[September 2008]

Within this report, the FAO outlines its efforts to reinforce local institutions and promote policies and legislation that aim for fairer access for both women and men to natural resources (particularly land, water, fishing and forestry) and to the relevant economic and social resources.

It goes on to approach the reasons why land tenure should be taken into account in project design, highlighting ecological issues, questions of gender, conflict and migrations, and the relationships between them.

A short video documentary of AFA's participation (through its Indonesia member Aliansi Petani Indonesia or API) in activities organized by civil society organizations (CSOs) parallel to the conferences of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC or FCCC), such as the thirteenth session of the Conference of the Parties (COP 13) and the third session of the meeting of the parties to the Kyoto Protocol (CMP 3), in Nusa Dua, Bali, Indonesia last December 3-14, 2007. API has been invited by some CSOs who organized the parallel activities to UNFCC.

Pobreza Rural y Desarrollo en Honduras, Nicaragua y Bolivia Informe Temático 2007 El llamado Proceso ERP – el proceso que gira en torno a las Estrategias de Reducción de Pobreza – respondió a una preocupación por la elevada y persistente pobreza en muchos países en vías de desarrollo así como por la baja efectividad de la ayuda.El Proceso ERP tenía como elemento central un proceso participativo que buscaba reunir al gobierno y la sociedad civil en la identificación de soluciones a los problemas de pobreza de cada país.El compromiso de los donantes fue el de apoyar con recursos las estrategi

Este trabalho se refere ao desenvolvimento de um modelo computacional para suporte à tomada de decisão, quanto ao planejamento e manejo de projetos de irrigação e/ou drenagem. O modelo computacional, denominado MCID, é aplicável em nível de unidade de produção, gerando informações sobre como diferentes práticas de manejo da irrigação e configurações do sistema de drenagem afetam a produtividade e o retorno financeiro.

The position paper provides an updated insight on the role that urban agriculture can play in pursuing the Millennium Development Goals and more specifically MDG 1 and 7, related to poverty reduction, food security, and environmental sustainability. It intends to raise awareness and inform decision makers and planners of the different aspects of urban agriculture, which entails a broad range of activities, related to the food production and distribution chain, within natural resources planning and use including urban and peri-urban forestry.

A combination of new and ongoing forces is driving global food prices. Rising energy prices and subsidized biofuel production, income and population growth, globalization, and urbanization are among the major forces contributing to surging demand—while on the supply side, land and water constraints, underinvestment in rural infrastructure and agricultural innovation, lack of access to inputs, and weather disruptions are impairing productivity growth and the needed production response.

Uganda’s significant economic growth over the last twenty years seemed to create favorable conditions for increased agricultural productivity, but agricultural productivity has failed to increase concordantly. As a result, most increases in aggregate crop production have been achieved from the expansion of cultivated land rather than increased investment in production technologies to raise crop yields per unit area of land. As access to land is increasingly constrained by high population growth, further expansion of cultivated land will be unsustainable.

Most of Nigeria's poor reside in rural areas and gain their livelihood from agricultural work. If the government's poverty reduction goals are to be achieved, Nigeria will need an adequate level of strategically targeted investments in agriculture to upgrade rural infrastructure, boost productivity, and increase competitiveness. Before effective investment programs can be designed and implemented, however, it is important to have a clear understanding of the current pattern of public spending on agriculture.

Human activities such as fossil fuel burning and deforestation have significantly increased the atmospheric concentration of greenhouse gases (GHG) leading to global climate change. Global climate change and its associated weather extremes pose considerable challenges worldwide, and mitigating the adverse impacts of climate change is a high priority for the international community. To reduce global emissions and curb the threat of climate change, many countries are participating in carbon trading.

Kenya is still largely agrarian with 80 percent of its population depending on agriculture for food, employment and income. The dilemma facing the country is that only 20 percent of the land is suited for agricultural production. A greater proportion of the country, however, consists of agroecologically less favoured areas (LFAs). Another dilemma in Kenya?s agricultural sector is that economic development impacts are not homogeneously spread even among the agriculturally favoured areas.

Since 1996, the Centres for Agriculture in the Tropics and Subtropics of the Universities of Hohenheim and Göttingen and of Berlin's Humboldt University have organised a conference, the ''Tropentag'', once a year to present and discuss recent findings in research on agriculture and rural development. Other universities, like Kassel-Witzenhausen, have joined in, and the number of participants, papers and posters presented has more than doubled.

In a world of food abundance, millions of people suffer from poor nutrition. In some parts of the world, the poor have inadequate access to energy from food to meet their energy requirements. In these locations, food shortage is often a seasonal phenomenon and micronutrients are also generally lacking in the diet. Elsewhere, there is a stable supply of energy but the poor have monotonous diets lacking in essential micronutrients.