GRAIN
GRAIN is an international non-governmental organisation which promotes the sustainable management and use
of agricultural biodiversity based on people's control over genetic resources and local knowledge.
Seized: The 2008
landgrab for food and financial security
PDF file -
(207 kb)
Annex - PDF file -
(209 kb)
Author: GRAIN Date: October 2008
Today's food and financial crises have, in tandem, triggered a new
global landgrab. On the one hand, “food insecure” governments that
rely on imports to feed their people are snatching up vast areas of
farmland abroad for their own offshore food production. On the other hand,
food corporations and private investors, hungry for profits in the midst
of the deepening financial crisis, see investment in foreign farmlands as
an important new source of revenue. As a result, fertile agricultural
lands are becoming increasingly privatised and concentrated. If left
unchecked, this global landgrab could spell the end of small scale
farming, and rural livelihoods, in numerous places around the world.
A food system that kills - Swine flu is meat
industry's latest plague
April 2009
Mexico is in the midst of a hellish repeat of Asia's bird flu
experience, though on a more deadly scale. Once again, the official
response from public authorities has come too late and bungled in
cover-ups. And once again, the global meat industry is at the centre
of the story, ramping up denials as the weight of evidence about its
role grows. Just five years after the start of the H5N1 bird flu
crisis, and after as many years of a global strategy against
influenza pandemics coordinated by the World Health Organisation
(WHO) and the World Organisation for Animal Health (OIE), the world
is now reeling from a swine flu disaster. The global strategy has
failed and needs to be replaced with a public health system that the
public can trust.
Corporate candyland - The looming GM sugar
cane invasion
April 2009
One of the most destructive developments in agriculture over the
past two decades has been the boom in soya production in the
southern cone of Latin America. The corporations that led that boom
are now moving aggressively into sugar cane, focusing on large
tracts of land in southern countries where sugar can be produced
cheaply. If these developments are not resisted, the impacts are
likely to be severe: local food production will be overrun, workers
and communities will face displacement and exposure to increased
levels of pesticides, and foreign agribusiness will tighten its grip
on sugar production. We look at the intersection between the
development of genetically modified (GM) sugar cane and
transformations in the global sugar industry.
The soils of war
March 2009
In this Briefing, we look at how the US’s agricultural reconstruction
work in Afghanistan and Iraq not only gives easy entry to US agribusiness
and pushes neoliberal policies, something that has always been a primary
function of US development assistance, but is also an intrinsic part of
the US military campaign in these countries and the surrounding regions.
Seen together with the growing clout that the US and its corporate allies
exercise over donor agencies and global bodies – such as the World Bank,
the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) and Consultative Group on
International Agricultural Research (CGIAR) centres, which influence the
food and farm policies adopted by the recipient countries – this is an
alarming development. These are not unique cases born from unusual
circumstances, but constitute a likely template for US activities
overseas, as it continues to expand its “war on terror” and pursue US
corporate interests.
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Food crisis and the global
land grab
Governments and corporations are buying up farmland
in other countries to grow their own food - or simply to make money
This site provides an open, up-to-date and easy to search library of over 800 articles, interviews and reports on
farmland grabs around the world published since the outbreak of the food crisis in 2008. This site is
open-publishing, and anyone can register and upload material.
|
Destroying African Agriculture
By Walden Bello - 7 June 2008
Biofuel
production is certainly one of the culprits in the current global food crisis.
But while the diversion of corn from food to biofuel feedstock has been a factor
in food prices shooting up, the more primordial problem has been the conversion
of economies that are largely food-self-sufficient into chronic food importers.
Here the World Bank, International Monetary Fund (IMF), and the World Trade
Organization (WTO) figure as much more important villains
|
From The World Bank
Global
Agricultural Trade and Developing Countries- 2005
Editors:
M. Ataman Aksoy and John C. Beghin
Agricultural
Trade Reforms Key To Reducing Poverty
WASHINGTON,
January 10, 2005 — With almost 70 percent of the poor people in
developing countries living in rural areas, agricultural sector
reforms - in particular global trade liberalization - will be
crucial in giving them opportunities for better lives, according to
a new World Bank report released today.
