13
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| Arun Dolke, Abhay Gandhe |
| As an example of the principles described in the previous article, tribal farmers in India are being encouraged to plant underutilised indigenous wild trees on their land. This is in response to the f... | |
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| Jubilee pages | 14-15
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- LEISA Magazine: 25 years.
- How I stay informed: Interview with subscriber Elcy Corrales Roa, Professor in Rural and Regional Development Studies, Colombia
- Using LEISA Magazine to pr... | |
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| Seeds, knowledge and diversity in the hands of small-scale farmers in Honduras | 16-17
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| Faris Ahmed |
| Farmers in the Yoro and Otoro regions of Honduras have organised themselves into agricultural research teams to improve the diversity and resilience of their farms. Supported by local and internationa... | |
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| The large impact of a small article | 18-19
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| Rajendra Uprety |
| Rajendra Uprety, an agriculture extension officer in Nepal, came across an article in LEISA Magazine on SRI, the System of Rice Intensification. It was new to him and made him curious. He contacted th... | |
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| Living the sustainable life: managing a dryland family farm | 20-22
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| Aspen Edge |
| In 1999, Aspen and David Edge bought Semilla Besada, a 12 hectare farm in southern Spain, with the intention of re-establishing its family farming tradition. They faced various challenges: the dryland... | |
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| Sharing knowledge on agrodiversity for conservation and livelihood improvement | 23-25
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| Luohui Liang, Harold Brookfield |
| Supporters of small-scale farming claim that it provides livelihoods, and it can also conserve agrodiversity. In an attempt to show this, an international network of scientists joined hands with farme... | |
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| From silkworms to travelling potatoes | 26-27
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| We received many more articles about diversity and farming systems than we had space to publish. As we want to draw attention to the range of farming systems found in the world, we have decided to sum... | |
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| Successfully preserving national heritage in Japan | 28-29
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| Kazumi Yamaoka |
| Rice in Japan has traditionally been grown on terraces built into volcanic slopes. With Green Revolution technology, however, rice fields in the plains became so productive that the terraced systems w... | |
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| How sustainable is organic farming? Two views | 30-31
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| Vanaja Ramprasad, Miguel Gamboa |
| Demand for organic products continues to grow and outstrip the supply. How organic are these products, when they have to be transported over many miles to reach consumers? And how sustainable is organ... | |
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| Spate irrigation: good for people, livestock and crops | 32-33
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| Frank van Steenbergen, Abraham Haile Mehari |
| Spate irrigation is an ancient form of water harvesting. It is a method of managing unpredictable and potentially destructive flash floods for crop and livestock production. By making water available,... | |
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| Soil-less agriculture gains ground | 34-35
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| A.H.M. Rezaul Haq, K. Wadud Nawaz |
| A few years ago, we published an article written by Rezaul Haq, Tapan Kumar and Pritam Ghosh, called “Cultivating wetlands in Bangladesh”. This article looked at the work of a small NGO promoting “soi... | |
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| "Hot issues" help preserve traditional agricultural systems | 36-38
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| Frank van Schoubroeck, Arend-Jan van Bodegom, Luohui Liang |
| Researchers and local policy makers acknowledge the values of traditional agricultural systems. But how can these systems be preserved? What kind of support do farmers need to keep developing their sy... | |
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| Field note - Mr Bairwa's diverse farm | 39
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| Veena Vidyadharan, Manoj Kumar Tiwari |
| Though the green revolution enabled India to attain food security, the technologies, subsidies and public support systems failed to address the problems of small-scale dryland agriculture. Diversified... | |
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| Sources | 40-41
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| Networking | 42
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| New books | 43
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| European ban on pesticides opens door to alternative approaches | 44
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| The European Parliament voted to ban 22 pesticides to protect the health of consumers and farmers. Besides pesticide companies, large-scale farmers in Europe are protesting against the ban because the... | |
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