General Objective The PCP, as a platform in partnership, with the participation and support of multiple actors will contribute to increasing productivity, competitiveness and sustainability of AFS with perennial crops of Mesoamerica through the quantification, valuing and development of all the potential products and environmental services of these AFS considering scale and climate change effects.
Specific objectives
Improving livelihoods of farming households involved in AFS.
Designing, in collaboration with farmers and other partners, competitive, sustainable and diversified management strategies for AFS from plot to farm level (including market activities), suitable for particular biophysical as well as ecological, economic and social constraints and opportunities.
Increasing understanding of the institutional arrangements along value chains for AFS productsand services and the opportunities for farmers’ business organizations to add value and good functional market governance.
Analyze changes in response to pressures, at the scales of farms to territories (in which AFS are a main component), and the effects of these changes on people’s livelihoods and well-being.
Contributing to the development of adequate policies and incentives for AFS to make better use of their potential, their productive and conservational capacities recognizing and valorizing their function for diverse agro-ecological services.
Understanding how cultural practices and management of the associated biodiversity (plant, animals and microorganisms) alter the biogeochemical, agronomical and ecological processes implicated in the performances of agroforestry systems.
The PCP will employ strategies such as interdisciplinary and participatory research approaches, and communication tools and methods, to focus on certain target audiences, involve and integrate them in its activities. That means that PCP members are ready to invest time and resources in this approach and acknowledge the necessity of transforming knowledge in capacities and impact, improving their own capacities for innovation and the ones of the different actors involved in this process such as extension agents and farmers. In that respect it would be equally important that these efforts are recognized at institutional level and are included in the internal evaluation system.