The report, Global Agricultural Trade and Developing
Countries, edited by M. Ataman Aksoy and John C. Beghin,
notes that despite the recent framework agreement in Geneva,
agricultural protection continues to be among the most contentious
issues in global trade negotiations. High protection of agriculture
in industrial countries was the main cause of the breakdown of the
Cancún Ministerial Meetings in 2003, and remains among the key
outstanding issues in the Doha Round of global trade negotiations.
|
United Nations University
World Institute for Development Economic Research:
RP2006/69
Yianna Lambrou and Regina Laub
Gender,
Local Knowledge, and Lessons Learnt in Documenting and Conserving
Agrobiodiversity
This paper explores the linkages between gender, local knowledge systems and agrobiodiversity
for food security by using the case study of LinKS, a regional FAO project in Mozambique,
Swaziland, Zimbabwe and Tanzania over a period of eight years and now concluded. The
project aimed to raise awareness on how rural men and women use and manage
agrobiodiversity, and to promote the importance of local knowledge for food security and
sustainable agrobiodiversity at local, institutional and policy levels by working with a diverse
range of stakeholders to strengthen their ability to recognize and value farmers’ knowledge and
to use gender-sensitive and participatory approaches in their work. This was done through three
key activities: capacity building, research and communication. The results of the LinKS study
show clearly that men and women farmers hold very specific local knowledge about the plants
and animals they manage. Local knowledge, gender and agrobiodiversity are closely
interrelated. If one of these elements is threatened, the risk of losing agrobiodiversity increases...
RP2006/33
Annelies Zoomers
Three
Decades of Rural Development Projects in Asia, Latin America, and Africa:
Learning From Successes and Failures
This article aims to contribute to the discussion about how to make development
interventions more effective by analyzing the factors contributing to the success or
failure of rural development projects. We made an aggregate level analysis of 46
projects in the field of agricultural research (AR), water management (WM), natural
resource management (NRM), and integrated rural development (IRD), financed by the
Netherlands’ Directorate-General for International Cooperation (DGIS) and carried out
between 1975-2005 in Asia, Africa and Latin America. Making a distinction between
the successful projects and failures, we showed the possibilities and limitations...
RP2005/07
Tony Addison
Agricultural
Development for Peace
Agricultural development can contribute significantly to peace by raising incomes and
employment, thereby reducing the social frustrations that give rise to violence.
Agricultural growth also generates revenues for governments, allowing them to redress
the grievances of disadvantaged populations. In this way, growth can be made more
equitable, an effect that is enhanced if inequalities in access to natural capital, especially
to land, are addressed as well. Agriculture is critical for countries rebuilding from war,
especially in making recovery work for the poor. And by raising per capita incomes,
agricultural development underpins new democracies. Agricultural development thereby
supports political strategies for peace-building and democratization.
DP2003/54
Martin Ravallion
Externalities
in Rural Development: Evidence for China
The paper tests for external effects of local economic activity on consumption and income
growth at the farm household level using panel data from four provinces of post-reform
rural China. The tests allow for nonstationary fixed effects in the consumption growth
process. Evidence is found of geographic externalities, stemming from spillover effects of
the level and composition of local economic activity and private returns to local human and
physical infrastructure endowments. The results suggest an explanation for rural
underdevelopment arising from underinvestment in certain externality-generating
activities, of which agricultural development emerges as the most important.
|
M. Lamine Gakou (1987)
The
crisis in African agriculture - Studies on African Political Economy
Our aim in undertaking this work is to demonstrate, or provide further
confirmation that the crisis affecting Africa particularly - even though it is
more widespread - has its profound roots in the integration of African economies
into the world capitalist system.
The agricultural sectors and the rural areas
are most often the ones most affected because of this integration.
The case of
agriculture, which, in most countries, is in crisis because it is essentially
oriented towards the world market and not towards the feeding of the local
people, shows that it is idle for the underdeveloped countries, and particularly
for Africa, to seek solutions to their problems in the framework of a system
whose modus operandi and rules of the game operate in such a way that it
is always the poorest and economically weakest that suffer the most serious
consequences of the crisis.
