The Healthy Agricultural Systems (HAS) Strategy in Latin America: A Conservation Approach to Increasing Agricultural Productivity

TRUITT NAKATA G.; CASTRO SCHMITZ M.; BELTRAN J.; (....); PERI P.L.

2018-02-01/2018-06-06

1-25

Biológica

Recursos naturales renovables-Varios

The Healthy Agricultural Systems (HAS) strategy has been in co-development since mid-2016 across the Latin America Region Lands Conservation Program (LAR Lands) at The Nature Conservancy (TNC). This HAS strategic plan is the result of nearly two years of scoping, workshops, meetings, research, input-gathering and analyses,and is grounded in both science and collaborative engagement. It lays out a broad and ambitious vision and set of outcomes, but the authors recognize that, given the scope of a strategic plan, many other components of the strategy are to come via the business plan (mid-2018) and subsequent planning and implementation phases in TNC and with other collaborators (2018-onward). This document describes the HAS strategy ? its background; why strategic intervention in agriculture and ranching in Latin America is critical to restoring and protecting habitat, soils and water; and how it will achieve outcomes for both people and nature. The strategic plan describes the theory of transformational change andhow it contributes to both TNC?s Shared Conservation Agenda (SCA) and other TNC conservation strategies. It also presents the four identified systems-based interventions and pathways LAR Lands expects to implement and scale up to transform agriculture and livestock production in Latin America, thereby supporting andenhancing natural ecosystems as well as increasing yields to feed a growing global population. In describing the intervention pathways and framework for achieving outcomes, this document lays out theprocess that existing projects and signature initiatives of TNC will be assessed and refined for high synergistic potential. As TNC?s sphere of control and influence rely on engagement with partners and diverse stakeholders, the strategic plan lays out how the TNC LAR units will work together and with external groups to achieve broadsystems change at the producer, business, policy and market level. These pieces are necessary to achieve the HAS strategy vision: an agricultural system that achieves a mutually-reinforcing relationship with our natural ecosystem. As a result, the future productivity of the land becomes as valued as the production itself.