There's an extremely interesting post at Resilience Science on the UN Special Rapporteur Olivier De Schutters' report on agroecology (see our past post on sdupdate). Thomas Hahn, an economist and Assoc. Professor at the Stockholm Resilience Centre reiterates what he extracted as being the two key points of the report:

"The report’s first point is that food production needs to increase in the areas where hungry people live. At the resolution of the planet I believe Foley is correct in his analysis that we need to blend the benefits of conventional and organic agriculture. But the poorest farmers with no cash can lower their vulnerability (increase food security and safety and self-reliance) by relying on place-based resources."

"The report’s second point is more political. The report suggests that supporting La Via Campesina and similar organizations is an effective way of scaling up agroecological best practices. This requires a shift in pubic policy from supporting the “green revolution” paradigm of subsidizing inputs to instead supporting the knowledge generation and dissemination done by networks such as La Via Campesina"

The post ends with a summary of some key points from the De Schutter report. There is a huge potential in scaling up agroecology, but that will require gargantuan effort from the public sector, research community and international donors to in different ways engage and support agroecological projects and initiatives. It also requires dissemination of agroecological practices through networks such as La Via Campesina. But this shift must be conducted against the grain of increasing support to "green revolution" paradigms and the rise of GM agriculture in developing countries.