Potential Role of Integrated Farming Systems (IFS) for Poverty Alleviation in the Mekong Basin: An Assessment of Farmer-Based Networks in Promoting IFS (Thailand)
This study explores the potential of Integrated Farming Systems (IFS) and farmer-based networks to alleviate poverty in Thailand’s Mekong Basin, highlighting the benefits of diversified agriculture for productivity, resilience, and environmental sustainability.
Intensive agricultural systems are often based on optimizing the productivity of monocultures. In those systems, crop diversity is reduced to one or very few species that are generally genetically homogeneous, the planting layout is uniform and symmetrical, and external inputs are often supplied in large quantities. Such systems are widely criticized today for their negative environmental impacts, such as soil erosion and degradation, chemical contamination, loss of biodiversity, and fossil fuel use (Giller et al., 1997; Griffon, 1999; Tilman et al., 2002). Conversely, multispecies cropping systems may often be considered as a practical application of ecological principles based on biodiversity, plant interactions and other natural regulation mechanisms. They are assumed to have potential advantages in productivity,
stability of outputs, resilience to disruption and ecological sustainability, although they are sometimes considered harder to manage (Vandermeer, 1989).
Intensive agricultural systems are often based on optimizing the productivity of monocultures. In those systems, crop diversity is reduced to one or very few species that are generally genetically homogeneous, the planting layout is uniform and symmetrical, and external inputs are often supplied in large quantities. Such systems are widely criticized today for their negative environmental impacts, such as soil erosion and degradation, chemical contamination, loss of biodiversity, and fossil fuel use (Giller et al., 1997; Griffon, 1999; Tilman et al., 2002). Conversely, multispecies cropping systems may often be considered as a practical application of ecological principles based on biodiversity, plant interactions and other natural regulation mechanisms. They are assumed to have potential advantages in productivity,
stability of outputs, resilience to disruption and ecological sustainability, although they are sometimes considered harder to manage (Vandermeer, 1989).
