How can the process of tropical deforestation be controlled? We now know a good deal about the causes of deforestation but not its control. Research from the University of Leeds in Thailand and the Philippines fills this gap, showing that changes in the domestic political scene explain how deforestation processes have been controlled in the two countries. Environmental constraints and increases in agricultural productivity can curb the demand for farmland to some extent.

This paper examines the impact of recent changes in the relationship between landowners and tenants in Egypt.

This paper investigates the impact of climate variability on maize yield in the Limpopo Basin of South Africa using the Generalized Maximum Entropy (GME) estimator and Maximum Entropy Leuven Estimator (MELE). Maize constitutes about 70 percent of grain production and covers about 60 percent of the cropping area in South Africa. It is a summer crop, mostly grown in semiarid regions of the country, and is highly susceptible to changes in precipitation and temperature.

This report details the proceedings of a workshop for indigenous livestock breeding communities that took place in Nairobi, Kenya, October 2003. The workshop sought to raise awareness among indigenous livestock keepers on their rights over animal genetic resources.The workshop showcased the significance of traditional knowledge and social systems for upholding farm animal genetic diversity.

Is the World Bank’s approach to land relations gender insensitive? Is it realistic to pin poverty reduction aspirations on the promotion of credit markets and reliance on women’s unpaid labour? Does the acquisition of secure tenure rights necessarily benefit poor women? How should advocates of women’s rights in Africa respond to the Bank’s land agenda?

Sierra Leone has recently emerged from a long period of political instability and civil war, and is ranked among the world’s poorest countries. Thousands of displaced people are in the process of returning totheir villages to rebuild their mainly farming-based livelihoods, and many are growing food crops for the first time in a decade.

Intensive farming has been adopted to produce large amounts of food grains and cash crops but environment is being deteriorated at alarming rate also. Increased use of fertilizers, pesticides, chemical growth regulators, machinery and poor management practices are accelerating environmental pollution, soil degradation, global warming, climatic change and food deterioration. Conservation agriculture offers a sustainable solution for all these problems most often. This review focuses the use of fertilizers in conservation agriculture and their impact on weed management.

Understanding land accumulation dynamics is relevant for policymakers interested in the economic effects of land inequality in developing country agriculture. This Working Paper explores and simultaneously tests the leading theories of microlevel land accumulation dynamics using unique panel data from Paraguay. The results suggest that farm growth varies systematically with farm size – a formal rejection of stochastic growth theories (that is, Gibrat's Law) – and that titled land area may have considerable infuence on land accumulation.

This report aims to improve the knowledge base for scaling-up investments in land management technologies that sequester soil carbon for increased productivity under changing climate conditions. The report presents the following key messages.

This contributory chapter of Working Group III to the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) outlines the status of climate change mitigation in agriculture and its implications on development, production and consumption trends. It presents regional and global trends in greenhouse gas emissions, as well as future global trends.

Understanding factors affecting farmers’ adoption of improved technologies is critical to success of conservation agriculture (CA) program implementation. This study, which explored the factors that determine adoption and extent of farmers’ use of the three principles of CA (i.e., minimum soil disturbance, permanent soil cover with crop residues, and crop rotations), was conducted in 10 target communities in 8 extension planning areas in Malawi. The primary data was collected using structured questionnaires administered to individual households.

The global food system will experience an unprecedented combination of pressures over the next 40 years. Global population size will increase and competition for land, water and energy will intensify, while the effects of climate change will become increasingly apparent. Over this period, globalisation will continue, exposing the food system to novel economic and political pressures.This final report of the Foresight Global Food and Farming Futures Project argues that decisive action needs to take place now. The report identifies five considerable challenges ahead: