By and large, it appears that the goals of agricultural reform are being met in Mexico. But measures such as decoupling income supports and price supports or reorienting research and extension could help farmers who cannot afford access to machinery and purchased inputs and services.Lopez, Nash, and Stanton report the results of a study of Mexican farm households using 1991 survey data and a smaller resurvey of some of the same households in 1993.One study goal was to empirically examine the relationship between assets and the output supply function.

For 25 years, agricultural growth has been a key source of the growth in Pakistan's GDP, but the momentum may be running out. Key problems include a crisis in irrigation and the government's overextended role in agriculture. An example of inappropriate government intervention is the provision of subsidies that do not help farmers, either because of rent seeking and inefficiency or because the subsidy (for wheat, for example) helps consumers at the expense of producers.

Commercial farms in South Africa could become significantly more efficient if they became smaller. The government could encourage that trend by removing policies and distortions that favor large over small farms.Drawing on international evidence, van Zyl, Binswanger, and Thirtle discuss the sources of economies of scale.

Apparently factor prices do matter in agricultural production and in the selection of production technology. And in South Africa, more attention should be focused on the technological needs of small scale farmers.

The Agricultural Perspective Plan (APP) is a national strategy with a cross-sectoral approach with a duration of twenty years (1995-2015). Its goal is to add two percentage points to the country’s agricultural growth which would expand per capita agricultural growth sixfold, from its current 0.5% to 3% per year. The APP strategy is based on the acceleration of the agricultural growth rate sufficiently to obtrain strong multiplier effect on growth in employment, both in agriculture itself and in nonagricultural sectors.

A large body of literature makes the argument that commercialization of agriculture has mainly negative effects on the employment, incomes, food production and consumption, health, and nutrition of the poor. In Commercialization of Agriculture, Economic Development, and Nutrition, Joachim von Braun and Eileen Kennedy find that the conclusion that commercialization of agriculture is generally bad for nutrition is flawed.

ABSTRACTED FROM IIED WEBSITE INTRODUCTION: One of the outputs of a research project considering shifting cultivation in Thailand, Lao PDR and Vietnam. It considers the dynamics of shifting cultivation and alternative land use systems in the context of highland development in Thailand, gathered in order to provide up-to-date information to policymakers. The study includes examination of national policies relating to highland areas and the impacts of such policies on local communities and land use patterns.

This research is being undertaken as an ILCA project with support from the Rockefeller Post-Doctoral Fellowship Programme. There are three objectives. One objective is very similar to that of the World Bank and Niger studies: to determine the effects of land tenure on investment, productivity and efficiency in crop-livestock systems in the Ethiopian highlands.

This research was undertaken as a Ph.D. dissertation (Stanford University) in conjunction with the ILCA programme in Niamey, Niger. The objective of the research was similar to that of the World Bank studies: to test how land tenure affects land-improving investment, agricultural productivity and resource management. The standard hypothesis is that land tenure that is non-exclusive insecure or non-transferable will lead to under-investment and depressed factor mobility.

The paper suggests a way forward to increase considerably the food-production in the Sub-Saharan African countries which have perpetually been suffering from acute shortage of food grains. Contrary to observed trends in most parts of the world, food production in Sub-Saharan Africa has failed miserably to keep pace with the growing population. Consequently, the region has been one of the most famine-prone regions on the planet. There is a lot to be learnt from the experience of many of the Asian countries who have made it on the food front inspite of equally difficult population pressures.