Groundwater provides an important buffer to climate variability in Africa. Yet groundwater irrigation contributes only a relatively little share of cultivated land, approximately 1% (about 2 million hectares) as compared to 14% in Asia. While groundwater is over-exploited for irrigation in many parts in Asia, previous assessments indicate an under-utilized potential in parts of Africa.

The chapter describes the major sites of open-space vegetable farming in Ghana’s main cities. It also presents the principal cropping systems and characteristics of urban farmers involved in irrigated vegetable production.

The role of urban agriculture in global food security is a topic of increasing discussion. Existing research on urban and peri-urban agriculture consists largely of case studies that frequently use disparate definitions of urban and peri-urban agriculture depending on the local context and study objectives. This lack of consistency makes quantification of the extent of this practice at the global scale difficult.

By 2050, it is estimated that the
world s agricultural system will need to produce
approximately 50 percent more food to feed an estimated 9
billion people. In emerging markets, agriculture is the most
important economic sector and source of employment; more
specifically, 75 percent of the world s poor live in rural
areas and depend on agriculture for their incomes. With
volatility in food prices putting additional pressure on

Ukraine is renowned as the breadbasket
of Europe thanks to its black soils ( Chernozem black
because of the high organic matter content) which offer
exceptional agronomic conditions. One-third of the worldwide
stock of the fertile black soils, which cover more than half
of Ukraine s arable land, a large variety of climatic zones,
and favourable temperature and moisture regimes, offers
attractive conditions for the production of a large range of

This paper examines the determinants of
agricultural productivity and its link to poverty using
nationally representative data from the Nigeria General
Household Survey Panel, 2010/11. The findings indicate an
elasticity of poverty reduction with respect to agricultural
productivity of between 0.25 to 0.3 percent, implying that a
10 percent increase in agricultural productivity will
decrease the likelihood of being poor by between 2.5 and 3

The Land Use Consolidation Act (LUC) was introduced in 2008 and is an important
component of agricultural policy in Rwanda. As part of the Government of Rwanda’s
broader Crop Intensification Program (CIP), LUC entails participating farmers
consolidating aspects of their operations with neighboring farmers, while retaining
individual ownership of their parcels. LUC farmers also agree to grow a single priority
crop that has been identified by the Ministry of Agriculture (MINAGRI) as best suited to

The Regulation prescribes the criteria for determining the dominant land use category in transactions with agricultural land; the information to be included in the application for transactions with agricultural land and the documents to be appended thereto; the procedures by which an agricultural land lessee and the manager of the Latvian Land Fund must exercise their pre-emptive right; the procedures by which a local government committee must be funded and established, its composition, as well as the rights and obligations of the local government committee; the procedures by which a local

This Law amends and supplements articles 17 and 18 of Law No. 9948 of 2008 dealing with the already-started land distribution procedures regulated by previous Laws No. 7501 of 1991 and No. 8312 of 1998 and provides local government structures with more time to finalize the documentation. It also adds article 19 according to which the decisions of the municipalities’ and communes’ councils and the documentation of land property completed by them according to law 9948 of 2008 during the period of 31 December 2013 to the date this law enters into force are considered valid. Amends: Law No.

The agricultural economics literature provides various estimates of the number of farms and small farms in the world. This paper is an effort to provide a more complete and up to date as well as carefully documented estimate of the total number of farms in the world, as well as by region and level of income. It uses data from numerous rounds of the World Census of Agriculture, the only dataset available which allows the user to gain a complete picture of the total number of farms globally and at the country level.