If the developed capitalist countries can make the
underdeveloped countries bear at least a part of the burden of their own crisis,
in these countries and in Africa in particular, the so-called 'non-modern',
'traditional' sectors, agriculture above all, bear more of the burden. Other
explanations can be found for the crisis, but we feel that these explanations
can be no more than secondary, the fundamental cause being the integration of
Africa into a system over which it has absolutely no control.
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| The World Bank on Rural Development |
| The World Bank on rural poverty in Latin America and the Caribbean |
J. O. Lanjouw and P. Lanjouw - 1995
Rural Non-Farm Employment: A Survey
The rural non-farm sector is a poorly understood component of the rural economy
and we know relatively little about its role in the broader development process.
This gap in our knowledge is the product of the sector's great heterogeneity
(see Box 1 for examples), coupled with a dearth, until recently, of empirical or
theoretical attention. As expressed by Liedholm and Chuta (1990, pg 327)
"...policy makers and planners charged with the formulation of policies and
programs to assist rural small-scale industry in the Third World are often
forced to make decisions that are 'unencumbered by evidence'." In fact until
recently, a commonly held view has been that rural off-farm employment is a low
productivity sector producing low quality goods. As such, it was expected to
wither away as a country developed and incomes rose, and its withering was seen
as a positive rather than a negative occurrence. A corollary of this view is
that government need not worry about the health of this sector in a pro-active
sense, nor be concerned about negative repercussions on the rural non-farm
sector arising from government policies directed at other objectives. More
recently opinion has swung away from this view,...
|
A. Figueroa, Catholic University of Peru - 1999
Social exclusion and
rural development
This paper examines factors that explain social inequalities in the Third World. It
develops a new theoretical approach, which focuses on social inequality and
introduces the concept of social exclusion into the analysis. In so doing, it specially
addresses the question: is inequality a result of some peculiar form of social
integration, or rather a result of some exclusions taking place in the social process?
Social inequality is conceived in this paper in broader terms than income inequality.
The social process is, for analytical purposes, divided into the three components:
economic, political, and cultural. Social inequality refers to the aggregation of
inequality on these components.
Social exclusion is also considered in a particular way. As a fact of life, we know
that the same group of people who participate in some social relations may, at the
same time, be excluded from others. Hence, to say that a person is excluded from
something is a purely descriptive statement, with no analytical value. In analytical
terms, the question is whether there are some exclusions that have important effects
upon social inequality. Which are these exclusions in a particular society? Who is
excluded and from what? Why do these exclusions take place?
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Foreign Policy IN
FOCUS
Food and Farm |
| Food and Agriculture Organization of the
United Nations |
| World Food Summit.- 2001 |
| World Food Summit.- 1996 |
The State of Food Agriculture Reports
From FAO
2008
Biofuels: prospects, risks and opportunities
The implications of the recent rapid growth in production of biofuels
based on agricultural commodities. The boom in liquid biofuels has been
largely induced by policies in developed countries.
More than at any time in the past three
decades, the world’s attention is focused
this year on food and agriculture. A variety
of factors have combined to raise food
prices to the highest levels since the 1970s
(in real terms), with serious implications
for food security among poor populations
around the world. One of the most
frequently mentioned contributing factors
is the rapid recent growth in the use of
agricultural commodities – including some
food crops – for the production of biofuels.
Yet the impact of biofuels on food prices
remains the subject of considerable debate,
as does their potential to contribute to
energy security, climate-change mitigation
and agricultural development. Even while
this debate continues, countries around the
world confront important choices about
policies and investments regarding biofuels.
These were among the topics discussed
at FAO in June 2008 by delegations from
181 countries attending the High-Level
Conference on World Food Security: the
Challenges of Climate Change and Bioenergy.
Given the urgency of these choices and the
magnitude of their potential consequences,
participants at the Conference agreed that
careful assessment of the prospects, risks and
opportunities posed by biofuels is essential.
This is the focus of FAO’s 2008 report on the
State of Food and Agriculture.
2007:
Paying
farmers for environmental services
The State of Food and Agriculture 2007 explores the potential for agriculture
to provide enhanced levels of environmental services alongside the production of
food and fi bre. The report concludes that demand for environmental services
from agriculture - including climate change mitigation, improved watershed
management and biodiversity preservation - will increase in the future, but
better incentives to farmers are needed if agriculture is to meet this demand.
