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High migration rates only occur in what the authors refer to as 'high quality' matrices, which are created by alternative agroecological techniques, as opposed to the industrial monocultural model of agriculture. The authors argue that the only way to promote such high quality matrices is to work with rural social movements. Their ideas are at odds with the major trends of some of the large conservation organizations that emphasize targeted land purchases of protected areas.

They argue that recent advances in ecological research make such a general approach anachronistic and call, rather, for solidarity with the small farmers around the world who are currently struggling to attain food sovereignty. Nature's Matrix proposes a radically new approach to the conservation of biodiversity based on recent advances in the science of ecology plus political realities, particularly in the world's tropical regions.

We all advocate this integration. This book does it. It is a must-read for anyone interested in understanding the connections between food sovereignty and the environment. The Science of Sustainable Agriculture. Would you like to tell us about a lower price? If you are a seller for this product, would you like to suggest updates through seller support? Read more Read less.

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Review 'This well written book is informed by sophisticated ecological theory applied to the complexities of modern tropical development in a dazzling critique of conventional thinking. Routledge; 1 edition September 20, Language: Start reading Nature's Matrix on your Kindle in under a minute. Don't have a Kindle? Try the Kindle edition and experience these great reading features: Share your thoughts with other customers.

Write a customer review. Showing of 3 reviews. Top Reviews Most recent Top Reviews. There was a problem filtering reviews right now. Please try again later. The park system is the prevailing model for biodiversity protection in the world - think Teddy R. Armed guards, strict rules, "nature here, humans there". Biologists have long recognized that local extinctions were common, even in these big, dynamic parks, so "corridors" were the rage a few years ago, little pathways that would connect two "natural" areas to each other to allow migration the solution to local extinction - bridges over busy highways, for example.

Most ecologists have found this approach hasn't worked. Using a dazzling array of different disciplinary perspectives biology, history, politics, anthropology , Perfecto et al. Conservationists, they argue, have been blind to the political realities that drive extinction in the most sensitive regions, regions that happen to be in the poorest areas of the world. They focus their attention on agriculture, which has been such a destructive force in places like Brazilian Amazon.

But they draw an important distinction between the Green Revolution-style industrial system usually encouraged by the global economic powers and the farming practiced by smallholders around the world. The latter, they argue, actually contribute to this matrix of biodiversity by showing more care for the land and thus conservationists should support and work closely with rural social movements that advocate for them. The book cites two large case studies from Latin America from coffee farms in Central America and cocoa farms in Brazil.

In both cases, the authors found a rich diversity of species living in and migrating through the farms. It's here that Vandermeer and Perfecto make a really insightful argument about yield I hadn't considered before. In energy economics, there is something called the Jevons Paradox.

Energy efficiency improvements could be used to drastically reduce fuel consumption. But without any outside limit on fuel use, any efficiency improvements instead simply reduce the price of energy and cause the economy to use more of it — more efficient power plants make each gram of coal more valuable. They don't provide any incentive to keep coal in the ground.

It's the same with grain yield. Advances like the Green Revolution and the new GMO revolution are often claimed to help us spare land for conservation by meeting growing food needs on the land currently in cultivation. However, this could only happen if all arable land were preserved and grain prices were stabilized externally. Otherwise, grain yields increase at the expense of matrix quality , and prices go down.

Low price grain means that farmers must grow more to meet their financial needs, which means increasing land in cultivation. The intensification process involves sacrificing a tremendous amount of planned and wild biodiversity on the farm, often including resources like fish, medicinal herbs, and natural pest control that had been part of the traditional management regime. Framed broadly, Nature's Matrix tells us that traditional farmers with techniques that maintained high quality matrix have been assaulted systematically by neo-liberal economics, degrading their lifestyles and degrading matrix quality, which in turn threatens biodiversity in preserves.

It frees us from the preconceptions we have about wilderness without human sustenance, eliminating the agriculture bad preserve good dichotomy and allows us to see farms as valuable habitat — if they're designed properly. How to design a farm well is more a theme than a thesis of the book the lesson we're meant to take is usually that indigenous and traditional smallholders know best how to do this in any given area.

But of course, since I'm about to try to build a farm practicing Restoration Agriculture, this is what I was most interested in. All the examples here were focused on tropical ecosystems, since this is where rural poverty, high biodiversity, and well-established perennial polyculture agroecological systems exist in tandem. There are a ton of great examples, from the coffee shade forests of Central America to the Chagga Homegardens of Kilimanjaro to wetland rice paddies of southeast Asia to shifting cultivation and milpa systems in Mexico.

This framework is really valuable, because it shows us land use in temperate areas in a whole new light. Since there are tropical systems between forest and cornfield, we can see them as endpoints on a spectrum of matrix quality and intensification, rather than dichotomous states. Some places are for humans, some places are for birds, but most land ought to be useful for both. The wilderness myth is vanquished utterly: D The principles can and should be applied to a temperate forest, savanna, or prairie ecosystem.


