Smallholder farmers in Georgia face multiple challenges, including low productivity and poor access to the inputs and capacities that they need. Oxfam and its partners are implementing a programme that aims to increase agricultural productivity and support the competitiveness of smallholder farmers. The project works with smallholder farmers to establish and strengthen business-oriented farmer groups. The project also promotes changes to national policy and legislation, in order to create a more conducive environment for their development.

El Caso del Asentamiento Nueva Esperanza, en Paraguay, es una lucha emblemática por la tierra y el manejo racional de los recursos naturales. Dos comunidades se organizaron e identificaron tierras no lejanas en estado de abandono, y empezaron las gestiones para adjudicárselas. A partir de febrero de 1999, 120 familias comienzan los trámites ante el INDERT.

The database consists of data on soil properties of both on station and 20 farmer fields, household characteristics of 301 households, woreda level crop production statistics for the past 5 years, land use maps and data and long-term historical climate data for Adamitullu in Oromia region, Ethiopia

The Department of Agriculture, Forestry, and Fisheries is currently developing a project in conjunction with the Department of Rural Development and Land Reform (DRDLR) to create Agri-parks in locations throughout South Africa. These Agri-parks aim to involve smallholders and local producers in the entire process of agriculture to address both food security and poverty. The Department hopes to fight issues such as the 14 million hungry South Africans, unused potential farmland, and the inequality between private agricultural business and the people.

The lessons learned from the
implications of the global crisis for the Armenian economy
led the Government of Armenia to refine its approach to
economic development policy. The business environment, the
market structure, and the incentive pattern had not fostered
reallocation of resources into more productive areas or the
emergence of internationally competitive products and
services. Despite numerous initiatives and multiple efforts,

The report Africa Can Help Feed Africa
(World Bank 2012) showed that increasing food staples1
supply can be met by better connecting African markets to
each other. That report called for a stronger focus on
removing trade barriers and building on the forces of
regional integration. This report builds on the lessons of
Africa Can Help Feed Africa by looking into the specific
circum¬stances met in West Africa, home to one-third of the

This paper discusses how catastrophe
crop risk models can be used to assess food security needs
at the sovereign level for the purpose of risk transfer. The
rationale for a system to evaluate food security needs at
the national level is discussed. The role of technology and
remote sensing data availability as an enabler of
catastrophe crop risk models is discussed followed by a
description of the framework of catastrophe crop models for

This issue of Handshake focuses on
natural resource PPPs that are making a difference. In
Cartagena, Colombia, a hybrid public-private agency is
profiled that has standardized water service to residents
while restoring the coast, and in the process, contributed
to political stabilization. Around Africas Lake Victoria, an
environmental management initiative with the potential to
reduce the pollution and resource footprint of industrial

The 2007/08 commodity price boom
triggered a ‘rush’ for land in developing countries. Yet,
many affected countries lacked the regulatory infrastructure
to cope with such demand and reliable data on investors’
performance. This study uses the example of Ethiopia to show
how simple improvements in administrative data collection
can help to address this by (i) allowing assessment of the
productivity of land use and taking measures to increase it;

This paper examines whether cooperative
behavior by respondents measured as contributions in a
one-shot public goods game correlates with reported
pro-forest collective action behaviors. All the outcomes
analyzed are costly in terms of time, land, or money. The
study finds significant evidence that more cooperative
individuals (or those who believe their group members will
cooperate) engage in collective action behaviors that

This paper estimate the effects of
collective action in Nepal’s community forests on four
ecological measures of forest quality. Forest user group
collective action is identified through membership in the
Nepal Community Forestry Programme, pending membership in
the program, and existence of a forest user group whose
leaders can identify the year the group was formed. This
last, broad category is important, because many community

This paper provides new empirical
insights on the joint distribution of consumption, income,
and wealth in three of the poorest countries in the world —
Malawi, Tanzania, and Uganda — all located in Sub-Saharan
Africa (SSA). The first finding is that while income
inequality is similar to that of the United States (US),
wealth inequality is barely one-third that of the US.
Similarly, while the top of the income distribution (1 and