As one among several other possible policy tools, payments to farmers for
environmental services hold promise as a fl exible approach to enhancing farmer
incentives to sustain and improve the ecosystems on which we all depend.
Nevertheless, challenges must be overcome if the potential of this approach is
to be realized, especially in developing countries. Policy efforts at
international and national levels are necessary to establish the basis for such
payments. The design of cost-effective programmes requires careful analysis of
the specifi c biophysical and socio-economic contexts and consideration of the
poverty impacts programmes may have. By clarifying the challenges that need to
be addressed in implementing such an approach, this report is intended to
contribute to the realization of its potential.
2006:
Food
aid for food security?
The State of Food and Agriculture 2006 examines the issues and controversies
surrounding international food aid and seeks to find ways to preserve its
essential humanitarian role while minimizing the possibility of harmful
secondary impacts. Food aid has rightly been credited with saving millions of
lives; indeed, it is often the only thing standing between vulnerable people and
death. Yet food aid is sharply criticized as a donor-driven response that
creates dependency on the part of recipients and undermines local agricultural
producers and traders upon whom sustainable food security depends. The economic
evidence regarding these issues is surprisingly thin, but it confirms that the
timing and targeting of food aid are central to achieving immediate food
security objectives while minimizing the potential for harm. Reforms to the
international food aid system are necessary but they should be undertaken
carefully because lives are at risk.
2005:
Agricultural
trade and poverty: Can trade work for the poor?
The State of Food and Agriculture 2005 examines the linkages among
agriculture, trade and poverty and asks whether international agricultural
trade, and its further reform, can help overcome extreme poverty and hunger.
The global statistics on poverty and hunger are all too familiar. An
estimated 1.2 billion people live on less than one dollar a day and FAO's most
recent estimates indicate that 852 million people lack sufficient food for an
active and healthy life. There is now also an increased awareness that extreme
poverty and hunger are largely rural phenomena. Most of the world's poor and
hungry people live in rural areas and depend on agriculture for their
livelihoods. To the extent that agriculture is affected by trade, trade will
necessarily affect the livelihoods and food security of the world's most
vulnerable people.
The global economy is becoming increasingly integrated through trade, and
agriculture is part of this larger trend. For some countries, agricultural trade
expansion - sparked by agricultural and trade policy reforms - has contributed
to a period of rapid pro-poor economic growth. Indeed, some of the countries
that have been most successful in reducing hunger and extreme poverty have
relied on trade in agricultural products, either exports or imports or both, as
an essential element of their development strategy.
Many of the poorest countries however, have not had the same positive
experience. Rather, they are becoming more marginalized and vulnerable,
depending on imports for a rising share of their food needs without being able
to expand and diversify their agricultural or non-agricultural exports. FAO
believes that the reform process under way must consider the specific
circumstances of these countries, particularly their stage of agricultural
development and the complementary policies needed to ensure their successful
integration into global agricultural markets.
FAO has long recognized that agricultural trade is vital for food security,
poverty alleviation and economic growth. Food imports are a fundamental means of
supplementing local production in ensuring the provision of minimum supplies of
basic foodstuffs in many countries. Agricultural exports are an important source
of foreign exchange earnings and rural income in many developing countries.
Reducing trade-distorting agricultural subsidies and barriers to agricultural
trade can serve as a catalyst for growth as producers worldwide could then
compete on the basis of their comparative advantage.
However, international trade in agricultural products is characterized by a
number of problems that do not allow competition on the basis of comparative
advantage. The markets for many temperate-zone products and basic food
commodities are substantially distorted by government subsidies and protection,
particularly in Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD)
countries. Some developed countries continue to subsidize their farmers and,
where this leads to market surpluses, even their agricultural exports. For other
agricultural products, particularly tropical ones such as coffee, tea, natural
fibres, tropical fruits and vegetables, the problems include high as well as
complex and seasonal tariffs and significant tariff escalation.
2003-4:
Agricultural
Biotechnology : Meeting the needs of the poor?
