Sustainable Agriculture for Smallholder Farming Communities in Papua New Guinea

Combining agricultural production with biodiversity conservation will be one of the main challenges of the 21st century. Smallholder farmers in developing countries play a key role in this issue. Smallholders currently supply at least 70% of the global agricultural output. They need to increase their production to meet the food demand of a rapidly growing population. However, smallholder farmers are highly vulnerable to disturbances such as climate change. At the same time, agriculture is already having major negative impacts on the environment. The majority of smallholders live in the most threatened species-rich regions on Earth, so how smallholder farmers manage their environment is of crucial importance to the state of biodiversity. Hence, the question is how smallholder farming communities can produce the food required to feed their families while safeguarding the environment. To answer this question we need to understand the trade-offs between farming and biodiversity, whether enhanced agricultural production by smallholders is feasible, and how sustainable land use planning that balances the objectives of agricultural production and biodiversity conservation can be achieved. So far most research regarding trade-offs between farming and biodiversity, and intensification has been performed on large-scale farms in temperate, developed regions. As a result, there are currently major knowledge gaps with regards to smallholder farming systems in the developing world. Besides, there is a need for the development of participatory planning methods that can be used by organizations and practitioners to engage in future planning and adaptive capacity building with local communities. This study aims to contribute to fill these gaps by investigating how sustainable agriculture in smallholder farming communities can be achieved, taking smallholder farming in Papua New Guinea as a study case. By doing so, the hope is to provide evidence for policies that promote sustainable food security for smallholder farming communities, and ultimately help to contribute to a diverse world with no hunger.

BBSRC Priority Areas: Food, Nutrition and Health & Sustainably Enhancing Agricultural Production
Cross Council Priorities and Programmes: Environment and Land Use & Global Food Security & Living with Environmental Change

AFS