Linking farmers to markets is widely viewed as a milestone towards promoting economic growth and poverty reduction. However, market and institutional imperfections along the supply chain thwart perfect vertical and spatial price transmission and prevent farmers and market actors from getting access to information, identifying business opportunities and allocating their resources efficiently. This acts as a barrier to market-led rural development and poverty reduction.
Urban agriculture contributes to local economic development, poverty alleviation, the social inclusion of the urban poor and women, as well as to the greening of the city and the productive reuse of urban wastes. Urban agriculture encompasses a wide variety of production systems in both urban as well as peri-urban areas. This study examines the contribution of urban agriculture to livelihoods, food security, health, and the urban environment through an assessment of existing urban agriculture activities among poor households in four selected cities.
Although much has been written about climate change and poverty as distinct and complex problems, the link between them has received little attention. Understanding this link is vital for the formulation of effective policy responses to climate change. This paper focuses on agriculture as a primary means by which the impacts of climate change are transmitted to the poor, and as a sector at the forefront of climate change mitigation efforts in developing countries.
Global agriculture will face multiple challenges over the coming decades. It must produce more food to feed an increasingly affluent and growing world population that will demand a more diverse diet, contribute to overall development and poverty alleviation in many developing countries, confront increased competition for alternative uses of finite land and water resources, adapt to climate change, and contribute to preserving biodiversity and restoring fragile ecosystems.
Land and property rights, migration, and citizenship are complex issues that cut across all social, economic, and political spheres of West Africa. This paper provides an overarching scoping of the most pressing contemporary issues related to land, migration, and citizenship, including how they intersect in various contexts and locations in West Africa. The way issues are analytically framed captures structural challenges and sets them against the regional and global meta-trends of which policy makers and practitioners should be aware for conflict-sensitive planning.
Interest in farmland is rising. And, given commodity price volatility, growing human and environmental pressures, and worries about food security, this interest will increase, especially in the developing world. One of the highest development priorities in the world must be to improve smallholder agricultural productivity, especially in Africa. Smallholder productivity is essential for reducing poverty and hunger, and more and better investment in agricultural technology, infrastructure, and market access for poor farmers is urgently needed.
The World Bank Group has a unique opportunity to match the increases in financing for agriculture with a sharper focus on improving agricultural growth and productivity in agriculture-based economies, notably in Sub-Saharan Africa.
The development objective of the Sustainable Management of Agricultural Research and Technology Dissemination Project is to improve the institutional capacity and performance of the Indonesian Agency for Agricultural Research and Development (IAARD) to develop and disseminate relevant and demand-driven innovative technologies, meeting the needs of producers and of the agri-food system. There are four components to the project. The first component of the project is human resource development and management.
Agricultural and Rural Development (ARD) is a fundamental component of Ethiopia's economic growth and poverty reduction strategy.
Livelihoods, food security, and development processes in Sub-Saharan Africa are highly dependent on land management practices to generate natural ecosystem goods and services. Out of a total population of about 717 million people, almost 60 percent depend for their livelihood on agriculture, hunting, fishing, or forestry. However, unsustainable land management already is leading to large-scale land degradation trends, which pose a threat to food security and poverty alleviation in Sub-Saharan Africa. Climate change threatens to exacerbate and add to the existing vulnerabilities.