The institutional change in rural Kyrgyzstan during the transition period included farm reorganization, land reform, building markets, and community institutions. The land reform established private property rights to land, including the rights to transfer, exchange, sell, lease, and use the land as collateral for credit. These key features of Kyrgyzstan’s agrarian transition are in sharp contrast with those of other transition countries in Central Asia.

Southern African Agriculture and Climate Change: A Comprehensive Analysis examines the food security threats facing eight of the countries that make up southern Africa — Botswana, Lesotho, Malawi, Mozambique, South Africa, Swaziland, Zambia, and Zimbabwe — and explores how climate change will increase the efforts needed to achieve sustainable food security throughout the region. Southern Africa’s population is expected to grow at least through mid-century. The region will also see income growth.

Research report

In Nigeria, conventional financial institutions serve only about 35 percent of the active population, and the poor, especially women, have limited access to financial services. Private sector-led microfinance institutions (MFIs) are increasingly playing a role to fill this need. This brief provides an overview of the institutional environment of microfinance in Nigeria, as well as insights and recommendations for better reaching this audience, based on focus group discussions and case studies of self-employed women in rural areas of Edo State, Nigeria.

The lack of updated information about food security is of concern to many countries, especially during and after economic crises, natural disasters, and conflicts. In this paper we present an analytical framework for assessing the effects of such crises on food security. This methodology can compensate for the lack of recent data in the aftermath of various crisis situations and thus provide important information to policymakers. We apply this methodology to Yemen, a country where the recent food price crisis and global economic recession have been especially damaging.

The Annual Report contains an Essay: Agriculture, Food Security, Nutrition and the Millennium Development Goals by Joachim von Braun, M. S. Swaminathan, and Mark W. Rosegrant. There is an overview of the Institute followed by information on Research and Outreach. Special emphasis is given to Global Food System Functioning, Food System Governance, and Food System Innovations.

This paper reviews the econometric evidence on gender differences in agricultural productivity. It provides a methodological overview and a critique of (1) production function-based estimates of technical and labor productivity differences by gender, (2) individual (gender-disaggregated) labor supply and earnings functions and (3) studies of the determinants of technological adoption. The review finds that (1) in general, male and female farmers are equally efficient as farm managers. Women farmers' lower yields are attributable to lower levels of inputs and human capital than men.

Over the past several years, the Ethiopian government has committed a substantial portion of the public budget to expanding public services and infrastructure in rural areas. This paper assesses who exactly is benefiting from this public spending. To do so, this paper undertakes a public expenditure benefit incidence analysis across gender and wealth groups of three public services/programs in rural Ethiopia: (1) selected components of the Food Security Program (FSP), (2) drinking water supply, and (3) agricultural extension services.

A wide range of issues are captured and reiterated in the 12 briefs contained in this collection. These include: the prevalence and importance of customary tenure; the prevalence and importance of common property arrangements; constraints to women’s access under both customary and statutory tenure; the need to secure common property and other forms of tenure; and the importance of broad based participation to secure broad consensus among multiple actors in order to enhance the efficiency, equity and sustainability objectives of land tenure reforms.

The programme has a substantial positive impact on the diet of children. It also complements the basic livelihood strategies of poor urban women working outside the home.; Urban Challenges to Food and Nutrition Security

Women play important and varied roles in agriculture, but they have unequal access, relative to men, to productive resources and opportunities. Closing these gender gaps would be good both for women and for agriculture. This was the message given by The State of Food and Agriculture 2010-11, a report of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO).

The government of Uganda is currently decentralizing many of its services including those directly related to agriculture and the environment. Non-government organizations (NGOs) and community-based organizations (CBOs) are being asked to take the lead in the provision of government services such as agricultural extension during the transition to demand driven fee-for-service. This paper explores the role of government programs, NGOs and CBOs in the adoption of land management technologies.