This edition of The State of Food and Agriculture explores the
potential for agricultural biotechnology to address the needs of the world's
poor and food-insecure. Agriculture continues to face serious challenges,
including feeding an additional two billion people by the year 2030 from an
increasingly fragile natural resource base. The effective transfer of existing
technologies to poor rural communities and the development of new and safe
biotechnologies can greatly enhance the prospects for sustainably improving
agricultural productivity today and in the future. But technology alone cannot
solve the problems of the poor and some aspects of biotechnology, particularly
the socio-economic impacts and the food safety and environmental implications,
need to be carefully assessed.
Developing biotechnology in ways that contribute to the sustainable
development of agriculture, fisheries and forestry can help significantly in
meeting the food and livelihood needs of a growing population. The study of
genomics and molecular markers, for example, can facilitate breeding and
conservation programmes and provide new tools in the fight against plant and
animal diseases. It is clear from the survey of current and emerging
applications of biotechnology in this report that biotechnology encompasses far
more than genetic engineering. But it is the ability to move genes between
unrelated species that gives genetic engineering its enormous power and elicits
such profound concern. FAO recognizes the need for a balanced and comprehensive
approach to biotechnological development, taking into consideration the
opportunities and risks.
Biotechnology offers opportunities to increase the availability and variety
of food, increasing overall agricultural productivity while reducing seasonal
variations in food supplies. Through the introduction of pest-resistant and
stress-tolerant crops, biotechnology could lower the risk of crop failure under
difficult biological and climatic conditions. Furthermore, biotechnology could
help reduce environmental damage caused by toxic agricultural chemicals.
Following a first generation of genetically engineered crops, which aimed
primarily at reducing production constraints and costs, a second generation now
targets the bio-availability of nutrients and the nutritional quality of
products. Examples are found in the production of varieties of rice and canola
that contain appreciable amounts of beta-carotene. This precursor of vitamin A
is in short supply in the diets of many, particularly in the developing world
where it could help to alleviate or reduce chronic vitamin A deficiencies.
Research is under way to raise levels of other vitamins, minerals and proteins
in crops, such as potatoes and cassava.
This issue of The State of Food and Agriculture reviews the
historical record of agricultural research in promoting economic growth and food
security. The Green Revolution, which lifted millions of people out of poverty,
came about through an international programme of public-sector agricultural
research specifically aimed at creating and transferring technologies to the
developing world as free public goods. The Gene Revolution, by contrast, is
currently being driven primarily by the private sector, which naturally focuses
on developing products for large commercial markets. This raises serious
questions about the type of research that is being performed and the likelihood
that the poor will benefit.
2002:
Agriculture
and global public goods ten years after the Earth Summit
According to FAO's latest estimate, there were 815 million undernourished
people in the world in 1997-99: 777 million in the developing countries, 27
million in the countries in transition and 11 million in the developed market
economies.
More than half of the undernourished people (61 percent) are found in Asia,
while sub-Saharan Africa accounts for almost a quarter (24 percent).
In terms of the percentage of undernourished people in the total population,
the highest incidence is found in sub-Saharan Africa, where it was estimated
that one-third of the population (34 percent) were undernourished in 1997-99.
Sub-Saharan Africa is followed by Asia and the Pacific, where 16 percent of the
population are undernourished.
Significant progress has been made over the last two decades: the incidence
of undernourishment in the developing countries has decreased from 29 percent in
1979-81 to 17 percent in 1997-99.
However, progress has been very uneven. In Asia and the Pacific, the
percentage has been halved since 1979-81. In sub-Saharan Africa, by contrast,
the incidence of undernourishment has declined only marginally over the same
period. Considering the rapid population growth in this region, this means that
the total number of undernourished people in sub-Saharan Africa has increased
significantly. In Latin America and the Caribbean, the incidence of
undernourishment is lower than in Asia, but progress over the last two decades
has been slower. The Near East and North Africa region has the lowest incidence
of undernourishment, but has seen no reduction over the last two decades.
At the World Food Summit in 1996, heads of state and government made a
commitment to cut by half the number of undernourished people in
developing countries by 2015 (with 1990-92 as the benchmark period). Since the
benchmark period, the number of undernourished people has declined by a total of
39 million, corresponding to an average annual decline of 6 million. To achieve
the World Food Summit goal, the number of undernourished people would have to
decrease by an annual rate of 22 million for the remaining period - well above
the current level of performance.
