Although the commercial cultivation of genetically modified (GM) plants in Africa has been relatively modest until now, a number of research and development projects in this field are already operating in several African countries. These involve breeding drought-tolerant, pest-resistant or nutrient-enriched maize, or cassava varieties with greater disease and pest resistance. 

Since the 2008 food price crisis, foreign investors have been acquiring more and more land in poor countries for producing foodstuffs and biofuels for their own use. Such investments have the potential to promote rural development and food security worldwide. By the same token, however, there is the danger of countless small farmers losing their land, of food insecurity increasing in many places, and of social and ecological systems collapsing through pure "land grabbing".

Land is an asset of enormous importance for billions of rural dwellers in the developing world. Recent trends are prompting a massive increase in global commercial interest in land and natural resources, and this is creating unprecedented pressures on land resources, especially in developing countries.

Six years after the fall of the Taliban, Afghanistan is a long way from political stability and economic progress. The decline of state influence continues, especially in rural areas; because of the security situation, aid organisations are drastically cutting back their programmes and military considerations are taking on overriding importance.

Since 1996, the Centres for Agriculture in the Tropics and Subtropics of the Universities of Hohenheim and Göttingen and of Berlin's Humboldt University have organised a conference, the ''Tropentag'', once a year to present and discuss recent findings in research on agriculture and rural development. Other universities, like Kassel-Witzenhausen, have joined in, and the number of participants, papers and posters presented has more than doubled.

Poverty in rural households have deepened in the past two years through world events: unprecedented rises in food and fuel prices were followed by global economic meltdown, all amidst growing climate uncertainty. Balancing water availability within and across growing seasons, water harvesting helps to buffer households against drought. Research on water harvesting in South Africa has focused on rural household livelihoods. Innovative results on appropriate water harvesting technologies and food security facilitation techniques are now being implemented in villages across South Africa.

More than 70 percent of the world's poor live in rural areas.The World Bank's approach to rural development is holistic and multisectoral, focused on improving the wellbeing of rural people by building their productive, social, and environmental assets. The author of this article explores what this means in the longer term horizon of beyond 2015.

Water is scarce in India's semiarid zones of Rajasthan. Climate change is putting additional pressure on the rare resources. Irregular or no rainfall forces many small farmers to abandon their fields, at least temporarily, and seek work in the towns. Participative water management projects as practiced in Bhipur village, growing crops with low water requirements and more sustainable farming practices are adaptation strategies that allow farmers to continue their activities despite climate risks.

Few aspects of development policy are better furnished with empirical evidence than the interplay between support for agriculture in the context of rural development and the reduction of poverty and hunger. It is therefore surprising that German Development Cooperation has today largely disengaged from activities in this area: Despite the evidence that practically nothing is more effective and sustainable than combating poverty where it is most often found, namely in the rural areas of poor countries,we fail to take that route.

In Germany, the debate about the security/development nexus is gathering pace. The reality of life in crisis regions, the management of post-conflict situations and the precautionary anticipation of demands arising in the context of crisis management all require the highest level of coordination at political and local level and on a cross-sectoral basis. Long-term improvement of this coordination, both vertical and horizontal, is the most important resource factor for these two policy areas and can be achieved without mobilising additional budget funds.

Fragile states, posing a major challenge of our times, are increasingly becoming a focus of attention in international politics and development cooperation. But very often, the viewpoint of the people affected by fragile statehood is not sufficiently heard. Parts of the international community prioritize their own security policy interests, the motto being the «war on terrorism». People in fragile states, by contrast, are primarily concerned with their own survival and the quest for development opportunities for themselves and their communities.

The early development strategies of both China and India were urban- and industry-focused, discounting the importance of rural development. Despite sweeping reforms in both countries, the urban bias and subsequent spatial disparities still exist today. In order to reduce poverty and increase growth, developing countries need to correct these spatial disparities through a set of policies that take advantage of the synergies and linkages between rural and urban areas.