This paper compares and contrasts the
performance of rural and urban manufacturing firms in
Ethiopia to assess the impact of market integration and the
investment climate on firm performance. Rural firms are
shown to operate in isolated markets, have poor access to
infrastructure and a substantial degree of market power,
whereas urban firms operate in better integrated and more
competitive markets, where they have much better access to

This paper uses two recently completed
surveys of individual entrepreneurs (farmers and
microentrepreneurs) and registered enterprises (agricultural
and nonagricultural) operating in Mexico s rural sector to
provide new evidence about the factors influencing the
incidence of credit constraints and investment behavior. To
measure the incidence of credit constraints, the authors use
self-reported information on whether economic agents have a

This document presents a set of guiding principles that promote to responsible contract farming operations. It is intended to serve as guidance for farmers and buyers engaged in contractual relationships, in order to promote good business practices and maintain an atmosphere of trust and respect that is essential if contract farming is to prove effective.

An appropriate rural investment climate (RIC) is essential for rural businesses to be successful and generate employment and income in their communities. Improving the investment climate could facilitate income-generation activities in both farm and nonfarm sectors, thus reducing rural poverty. Nonfarm sector focused growth, combined with agricultural growth, and has been shown by Delgado et al. (1998) to have a significant impact on the local economy through the generation of employment and income.

The Asian Farmers’ Association for Sustainable Development (AFA) and Women Organizing for Change in Agriculture and Natural Resource Management (WOCAN) agreed to undertake an outcome-based evaluation of the ten provincial training activities conducted from May –December 2010, under a twoyear Rural Women’s Leadership Project (RWLP), supported by the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) through the Government of Norway.

The structure of this review is as follows: the first section discusses how contract farming is defined for the purposes of this review and  briefly describes the history and extent of contract farming globally. The second section details the main factors contributing to the increased incidence of contract farming in developing countries, and describes the most common models utilised. Section 3 covers the main conceptual and theoretical perspectives on contract farming.

The LAPSSET Corridor project, a major infrastructure development project that will run from Kenya to South Sudan and Ethiopia, will impact, positively or negatively, on the lives of more than 100 million people in the three countries. Indigenous peoples will potentially suffer the most negative impacts as a result of their having been historically marginalized economically, socially and politically. The recent discovery of oil in Turkana will add to the suffering of the Turkana peoples.

Ekta Parishad along with support organisations launched a decisive movement called Jan Satyagrah whose focus was to bring together people’s voices for a ‘National Land Reforms Act & Policy’ as a broad framework and means of land re-distribution to the landless and homeless poor.

En esta edición de La Revista Agraria presentamos un especial sobre la concentración de la tierra en el Perú, con artículos sobre el tamaño de los latifundios, variables a tener en cuenta para limitar la propiedad rural, el acaparamiento en la subasta de tierras del proyecto Olmos, y los problemas ambientales que presentan los proyectos de irrigación en la costa. También se hace un análisis del presupuesto del MINAG y la problemática del sector vicuñero.

Public agricultural extension systems often fail due to inadequate consultation of farmers about their information needs and poor understanding of their information search strategies. In discussing and implementing extension programs and advisory services, the following questions need to be addressed: What information do the farmers need? How and where do they search for information? What factors determine their search behavior? How much are they willing to pay for information?

We preliminarily find that providing sustainable land management (SLM) training to standard contact farmers and having them maintain demonstration plots within the community on a whole had low impact on the knowledge and adoption of SLM practices. However, the aspect of our intervention that targeted a traditionally disadvantaged group as far as their access to extension services, women, was somewhat successful in terms of improving their SLM knowledge and adoption rates. Having a female contact farmer increased the number of SLM techniques adopted by women by 10 percent.