This 2014–2015 Global Food Policy Report is the fourth in an annual series that provides a comprehensive overview of major food policy developments and events. In this report, distinguished researchers, policymakers, and practitioners review what happened in food policy in 2014 at the global, regional, and national levels, and—supported by the latest knowledge and research—explain why. This year’s report is the first to also look forward a year, offering analysis of the potential opportunities and challenges that we will face in achieving food and nutrition security in 2015.

The Atlas of African Agriculture Research & Development is a multifaceted resource that high­lights the ubiquitous nature of smallholder agriculture in Africa; the many factors shaping the location, nature, and performance of agricultural enterprises; and the strong interde­pendencies among farming, natural resource stocks and flows, rural infrastructure, and the well-being of the poor.

In the ninth of the Land Governance Booklet Series created by the NGO Uttaran, the position and the work around research and advocacy on land rights is described.

The content of the booklet is as follows:

This publication, from the Global Land Tool Network, presents a mechanism for effective inclusion of women and men in land tool development and outlines methodologies and strategies for systematically developing land tools that are responsive to both women and men’s needs. Equal property rights for women and men are fundamental to social and economic gender equality. However, women often face discrimination in formal, informal and customary systems of land tenure.

The land challenge is central to the broader youth dynamics of migration, employment, livelihoods and belonging. The more than 1.8 billion youth living worldwide represent not only a land challenge, but an untapped potential in moving the tenure security agenda forward. Recognizing this, the Global Land Tool Network has partnered with UN-Habitat to develop youth responsive land tools through the Youth-led Action Research on Land program. Five action research projects will be undertaken by youth organizations in Brazil, Kenya, Nepal, Yemen and Zimbabwe.

This paper analyzes the effects of land
market restrictions on structural change from agriculture to
non-farm in a rural economy. This paper develops a
theoretical model that focuses on higher migration costs due
to restrictions on alienability, and identifies the
possibility of a reverse structural change where the share
of nonagricultural employment declines. The reverse
structural change can occur under plausible conditions: if

This paper investigates how land size
measurements vary across three common land measurement
methods (farmer estimated, Global Positioning System (GPS),
and compass and rope), and the effect of land size
measurement error on the inverse farm size relationship and
input demand functions. The analysis utilizes plot-level
data from the second wave of the Nigeria General Household
Survey Panel, as well as a supplementary land validation

While scholars agree on the importance
of land rental markets for structural transformation in
rural areas, evidence on the extent and nature of their
operation, including potential obstacles to their improved
functioning, remains limited. This study uses
household-level data from six countries to start filling
this gap and derive substantive as well as methodological
lessons. The paper finds that rental markets transfer land

This paper disentangles different
aspects of land fragmentation and its impact on the
efficiency of resource use. The paper uses information on
the incidence of crop shocks to assess whether fragmentation
provides benefits in reducing risk and parcel coordinates
and terrain-adjusted travel times between parcels to more
precisely account for the associated costs in 2010/11 data
from Rwanda. While fragmentation increases the time required

The 2007/08 commodity price boom
triggered a ‘rush’ for land in developing countries. Yet,
many affected countries lacked the regulatory infrastructure
to cope with such demand and reliable data on investors’
performance. This study uses the example of Ethiopia to show
how simple improvements in administrative data collection
can help to address this by (i) allowing assessment of the
productivity of land use and taking measures to increase it;

This paper presents early evidence from
the first large-scale randomized-controlled trial of a land
formalization program. The study examines the links between
land demarcation and investment in rural Benin in light of a
model of agricultural production under insecure tenure. The
demarcation process involved communities in the mapping and
attribution of land rights; cornerstones marked parcel
boundaries and offered lasting landmarks. Consistent with

Groundwater is a vital yet threatened
resource in much of South Asia. This paper develops a model
of groundwater transactions under payoff uncertainty arising
from unpredictable fluctuations in groundwater availability
during the agricultural dry season. The model highlights the
trade-off between the ex post inefficiency of long-term
contracts and the ex ante inefficiency of spot contracts.
The structural parameters are estimated using detailed