Key messages:
- Smallholder farmers and forestry producers have a crucial role to play in food security, sustainable land use and emissions reductions initiatives.
- Producers and investors alike require appropriate incentive structures to facilitate participation in sustainable land use initiatives.
- A networked financing approach—Inari—may provide an innovative response to financing sustainable land use via intelligent diversification and addressing the finance needs of smallholders.

How should African politicians respond to the ‘land rush’? Parliamentarians from the member states of the Central African Economic and Monetary Community (CEMAC) met in mid-November to debate this question. Includes a collective response to agriculture and food security is needed, what land deals are underway in Central Africa?; investment and production, but for which markets?; impacts of land deals on Africa farmers; can Africa help secure the world’s food supply?; transparency isa precondition for inclusive investments; what should be done?

Using two surveys from Bangladesh, this paper provides evidence on the effects of microfinance competition on village moneylender interest rates and households' dependence on informal credit. The views among practitioners diverge sharply: proponents claim that competition of microfinance institutions reduces both the moneylender interest rate and households' reliance on informal credit, while the critics argue the opposite.

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

The Government of Indonesia (GOI) is in
the process of designing a national REDD+ mechanism to allow
it to access donor funding in the medium term, and funding
from a potential performance based mechanism in the long
term. This policy brief is focused on the broad question of
how REDD+ can address underlying community issues such as
lack of access to forest land, and does not deal with the
more specific questions of legal and institutional

This paper examines some of the concepts
surrounding the idea that forests and trees can contribute
to making households more resilient to food insecurity. The
paper begins with a discussion of the widely accepted
definitions of food security, and the implications for our
understanding of the role of forests and trees in
contributing to food security. Authors discuss the origins
of the idea of resilience, adaptability, and transformation

Considering that agriculture remains a key sector in Ethiopia, commercialization of the sector necessitates improving participation of smallholder farmers in markets, hence improving their incomes and livelihoods. Promoting smallholder commercialization through cash crop production is one avenue of such efforts. The main argument for smallholder commercialization through cash crop production is that it can allow households to increase their income directly. Sesame in Ethiopia can be taken as a good example in this regard.

Termite infestation is symptomatic of severe land degradation in many semi-arid regions of the Nile Basin. One characteristic of land degradation is low organic matter (OM) reserves in vegetative biomass and soil. One consequence is excessive rainwater depletion through non-productive evaporation and runoff leading to low agricultural water productivity and diminished livelihoods. CPWF research demonstrated that rapid restoration of pasture production is possible by providing manure through night corralling of cattle prior to re-seeding termite affected rangeland in Uganda.

Thirteen years after the adoption of UN Security Council Resolution 1325, investment in women as agents of change in peacebuilding remains inadequate. One of the unexplored entry points for strengthening womens contributions to peacebuilding relates to the way in which they use, manage, make decisions on and benefit from natural resources.

According to the most recent AgLetter, Seventh District farmland values in the third quarter of 2013 were 14 percent higher than a year ago. However, values for “good” agricultural land in the third quarter of 2013 were only 1 percent higher than in the second quarter.

agricultural productivity, total factor productivity (TFP), land productivity, labor productivity, International Development, International Relations/Trade, Production Economics, Productivity Analysis,

With a fast growing population requiring an ever growing supply of food, a national poverty rate of 63 percent, and a labor force that is dominated by agricultural work, Nigeria's efforts to boost agricultural productivity could not be better timed. Though women constitute a large share of the agricultural labor force in Nigeria, little is known about their activities, roles, and constraints in the sector.