The years of war have led to a rapid decline in the nutritional status of people in the Democratic Republic of Congo. To cover their protein requirements, the rural population in the Kivu region in the east of the country have turned to raising guinea pigs. For many families these rodents are nowadays not just a vital element of their food security, but also an essential source of income.

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. 

Nerica – New Rice for Africa is the name of the great biotechnological success in rice breeding. What scientists created in the lab using modern methods, namely hybrids of African rice and Asian rice, had already come into being decades ago by chance in West African ?elds.

A team of German and Spanish scientists has genetically modified a maize plant in a way that markedly increases the level of three vitamins in the maize kernels. The level of betacarotene, the precursor to vitamin A, was raised by a factor of 169, the level of vitamin C increased six-fold and the level of folic acid, a vitamin of the B group, doubled.

Kenya is still largely agrarian with 80 percent of its population depending on agriculture for food, employment and income. The dilemma facing the country is that only 20 percent of the land is suited for agricultural production. A greater proportion of the country, however, consists of agroecologically less favoured areas (LFAs). Another dilemma in Kenya?s agricultural sector is that economic development impacts are not homogeneously spread even among the agriculturally favoured areas.

Dar es Salaam is one of the fastest growing cities in sub-Saharan Africa. In its rapidly expanding peri-urban fringe poor migrants from distant rural areas settle down on plots they can afford that provide access to urban markets. They engage in commercial poultry farming establishing sustainable livelihoods and improving food security in the city.

In many developing countries, supermarkets are growing fast. This growth entails a change in the food chain that supplies fresh foods from farmers and processed foods via agroprocessors. Farmers who wish to participate in the food chain have to adapt to the supermarkets' requirements. It is the task of governments to improve infrastructures, and access to support services and financial services.

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.

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.

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.

Many adaptation measures urgently needed in agriculture today as a consequence of climate change concern water in agriculture and were already devised and implemented in the 1980s as a part of rural development activities. However, most of the experience and knowledge have sunk without trace. Systematic knowledge management at that time would have made it possible to benefit from this experience today in the planning and implementation of water-related adaptation measures, providing effective support for these measures and hastening their implementation.

Agricultural value chains link urban consumption with rural production. Changing demand, as a consequence of urbanization, emergence of «modern» consumption patterns or new trends in international trade, impacts on rural areas along value chains and spills over to marketing and production systems.These rural urban linkages bear challenges but also mutual benefits for producers and consumers and can be promising entry points for development interventions.This is illustrated with the case of the Kenyan potato value chain.