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Southern Africa is a region that is extraordinarily rich in natural resources and biodiversity and is equally an area of striking food insecurity. Agriculture in Southern Africa has evolved over tens of thousands of years, and for most of this time it has been small-scale, labour intensive and low-tech. Over the last halfcentury or more, however, new forms of agriculture have emerged which make extensive use of inputs–improved seeds, fertilizers and pesticides–to increase production to meet the food needs of a growing global population. But there is growing evidence that these agricultural techniques–both in rich and poor countries–are helping to undermine the natural resource base of the communities and economies that depend upon them, including extensive degradation of soils (IPBES, 2018). In many regions of Southern Africa, conventional high-input agriculture has not taken hold. In many such regions, resource-poor farmers contend with issues of marginal high-risk environments and experience poor yields just where food security is most vulnerable. In contending with these issues, other pathways than conventionally intensified agriculture are not just possible but increasingly becoming an imperative in ensuring sustainability. In transforming agriculture in Southern Africa, numerous approaches exist to work with nature, rather than against it, in harnessing key biological processes that sustain and enhance production while also generating other multiple benefits.

These sets of processes are collectively known as “ecosystem services”(ES), defined as “the conditions and processes through which natural ecosystems, and the species that make …