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We have endangered species living in patches in highly fragmented, largely agricultural landscapes here too, and we have an emerging local food movement eager to contribute to environmental quality. We just need models appropriate for each bioregion here that can accomplish what shade coffee and wetland rice achieve in the tropics.

We model the system on the native forest type as much as possible which of course means perennial polyculture! Of course, without any surviving native forest patches, much less indigenous communities or smallholders making a living on them, it's much harder for us to develop a historical model. Most indigenous communities here now just practice normal sustainable land use, which is usually relatively intensified and of poor matrix quality compared to many of the examples in the tropics.

I don't know how well I managed to squeeze all that in, but I'll try to sum it up. Conservation requires migration between population patches, which means high matrix quality.

Natures Matrix: Linking Agriculture, Conservation and Food Sovereignty

A quality matrix resembles native habitat in many ways, so agricultural systems based on forest and prairie are far superior to chemical cornfields. These systems provide many social benefits as well — diverse nutrition and resilient production, ecosystem services like pest control and fertility, etc — but they are complex and labor intense and low-input, and depend on smallholders with land tenure and access to cooperative credit and markets, protected from neo-liberal bullying.

All the social and environmental issues are tied together into one cohesive picture with agriculture front and center. The argument of this book is essentially: They argue that agriculture has historically been conceived of as a zero-sum game i. Small-scale, low-input intensity and poly-cropped agro-ecosystems are the best such repositories, and for this reason, conservation efforts should focus on generating political, technical, and economic support for these systems. Is land-sparing a better approach in some situations? I think they would argue back that it doesn't matter because of issues of land rights and food sovereignty; that's a local argument though and what I find problematic are the global implications of a complete paradigm shift if yields suffer dramatically.

A second problem I have is that some biodiversity simply cannot exist within an agricultural matrix. The reserve-based approach to biodiversity conservation is often socially problematic and needs to be carefully navigated, but it is still an important component of the biodiversity conservation portfolio.

Nature's Matrix: Linking Agriculture, Conservation and Food Sovereignty by Ivette Perfecto

I'm not sure their argument excludes this though. My largest problem with the book is that it doesn't provide much more than wishy-washy utopian suggestions for how and why we should go back to the farm and manage sustainably for local needs. Barring the complete dissolution of the neo-liberal model of economic development, this isn't viable on a global scale. That said, I see this book as enormously important. It argues compelling for the role of agriculture in biodiversity conservation, and demonstrates clearly and intelligently the multiple linkages between land rights, food security and biodiversity conservation.

For like 10 pages, it also made me want to be a socialist and a farmer. Aug 18, Erica rated it really liked it Shelves: The park system is the prevailing model for biodiversity protection in the world — think Teddy R. Using a dazzling array of different disciplinary perspectives biology, history, politics, anthropology , Perfecto et al.

Conservationists, they argue, have been blind to the political realities that drive extinction in the most sensitive regions, regions that happen to be in the poorest areas of the world.

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They focus their attention on agriculture, which has been such a destructive force in places like Brazilian Amazon. But they draw an important distinction between the Green Revolution-style industrial system usually encouraged by the global economic powers and the farming practiced by smallholders around the world. The latter, they argue, actually contribute to this matrix of biodiversity by showing more care for the land and thus conservationists should support and work closely with rural social movements that advocate for them.

The book cites two large case studies from Latin America from coffee farms in Central America and cocoa farms in Brazil. In both cases, the authors found a rich diversity of species living in and migrating through the farms. Examples of maize farming in Mexico and wetland protection via rice fields in Southeast Asia are also provided.

The authors make a well-developed argument that supporting such farms should be central to any conservation plan, especially in the developing world.

Nature's Matrix: Linking Agriculture, Conservation and Food Sovereignty

Farms provisioning food for local markets should play a bigger role in any discussion of food sovereignty. Nevertheless, the findings are hopeful and paradigm-rattling and will likely make conservationists and rural development practitioners rethink their methods. Dec 26, David rated it liked it. The authors extend the simple idea behind shade grown coffee—that the success of the neotropical migrants that visit the temperate U. In their view, agriculture is seen as ecosystem management, and political solutions to poverty The authors extend the simple idea behind shade grown coffee—that the success of the neotropical migrants that visit the temperate U.

In their view, agriculture is seen as ecosystem management, and political solutions to poverty are preferred to technological ones. From the title and the physical aspect of this book, I figured it would read like a textbook and that I would struggle to finish it. However, I received this book from someone I greatly admire and whom I wouldn't want to disappoint by NOT finishing it, so I committed myself to reading it and the further I got into it, the more I enjoyed it! I found Nature's Matrix to be both accessible and eye-opening, and relevant to both my work and my food-consumption choices.

This book mixes the science of conservation biology and the politics behind it in very accessible language. It It gives a good analysis of the situation as it plays out in Latin America. I learned a lot. Alice Henry rated it it was amazing Nov 19, Justin Krohn rated it really liked it Jul 04, Amit rated it liked it Nov 25, Jerry Tyrrell rated it really liked it Sep 19, Jacob rated it really liked it Apr 14,