The purpose of this report is to provide national- and state-level policymakers, private-sector investors, civil society, and donors with an analysis of the rural economy of Mon State and pathways to improved prosperity for its population. The analysis is based on a representative survey of rural households, which make up 73 percent of Mon State’s 2 million residents, and extensive interviews with farmers, traders, processors, local leaders, and government officials.

كان عام 2015 لحظة فارقة لمجتمع التنمية الدولية. فلقد ابرزت نهاية الاهداف
الانمائية للألفية التقدم الملحوظ والمحقق لتلك الاهداف منذ عام 1990 ، حيث
انخفضت معدلات الجوع والفقر المدقع ووفيات الأطفال إلى النصف، ومع ذلك تظل هناك
تحديات جسيمة. يستعرض تقرير السياسة الغذائية العالمية لعام 2016 الاتجاهات والاحداث
والتغيرات الكبرى التى تؤثر على الأمن الغذائي والتغذية في عام 2015 وما بعدها؛ كما
يناقش كيف يمكن للنظام الغذائي العالمي أن يساهم فى المزيد من خفض معدلات حدة الفقر،
والجوع، وسوء التغذية مع ضمان الاستخدام المستدام لموارد العالم. وسوف يكون عام 2016

ABSTRACTED FROM EXECUTIVE SUMMARY: Rubber prices in northern Laos have fallen significantly over the last few years, eroding much of the enthusiasm developed by both farmers and government officials in the 1990s and early 2000s about rubber providing a way out of poverty for poor upland farmers.

Smallholders remain an important part of human-environment research, particularly in cultural and political ecology, peasant and development studies, and increasingly in land system and sustainability science. This introduction to the edited volume explores land use and livelihood issues among smallholders, in several disciplinary and subfield traditions. Specifically, we provide a short history of smallholder livelihood research in the human-environment tradition.

Land-titling programs, land and forest allocation programs, and projects on state-allocated land for development and investment in Laos have been key drivers of change in land tenure. These have triggered major shifts in land use rights, from customary, to temporary, and then to permanent land use rights. This article explores how government programs to grant land use rights to individual households have affected the way people have been able to acquire and secure land tenure.

Farmland resources in mountainous areas are important for regional food security and ecological security. Studies concerning changes in farmland use in mountainous areas are of considerable significance in China. Here, we analyzed marginalization characteristics of farmland in Renhuai city from 2005 to 2011 and driving factors using land information systems, surveys of farmer households and statistical data. Our results indicate that from 2005 to 2011, 3095.76 hm² of farmland was converted to forest land and natural reserve, accounting for 5.45% of the total farmland area.

Private landholders’ contributions to biodiversity conservation are critical in landscapes with insufficient formal conservation reserves, as is the case in Australia's tropical savannas. This study reports results from a discrete choice experiment conducted with pastoralists and graziers across northern Australia. The experiment was designed to explore the willingness of pastoralists and graziers to sign up to voluntary biodiversity conservation contracts. Understanding preferences for contractual attributes and preference heterogeneity were additional objectives.

We describe the results of a survey of farmers’ perceptions of and satisfaction with the performance of watershed development activities on socioeconomic, agriculture and livestock, and environmental attributes. We administered a questionnaire to 120 farmers randomly interviewed in the Morni Hill area of the Siwalik Himalayas in India. Our results show that the farmers have considerable knowledge about the implementation of watershed development activities and their impact on the economy, agriculture and the environment.

This paper reviews the constraints and challenges of paddy farming in Taiwan. Based on those evidences, a set of eco-friendly rice farming practices raised by SRI principles are proposed from exploratory SRI trials conducted in Taiwan.

Although efforts in improving forest rights across developing countries are growing, de jure property rights and physical ownership of forests do not automatically enable farmers to obtain benefits from forests. Their access to forest benefits is limited by a range of legal and extralegal mechanisms.

In the Blue Nile Basin of Ethiopian highlands, rainfall distribution is extremely uneven both spatially and temporally. Drought frequently results in crop failure, while high rainfall intensities result in low infiltration and high runoff causing soil erosion and land degradation. These combined factors contribute to low agricultural productivity and high levels of food insecurity. Poor land management practices coupled with lack of effective rainwater management strategies aggravate the situation.

Given the regional geographic specificities of Central Andean valleys, the social and environmental impact of dispersed urbanization on smallholder farmers is particularly high in the new urban peripheries of Peruvian mountain cities.