Agroforestry World
Sander Van de Moortel
After obtaining his master's degree in linguistics and, later, journalism, Sander Van de Moortel chose to leave his native Belgium for more adventurous lands. After a stint as a product manager for a German IT firm, he landed in China in 2011 after taking a wrong turn on a bike trip through Viet Nam. Comfortably trapped in Yunnan by his linguistic ambitions and his somewhat complicated relationship with China, Van de Moortel has been responsible for communications at the World Agroforestry Centre's East and Central Asia office, and is now assisting the communications unit in the Southeast Asia office. His research is almost exclusively focussed on exploring Southeast Asia's colourful patchwork by bicycle.
Scientists at ICRAF The World Agroforestry Centre have struck the golden mean between intensification and environmental health for oil-palm plantations. Their analysis shows that sustainable systems can significantly boost production but not as high as some analysts believed....
Visitors from all over Indonesia flock to small villages in Southeast Sulawesi that have found ways to increase their profits while reducing environmental impact. The villagers are keen to share their knowledge.
Concluding five years of AgFor, a multilateral project aimed at promoting agroforestry practices in Indonesia’s exotic Sulawesi region, participating farmers are now starting enterprises to process and market their products beyond their own village.
The global economy is consuming our available resources about one-and-a-half times as fast as they regenerate. Trees play a prominent role in our attempts to buck this trend. Just as companies, countries and households need to keep...
In the newest episode in our Liming saga, farmers have taken initiative to grow the cover crops after harvest rather than before, as originally advised. ICRAF went to find out why and came with new recommendations for the late sowing of cover crops. Farmers also got a chance to voice their concerns about their participation in the Seeds of Beauty programme.
Scientists at the World Agroforestry Centre and the Chinese Academy of Sciences establish methods to reliably measure the CO2 output of dead wood. The methods have implications for the accuracy with which we can assess climate change.
A new project promoting agroforestry as a sustainable alternative to shifting cultivation in the uplands of Myanmar has been received with enthusiasm. His Excellency U Win Tun, the Minister of Environmental Conservation and Forestry, officially launched the project, which will run until 2018, last Tuesday.
The World Agroforestry Centre held a follow-up training workshop with farmers in the remote and mountainous villages of Liguang and Meile in Liming County, northwestern Yunnan Province. The farmers assessed local conditions, identified management techniques for issues raised...
Increasing amounts of environmentally valuable and protected land are being cleared for rubber plantations that are economically unsustainable, new research funded by the German and Scottish governments suggests. More widespread monitoring is vital to design policy that protects...
Xishuangbanna, the tropical south of China’s Yunnan province, has lost a great deal of its original cultural and biological diversity to monoculture rubber and banana, and while quality of life has generally gone up, income and education gaps...
Three researchers from the World Agroforestry Centre’s East and Central Asia office held a two-day workshop to train farmers in agroforestry for their remote villages of Liguang and Meile, Liming County, north-western Yunnan.
The University of East Anglia is developing an online course on Environmental Justice, taught by Prof Thomas Sikor. Interested parties can sign up for free on Futurelearn. The first course starts on 30 March 2015.
Villages in the tropical south of Yunnan province in China are responding to the drop in the global rubber latex price by replacing plantations with other crops. However, this does not address the root of the problem caused...