FAO's The State of Food and Agriculture 2007

Carefully targeted payments to farmers can serve as an approach to protect the environment and to address the growing concerns about biodiversity loss and climate change, said the Food and Agriculture Organization  (FAO) of the United Nations in its annual publication The State of Food and Agriculture. The report emphasized the roles taken by farmers in managing the world’s natural resources. FAO stated that by paying farmers for their environmental services, it is possible to reduce the negative side-effects of agriculture while meeting the growing demands for agricultural products.

FAO Director-General Jacques Diouf, in his foreword to the report, said that “the future of Earth’s land, water and biological resources depends on the more than two billion people whose livelihoods depend directly on crops, livestock or forests. Ensuring appropriate incentives for these people is essential.”

Hundreds of payment programs for environmental services are currently being implemented around the world, mainly as part of forest conservation initiatives. “But relatively few programs for environmental services have targeted farmers and agricultural lands in developing countries,”  the report said. “Paying farmers for their environmental services may promise a flexible approach to enhancing the role of farmers worldwide in sustaining and improving the ecosystems on which we all depend.

The report is available at ftp://ftp.fao.org/docrep/fao/010/a1200e/a1200e00.pdf