Communication is essential to making biotechnology and genomics relevant to developing countries and poor people. Few would disagree with that. But many are sceptical about public relations efforts to impose inappropriate technological ‘solutions’ on developing countries. This paper is a partial reflection on how PR and advocacy ‘mixes’ can be understood and whether they can be useful to innovation in developing country contexts.

This text analyses the development of organic farming in Brazil. It shows the great variability of social models of organic production recognised by Brazilian Law: organic, agroecological, ecological or biodynamic agriculture, permaculture etc.. It depicts how the political and social concerns in the spheres of family farming and environment caused the reorganisation of production systems, in the agricultural practices and n the new relationships with the market and with natural resources.

Family farms are by far the most numerous component of the agricultural sector in the Brazilian Amazon. However socially vital for the development of the region, these small landholdings' agricultural and cattle ranching activities frequently overdraw and degrade natural resources, threatening important ecosystem services. Predominant agricultural practices have been marked by shifting cultivation, with intense use of fire and low productivity, causing high rate of destruction of natural forests.

This report shows some initial results about the research project entitled GlobalOrg, on a Brazilian case study, investigating the sustainability of tropical fruit organic farming in a global food chains perspective. It was performed an analysis about the production strategies of certified units of a familiar smalholders cooperative from Itápolis-SP-Brazil.

African farming systems are highly heterogeneous: between agroecological and socioeconomic environments, in the wide variability in farmers’ resource endowments and in farm management. This means that single solutions (or ‘silver bullets’) for improving farm productivity do not exist. Yet to date few approaches to understand constraints and explore options for change have tackled the bewildering complexity of African farming systems. In this paper we describe the Nutrient Use in Animal and Cropping systems – Efficiencies and Scales (NUANCES) framework.