Partners Magazine March - June 2009

Partners Magazine March - June 2009 highlights the important link between natural resource management and food security. It focuses on ACIAR-supported initiatives and partnerships which are delivering sustainable approaches to agriculture, with examples of projects that demonstrate that environmental sustainability can also help smallholders increase their productivity.

As ACIAR Commissioner John Williams outlines, the challenges facing agricultural science are immense, but sustainability is achievable if scientists and producers can develop agriculture in a wider ecological framework.

In this issue we report on research in India and Australia that is both improving soils and reducing environmental damage through use of organic fertilisers, helping farmers rehabilitate their land in Aceh, and ways farmers in the Philippines are reducing soil erosion and increasing their incomes by planting harvestable hedgerows.

Other reports cover ACIAR-funded work in the Philippines that is reducing pesticide run-off into waterways, and which is also being applied in South Australia, and helping to identify suitable locations for sea-cage aquaculture to reduce environmental impacts. Another is on research in Papua New Guinea that is helping communities develop sustainable harvesting strategies for their timber resources.