The magnitude of risks facing Mongolian agriculture has made the sector’s
development extraordinarily volatile over the last 25 years as it underwent decollectivization.
Livestock in particular has seen rapid and largely unsustainable
rates of growth in terms of numbers of animals and herders, and in so doing has
become acutely vulnerable to the severe winter weather events known as dzuds.
Periodic droughts and other production risks have also affected the country’s
much smaller crop agriculture, much of which is geared for the production of

Improved agricultural risk management is one of the core enabling actions of the
Group of Eight’s (G-8’s) New Alliance for Food Security and Nutrition. The Agricultural
Risk Management Team (ARMT) of the Agriculture and Environment Services
Department of the World Bank conducted an agricultural sector risk assessment to better understand the dynamics of agricultural risks and
identify appropriate responses, incorporate agricultural
risk perspective into decision-making, and build capacity
of local stakeholders in risk assessment and management.

The performance of Senegal’s
agricultural performance exemplifies the impact of unmanaged
risk on productivity among vulnerable smallholder crop
producers and pastoralists. The government of Senegal has
historically responded to drought and other shocks with
direct financial support to farmers as well as general
assistance to the rural population. The World Bank, with
support from the group of eight (G-8) and the United States

Agriculture is the dominant sector of
the economy, contributing a third of the country’s gross
domestic product (GDP) and about half of Rwanda’s export
earnings. The government of Rwanda has therefore made
agricultural development a priority and allocated
significant resources to improving productivity, expanding
the livestock sector, promoting sustainable land management,
and developing supply chains and value-added activities. At

This study analyzes the long-term
impacts of large-scale expansion of biofuels on land-use
change, food supply and prices, and the overall economy in
various countries or regions using a global computable
general equilibrium model, augmented by a land-use module
and detailed representation of biofuel sectors. The study
finds that an expansion of global biofuel production to meet
currently articulated or even higher national targets in

The project ( 1996-2001 - US$22 million
credit ) was uniquely designed as a risk management
instrument - it conceived the establishment of a viable,
government-run system of drought management, through early
warning systems, contingency plans, mitigation and quick
response. The design also devolved responsibility to the
district and community level, encouraging civil servants and
other district development actors to empower local

An extensive review of literature on the
determinants of adoption and impacts of land management
technologies in the Ethiopian highlands was undertaken to
guide policy makers and development agencies in crafting
programs and policies that can better and more effectively
address land degradation in Ethiopia. Several
generalizations emerge from the review: 1) the profitability
of land management technologies is a very important factor

This paper reviews past studies on the
costs of land degradation in Ethiopia, with a view to
drawing implications for policies, programs, and future
research on sustainable land management (SLM). Given the
wide range of methods and assumptions used in the studies,
their findings concerning annual costs of land degradation
relative to agricultural gross domestic product (AGDP) are
of remarkably similar magnitude. The minimum estimated

Livestock systems globally are changing
rapidly in response to human population growth,
urbanization, and growing incomes. This paper discusses the
linkages between burgeoning demand for livestock products,
growth in livestock production, and the impacts this may
have on natural resources, and how these may both affect and
be affected by climate change in the coming decades. Water
and land scarcity will increasingly have the potential to

Declining soil fertility due to
inadequate farming practices, deforestation and overgrazing
are among the primary impediments to increased agricultural
productivity in Sub-Saharan Africa. These causal factors,
driven by social, economic and political forces, manifest
themselves in market, policy and institutional failures,
inappropriate technologies and practices. This is also the
case in Tanzania where over 90 percent of the population is

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;

Discussions about climate change have repeatedly regarded livestock as responsible for a significant contribution of greenhouse gas emissions. However, proper management schemes for livestock production may contribute to a reduction in emissions and, at the same time, induce optimization of production systems and intensification of food production.