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| 2001 |
Economic impacts of
transboundary plant pests and animal diseases
Pests and diseases have threatened farmers since farming began. The damage
they cause can be economic (through lost output, income and investment) as well
as psychological (manifested in shock and panic). Combating pests and diseases
is a necessity for farmers and, as a rule, decisions regarding control are made
by the individual farmer. However, the presence of a pest or disease on one farm
poses a threat to adjacent farms and sometimes even to distant localities. As
such, pests and diseases imply negative impacts on third parties and call for an
additional response, either from affected parties or a public agency.
Infrastructure and services to prevent and combat pests and diseases are a
public good that can be provided more efficiently by governments than by
individual farmers. Yet, the most effective form of government intervention
depends on the pest or disease in question. Experience has often shown that
government provision of pest and disease control services can create a
dependency among farmers and discourage their adoption of integrated pest
management approaches that enable them to address the problems themselves. In
such circumstances, government provision of knowledge, science and information
may be the best and most sustainable way of serving the farming community in the
long term.
The justification for government control intervention is stronger for
transboundary pests and diseases than for those that only occur locally.
Furthermore, in some countries the loss of food as a result of pests and
diseases may threaten food security or rural livelihoods, making intervention
politically unavoidable.
Plant pests and animal diseases pose the greatest immediate threat when they
move as plagues or when they are introduced for the first time into ecologically
favourable conditions where there are few natural factors to limit their spread
and people do not have experience in managing them. Such occurrences often have
the most evident economic impact and, in many cases, affect marginalized people
most severely.
The spread of emergent diseases and invasive species has increased
dramatically in recent years. At the same time, numerous developments - such as
the rapidly increasing transboundary movements of goods and people, trade
liberalization, increasing concerns about food safety and the environment - have
heightened the need for international cooperation in controlling and managing
transboundary pests and diseases.
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 |
| 2000 |
World food and agriculture:
lessons from the past 50 years
This review covers changes in the world food, agricultural and food security
situation over the past half-century, with a view to deriving policy messages
for the years to come.
Fifty years of world food and agriculture make up a canvas that can only be
painted with a broad brush. It is not only a long period but also an
extraordinarily eventful one - indeed, no other 50-year period in history has
seen such wide-ranging and rapid changes in humanity. These changes have not
left agriculture untouched. Food and agricultural techniques and systems have
undergone major transformations, as have agricultural and rural societies.
Different food security situations have also evolved across regions, countries
and groups of people. Progress has been spectacular in some areas, disappointing
in others. The world today appears overall to be a rich and peaceful place
compared with what it was 50 years ago. Yet, millions of people, even in rich
societies, are still bowed down by the suffering imposed on them by hunger and
related diseases. Such contrasts are certainly not specific to the contemporary
world, but advances in technology and resources have made hunger more avoidable
and, therefore, more intolerable today.
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|
| 1998 |
Rural non-farm income in
developing countries
The traditional image of farm households in developing countries has been that
they focus almost exclusively on farming and undertake little rural non-farm
(RNF) activity. This image persists and is
widespread even today. Policy debate still tends to equate farm income with
rural incomes, and rural/urban relations with farm/non-farm relations. Industry
Ministries have thus focused on urban industry and Ministries of Agriculture on
farming, and there has been a tendency even among agriculturists and those
interested in rural development to neglect the RNF sector.
Nevertheless, there is mounting evidence that RNF income (i.e. income
derived in this sector from wage-paying activities and self-employment in
commerce, manufacturing and other services) is an important resource for farm
and other rural households, including the landless poor as well as rural town
residents. Although this source accounts for only part of total off-farm income
(which also includes farm wages and migration earnings), this chapter focuses on
RNF income so as to enable a closer examination of what can be done within rural
areas themselves to increase overall economic activity and employment.
There are several reasons why the promotion of RNF activity can be of great
interest to developing country policy-makers. First, the evidence shows that RNF
income is an important factor in household economies and therefore also in food
security, since it allows greater access to food. This source of income may also
prevent rapid or excessive urbanization as well as natural resource degradation
through overexploitation.
