This review has drawn on published research and the collective insights of a small team of experienced researchers to identify important trajectories in rice-based farming systems and to draw out the implications for agricultural research as a basis for discussion within ACIAR and the broader research community working on smallholder rice-based farming systems in MSEA.

Loggers, miners and rural communities all exploit forests in unsustainable ways in search of profits and means of subsistence. They are the primary actors in forest decline and their immediate motivations are the direct causes of deforestation and degradation. However, these motivations are determined, through complex causation chains, by deeper and much more fundamental forces: the underlying causes of deforestation. Effective action against forest decline requires an understanding of these underlying causes and their distant impacts on forests.

This audiotutorial unit (cassette, printed script, 76 color slides, study guide, self-evaluation test), prepared by the Communications Support Unit at CIAT, is available for use with a manually or automatically synchronized slide projector/cassette tape reccorder. Each unit is a vailabIe from the Distribution Office at a cost of US$ 50; photocopies of the study guide alone can be obtained from the Cassava Information Center. The objective of this unit is to present some of the results of research conducted by the physiology Section of CIATs Cassava Program.

This policy brief describes work carried out by CIAT in partnership with the University of the West Indies (UWI), which used climate predictions and crop suitability models to assess the likely impact of climate change on crops grown in Trinidad & Tobago. Key policy recommendations are provided.

Conservation agriculture (CA) is increasingly promoted in Africa as an alternative for coping with the need to increase food production on the basis of more sustainable farming practices. Success with adopting CA on farms in Africa has been limited, despite more than two decades of research and development investments. Through analyzing past and on-going CA experiences in a set of case studies, this paper seeks to better understand the reasons for the limited adoption of CA and to assess where, when and for whom CA works best.