A Case of Agricultural Heritage Systems

A Case of Agricultural Heritage Systems

Descripción

Throughout centuries, human communities, generations of farmers, herders and forest people have developed complex, diverse and locally adapted agricultural and forestry systems. These systems have been managed with time-tested ingenious combinations of techniques and practices that have usually led to community food security and the conservation of natural resources and biodiversity. These microcosms of agricultural heritage can still be found throughout the world covering about 5 million hectar es which provide a series of cultural and ecological services to humankind such as the preservation of traditional forms of knowledge systems, traditional crops and animal varieties and autochthonous forms of socio-cultural organizations. These agricultural heritage systems have resulted not only in outstanding landscapes of aesthetic beauty, maintenance of globally significant agricultural biodiversity, resilient ecosystems and valuable cultural inheritance, but above all, in the sustained prov ision of multiple goods and services, food and livelihood security and quality of life.