Agriculture is the largest global user of biodiversity. Over-reliance on a handful of crops puts global food security at great risk especially in the context of climate change. Selected and used by generations of farmers, agricultural biodiversity contributes to reducing malnutrition, alleviating poverty and combating climate change challenges. This diversity has been in decline for decades and is now in danger of disappearing and efforts needed to conserve them using both ex situ and in situ approaches.

This report explores evidence and insights from five case studies that have made significant recent progress in addressing the challenge of insuring poor smallholder farmers and pastoralists in the developing world. In India, national index insurance programmes have reached over 30 million farmers through a mandatory link with agricultural credit and strong government support.

The project aims to support small-scale farmers in the project area in their efforts to adapt their farming practices to anticipated climate change and to enhance their incomes.

This report argues that land reform, both tenancy reform and redistribution of ceiling surplus lands to the landless, is important to poverty alleviation.The paper argues that in addition to production benefits, land reform helps to change the local political structure by giving more voice to the poor. Re-distributive land reform, whether through market-assisted land reform programmes or otherwise, should remain a substantive policy issue for poverty reduction.

Hundreds of millions of people in Asia are dependent on shifting cultivation, yet the practice has tended to be seen in a negative light and discouraged by policy makers. This document challenges prevailing assumptions, arguing that shifting cultivation – if properly practised – is actually a ‘good practice’ system for productively using hill and mountain land, while ensuring conservation of forest, soil, and water resources. Focusing on Eastern Himalayan farmers, it looks at whether there is a need for new, more effective and more socially acceptable policy options that help to improve shi

Poverty reduction has become a worldwide promise, yet the term itself has been commonly abused to legitimize development policies and projects with truly questionable impacts on the poor. This article critically reflects on how claims of poverty reduction through agricultural development have been turned into tactics of land capture in Cambodia.

ABSTRACTED FROM EXECUTIVE SUMMARY: During the critical years following the 2012 land reforms undertaken in the midst of Myanmar’s political transition, Gret conducted an in-depth study combining qualitative and quantitative surveys in nine villages of Bogale and Mawlamyinegyun townships (Delta) and nine villages in Monywa and Yinmabin townships (Dry Zone). The full report and the synthesis are the result of more than two years in-depth research and 13 months of eldwork that involved an inter-disciplinary team of 11 international and Myanmar researchers.

The Thai government has ambitious plan to further promote the use of biodiesel. However, there has been insufficient consideration on the environmental effects of oil palm expansion in Thailand. This paper focuses on the effects of oil palm expansion on land use. We analysed the direct land use change (dLUC) and indirect land use change (iLUC) caused by the oil palm expansion and its effects on ecosystem services supply. Our analysis shows that between 2000 and 2009 dLUC related to oil palm expansion was more prevalent than iLUC.

During Vietnam’s transition from a socialist to a market economy, household’s property rights over agricultural land were considerably strengthened through a land certification program. This resulted in active formal credit and land markets, either of which potentially affects consumption levels and volatility. This article evaluates the program impact with respect to consumption outcomes. In particular, it identifies the channel of impact through which improved property rights affect consumption volatility.

Investment in agricultural land in the developing world has rapidly increased in the past two decades. In Cambodia, there has been a surge in economic land concessions, in which long-term leases are provided to foreign and domestic investors for economic development. More than two million hectares have been leased so far, sparking debate over the consequences for local communities and the environment.

As BRICS-led foreign investment in agriculture has increased dramatically worldwide in recent years, China in particular, has begun to secure huge quantities of foreign land as an additional measure for securing future food and energy supplies. While an increasing amount of academic research has been conducted on the expansion of land deals in Latin America and Africa in recent years, Southeast Asian cases are just beginning to receive significant attention and have become the focus of some emerging academic and non-academic research.

Over the last decade, the highlands of Ratanakiri province in northeastern Cambodia have witnessed massive land acquisitions and profound land use changes, mostly from forest covers to rubber plantation, which has contributed to rapidly and profoundly transform the livelihoods of smallholders relying primarily on family-based farming. Based on village- and households-level case studies in two districts of the province, this paper analyses this process and its mid-term consequences on local livelihoods. We first look at who has acquired land, where, how and at what pace.