Ethiopian farmers: Rio+20 should focus on sustainable farming

Small-scale farmers from Assosa, Ethiopia (picture), demand that the Earth Summit Rio+20 focuses on sustainable farming to ensure that the "Green Economy" can meet the challenges of climate change and a growing world population. At a training centre for ecological farming of the Swiss foundation Biovision and the Ethiopian organisation BioEconomy Africa, the farmers refer to the fact that world-wide some 70 % of food is produced by people like themselves.

BioEconomy Africa (BEA) is an international non-governmental, secular, not-for-profit organization legally established in 2003 in Ethiopia to promote and replicate the holistic bioeconomy system with health improvement packages and climate change adaptation/ mitigation concepts and initiatives. BEA focuses on both indigenous and experimental scientific knowledge. Furthermore, it enhances hands-on integrated capacity building using system-based problem solving adaptive management.