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|
| 1997 |
The agroprocessing industry and
economic development |
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|
| 1996 |
Food security: some
macroeconomic dimensions |
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|
| 1995 |
Agricultural
trade: entering a new era? - Full
Report
The expansion of agricultural trade has helped provide greater quantity,
wider variety and better quality food to increasing numbers of people at lower
prices. Agricultural trade is also a generator of income and welfare for the
millions of people who are directly or indirectly involved in it. At the
national level, for many countries it is a major source of the foreign exchange
that is necessary to finance imports and development; while for many others
domestic food security is closely related to the country's capacity to finance
food imports.
As with any activity that involves buyers and sellers, however, agricultural
trade - perhaps more than any other trade tends to be a source of conflicts of
interest and international confrontation. One reason for this is that
agricultural policies are frequently influenced by the interests of particular
political constituencies within a country rather than by national, international
or global interests. Related reasons are: the emergence and growth of widespread
distortions in world agricultural markets; the food-security role of
agricultural trade, which confers upon it a special political, socio-economic
and strategic dimension; and, more recently, differing perceptions of the role
of agricultural trade in environmental matters of transnational or global i
merest.
Agricultural trade policy has long reflected the widely held belief that,
because of its importance and vulnerability, the agricultural sector could not
be exposed to the full rigours of international competition without incurring
unacceptable political, social and economic consequences. This view has led to
high and widespread protection of the sector, which has been a cause of
depressed and unstable agricultural commodity markets, in their turn, leading to
further pressures for protection. In recent years, however, many developing
countries have unilaterally taken steps towards the liberalization of overall
and agricultural markets. Most of these steps have involved the development of
structural adjustment programmes and regional cooperation schemes. In the former
centrally planned economies, the systemic reforms underway have also led to
greater external openness and this process, in particular the increasingly
important role in international trade that China is likely to play, has
far-reaching implications worldwide. On the other hand, for a number of
developed countries, including such major traders as the United States and the
EC, agricultural policy reform induced by domestic or international pressure has
led to some reduction in trade distortions but not to significant trade
liberalization as yet.
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|
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| 1994 |
Part III: Forest
development and policy dilemmas - Full
Report |
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| 1993 |
Part III: Water
policies and agriculture - Full report |
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| The World Bank: agriculture
and rural development |
The state of food insecurity in the world reports on
global and national efforts to reach the goal set by the 1996 World Food Summit: to reduce by half the
number of undernourished people in the world by the year 2015.
FAO has the mandate to monitor progress in hunger reduction based on accurate, reliable
and timely methods that measure the prevalence of hunger, food insecurity and
vulnerability and that also illustrate changes over time.
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Full SOFI report 2003
SOFI 2003 summary in
pdf (95 K)
News Story (1)
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Full SOFI report 2002
SOFI 2002 summary in
pdf (159 K)
News Stories (1) (2)
International Year of the Mountains
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Full SOFI report 2001
Press
release
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Full SOFI report 2000
Full SOFI report 2000
in pdf (1 MB)
SOFI 2000 summary in
pdf (376 K)
FAO Focus on SOFI
News and Highlights
Press
release
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Full SOFI report 1999 in pdf (1
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SOFI 1999 summary in
pdf (328 K)
FAO Focus on SOFI 1999
Press
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From UNCTAD
Least Developed Countries Report 1997
Agricultural Development and Policy Reforms in
LDCs
UNCTAD´s annual report on the Least Developed Countries (LDCs) is the most
comprehensive, and authoritative, source of socio-economic analysis and data on
the world s 48 most impoverished nations.
This year, it raises the following important questions:
Why, at a time of record resource flows to developing countries, is the LDC s
share of external finance falling?
Why, twenty years after the Green Revolution, have many LDCs failed to
improve their agricultural productivity?
Why, at a time of unparalleled prosperity, are the populations of nearly half
the LDCs getting less to eat than ten years ago?
What can the international community do to help those LDCs that have
experienced serious civil strife for over a decade, and whose economies are in
regress?
