In parts of the northern hemisphere, many pollinator species are in decline, with potential adverse implications for pollination and the ecosystem service of food production. It is therefore important to understand how habitats primarily orientated towards food production can be managed in an efficient way to enhance pollinator populations for current and future food security. In Europe, agri-environment schemes are a well-established method for promoting nature conservation on farmland.

Ten years after the Global Financial Crisis, this research examines how resilience theory and rhetoric relating to the economy and housing markets has been translated into policy and practice. The methodology involves a case study of a city (Auckland) with a nationally dominant housing market and high unaffordability. Via secondary literature and a series of interviews we analyse questions connected to resilience from what, how, by whom, and discuss the implications and limits of the approach.

In developing countries, cities are rapidly expanding and urban and peri-urban agriculture (UPA) has an important role in feeding these growing urban populations; however such agriculture also carries public health risks such as zoonotic disease transmission. It is important to assess the role of UPA in food security and public health risks to make evidence-based decisions on policies. Describing and mapping the peri-urban interface (PUI) are the essential first steps for such an assessment.

This study quantifies the adoption of improved amaranth varieties in Kenya and Tanzania, and the extent to which these result from international vegetable breeding research conducted by the World Vegetable Center (WorldVeg) and partners. The study used expert elicitation and a questionnaire survey among vegetable seed producers. Nine expert panels were conducted involving 123 local experts. The results show that improved amaranth varieties were planted on 51% of the planted area in Kenya and 70% in Tanzania.

European agri-environmental schemes are being criticised for reinforcing rather than negating an opposition between agricultural production and environmental production, and for assuming instead of securing a public willingness to pay for agri-environmental change. This paper explores if a regionalisation of agri-environmental governance may contribute to overcome these criticisms. The paper empirically explores three regionalised agri-environmental schemes from Flanders, Belgium, with the use of 40 qualitative interviews with farmers and other relevant stakeholders.

Using a qualitative social research method at the local administrative level, this paper provides insight into the policy process in China and farmers’ perceptions of the effectiveness of policies implemented to deal with drought. Two villages in rural South-West Yunnan were purposefully selected for the study. The research started with the general assumption that China has a strong top-down hierarchal approach to policy processes and that funding dispersal is prioritised by the central government.

The forest and landscape restoration (FLR) targets set as part of the Bonn Challenge draw attention to the governance arrangements required to translate national FLR targets into local action. To achieve the targets, actors at multiple levels of the governance scale aim to influence relevant processes on the ecological scale. In this article, we focus on the scale challenges relating to the implementation of Ecuador’s restoration targets, by analysing the implementation of the 2014–2017 National Forest Restoration Plan in the montane Chocó Andino and Bosque Seco landscapes.

This paper identifies the relationship between an active use of EU investment support programs by Polish farmers, on one side, and the local conditions for socioeconomic development and natural and structural characteristics of agriculture, on the other. The research was illustrated by the example of Poland, a country with a remarkably fragmented and territorially heterogeneous agrarian structure.

The growing awareness of the negative impact of agriculture on the natural environment creates social expectation towards the reduction of this impact through the pro-environmental activities of farmers. Agri-environmental programmes are one of the key instruments of EU agricultural policy aimed at encouraging farmers to do so. Due to their voluntary nature and involvement of farmers in these activities, there has been a scientific discussion for a long time on the factors determining the participation of farmers in these programmes.

The nature conservation regimes of post-socialist EU countries are multi-layered, consisting of initial components established before Socialism, reinforced and solidified during Socialist period, and changes brought about by the democratic transition. For nature conservation, the transition to democracy led to new political and legal frameworks, the re-allocation of resources and land tenure changes, which Central Eastern European countries approached differently.

Weather variability is an important source of production risk for rainfed agriculture in developing countries. This paper evaluates the impacts of the adoption of drought-tolerant maize varieties on average maize yield, yield stability, risk exposure and resource use in rainfed smallholder maize farming. The study uses cross-sectional farm household-level data, collected from a sample of 840 farm households in Uganda. The adoption of drought-tolerant maize varieties increased yield by 15% and reduced the probability of crop failure by 30%.

The new European Green Deal has the ambition to make the European Union the first climate-neutral continent by 2050. The European Commission presented an ambitious package of measures within the Biodiversity Strategy 2030, the Farm to Fork and the European Climate Law including actions to protect our soils. The Farm to Fork strategy addresses soil pollution with 50 % reduction in use of chemical pesticides by 2030 and aims 20 % reduction in fertilizer use plus a decrease of nutrient losses by at least 50%.