International

Globally, soil quality is deteriorating at an alarming rate—millions of people are affected, and vast areas of agricultural land are being lost. Charlotte Pavageau from Biovision’s Policy & Advocacy team explains why strong political frameworks are essential, what needs to change, and how agroecology is already making an impact.

In agreements made through the United Nations, countries around the world have committed themselves to curbing the drastic loss of biodiversity on our planet. Agroecology could play a key role and combine sustainable agriculture with biodiversity protection. An interview with Dr John Garcia Ulloa from Biovision about major challenges and huge opportunities.

Biofach in Nuremberg is the world’s largest trade fair for organic products and sustainable agriculture. It offers producers, traders and anyone interested a platform for exchanging ideas and networking. Recently, Biovision employees were also among the participants.

Biovision promotes agroecology to leverage a sustainable food system. Entrepreneurs, project leaders and people responsible for initiatives often do not know how much their projects or business model correspond to the 13 principles of agroecology, though. To make their assessments easier (and anchor agroecology more firmly as a result), Biovision has developed the Business Agroecology Criteria Tool, or B-ACT for short.

Today we celebrate 25 years of Biovision. Our journey has led us to countless encounters, brought numerous challenges, but also great successes. Join us on a journey through time, from our past to our future.

Biodiversity loss, climate change, rising fertiliser prices: these global challenges are highly influenced by food production and consumption. Agroecology addresses these challenges, shares many synergies with other systemic approaches and may even decrease governments’ dependencies on global markets. This is shown by the three policy briefs from the Agroecology Dialogues, published by Biovision and the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) in support of the Agroecology Coalition.

The influence of agriculture and the food system on the climate has been neglected in climate negotiations thus far. In recent years, Biovision has been advocating for an agroecological transformation to address climate change. It was also present this year at the United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP27) in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt. We spoke to Tanja Carrillo from our Policy & Advocacy team about whether this conference has brought us a step closer to climate protection.

Higher food prices, halted grain deliveries, extreme droughts: the food situation has dramatically worsened for millions of people worldwide this year. It is particularly precarious in sub-Saharan Africa, where our organization runs around 50 projects. How is Biovision working to counteract the crisis?