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From The World Bank Group
archives
Public and Private Roles
in Agricultural Development
Proceedings if the Twelfth
Agricultural Symposium
J. R. Anderson and C. de Haan, editors - 1992
File Copy 11505
From the Foreword: The tradition of the Annual Agricultural Symposium is now
well established...Our deliberations got off to a spirited start with the
Opening Address of Mr. Mahbub ul Haq, formerly of the World Bank and of many
senior positions in Pakistan and, most recently, of UNDP. His address "The
Myth of Friendly Markets" led to a vigorous debate with
participation by many of the very large audience of Bank staff.
The theme of this year's Symposium - Public and Private Roles in
Agricultural Development- is one that is to the fore of debate on many
aspects of Bank operations...the contributions ranged accross roles in
marketing, credit, research, extension, input supply, seeds, veterinary
services, and grassroots development initiatives.
Table of contents:
Opening Session:
Opening
Statement, by Lewis Preston
The
Myth of the Friendly Markets, by Mahbub ul Haq
Governments and the
handling of purchased ibputs and marketed outputs
The
art of privatizing after decades of planning, by Robert L. Roos
How
to privatize a parastatal, by Wilfred Candler
Rural
finance in developing countries, by Jacob Yaron
New approaches to
supporting agricultural research and Extension
An
initiative involving the private sector in meat and livestock research,
by Nigel H. Monteith
The
United Kingdom experience in the privatization of extension, by Paul
Ingram
Agricultural delivery
systems
From
agricultural extension to rural information management, by Willem Zijp
Energizing
the communication component in extension: a case for new pilot projects,
by Bella Mody
New
technologies in soil fertility maintenance private sector contributions,
by Dennis H. Parish
Public
and private sector roles in the supply of veterinary services, by
Cornelis de Haan and Dina L. Umali
Fostering
a Fledging Seed Industry, by Alexander Grobman
The
development and marketing of new material from biotechnology in the
commercial sector, by Sue Sundstrom
Long-term issues
affecting the environment in which public and private roles are played out
The
global supply of agricultural land, by Pierre Crosson
Land
use planning and productive capacity assessment, by Wim Sombroek
Update
on aquaculture: small-scale freshwater fish culture in South Asia, by
Darrell L. Deppert
Nutritional
considerations in World Bank lending for economic adjustment, by Harold
Alderman
Nongovernmental
organizations
Private
voluntary initiatives: enhancing the public sector's capacity to respond to
nongovernmental organizations needs, by Anthony Bebbington and John
Farrington
Nongovernmental
organization alternatives and fresh initiatives in extension: the Aga Khan
Rural Support Programme experience, by Shoaib Sultan Khan
Closing session
Closing
remarks, by Michel Petit
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Mexico
- Agricultural Development and Rural Poverty Project Vol. 1 (English)(1997) |
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Mexico
- Protected Areas Program Restructuring Project Vol. 1 (English)(1997) |
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Mexico
- Rural Finance Technical Assistance and Pilot Project Vol. 1 (English)(1996) |
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Mexico
- Third Integrated Rural Development (PIDER III) Project Vol. 1 (English)(1990) |
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Mexico
- Second Integrated Rural Development (PIDER II) Project Vol. 1 (English)(1986) |
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Mexico - Integrated Rural
Development (PIDER) Project Vol. 1 (English)(1983) |
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Mexico - Third Integrated Rural
Development (PIDER III) Project Vol. 1 (English)(1981) |
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Mexico - Third Integrated Rural
Development (PIDER III) Project Vol. 1 (English)(1981) |
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Mexico - Second Integrated Rural
Development (PIDER II) Project Vol. 1 (English)(1977) |
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Mexico
- Second Integrated Rural Development (PIDER II) Project Vol. 1 (English)(1977) |
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| Centro
de Documentación de Desarrollo Rural |
| El estado mundial de la agricultura y
la alimentación 2000 (FAO website) |
| Cumbre Mundial sobre la Alimentación.-1996 |
| Organización de las Naciones Unidas para la
agricultura y la alimentación |
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| Inter-Réseaux. Développement Rural |
| La situation mondiale de
l'alimentation et de l'agriculture 2000 (FAO website) |
| Sommet mondial de
l'alimentation.-November 2001 |
| Sommet mondial de l'alimentation.-1996 |
| Organisation de Nations Unies pour l'alimentation et
l'agriculture |
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