The institution of slavery is found mostly at intermediate stages of agricultural development, and less often among hunter-gatherers and advanced agrarian societies. We explain this pattern in a growth model with land and labor as inputs in production, and an endogenously determined property rights institution. The economy endogenously transits from an egalitarian state with equal property rights, to a despotic slave society where the elite own both people and land; thereafter it endogenously transits into a free labor society, where the elite own the land, but people are free.

In this paper I develop a theoretical model to analyze policy that restricts who can own land. I briefly review research related to such policy in Saskatchewan, Canada, and identify a standard supply-demand model that I extend in several ways. First, I replicate results for how policy affects prices and develop new results for how policy affects social welfare using comparative statics. Second, I extend the model to a dynamic setting where demand curves change over time and show that policy can affect price changes in variety of ways, which I refer to as comparative dynamics.

A project run by the WWF has set itself the goal of transforming Philippine tuna fisheries towards more sustainable practices, securing the livelihoods of the small-scale fishers in the long term. European buyers who have committed to source from them provide the necessary incentives.

An ingenious combination of plant breeding, contract farming and processing has enabled smallholder tomato growers to tap new markets in Tanzania’s Arusha Region. Two improved tomato cultivars released from AVRDC lines are at the centre of this success story.

Previous studies have combined climate, crop and economic models to examine the impact of climate change on agricultural production and food security, but results have varied widely due to differences in models, scenarios and input data. Recent work has examined (and narrowed) these differences through systematic model intercomparison using a high-emissions pathway to highlight the differences. This paper extends that analysis to explore a range of plausible socioeconomic scenarios and emission pathways.

L’analyse des aménagements hydro-agricoles en Afrique de l’Ouest permet de tirer des leçons concernant l’affectation foncière, qui peuvent servir pour orienter les aménagements en cours, ou ceux qui sont prévus dans les années à venir. Sans affectation foncière adéquate, les objectifs principaux des barrages – la lutte contre la pauvreté et l’amélioration de la production nationale de céréales – pourront difficilement être atteints.

Em 1990 Moçambique era considerado o país mais pobre do mundo. Porém, após o fim da guerra civil em 1992, o país tem estado a testemunhar grandes investimentos públicos e privados, uma inflação baixa e estável, taxas de juro em decréscimo o que tem contribuído para um crescimento económico rápido. O África Progress Panel (2014:27) apresenta Moçambique como o 5º país da África com a taxa de crescimento económico média mais rápida no período 2008-2013 (taxa média de 7.25%), apenas atrás da Serra Leoa (taxa média de 9.45%), Ruanda (8,4%), Etiópia (8.37%) e Gana (8.11%).

Analysis of land allocation strategies in irrigated agriculture schemes in West Africa yields lessons which can guide the design and implementation of current and forthcoming projects. Allocation of insufficient land makes the main purposes of large dam projects – to combat poverty and to increase national cereal production – more difficult to achieve. Research by the Global Water Initiative (GWI) at three dam project sites in West Africa shows that the area of land allocated per family is usually about 1 hectare (ha).

As comunidades que  vivem  a  experiência  do  reassentamento  involuntário  e  de  contacto  com projectos de mineração de carvão em oito localidades da Província de Tete, abrangendo os distritos de Moatize e de Marara, juntaram-se ao longo de dois dias, na última semana de Julho,  para  partilharem  suas  vivências,  na  perspectiva  das  suas  condições  de  vida, determinadas  pela  actividade  mineira  naquela  região  do  nordeste  de  Mocambique. 

This report helps policy makers, practitioners and funding agencies identify emerging adaptation good practices and the conditions necessary for scaling up those good practices to achieve adaptation success at scale.

A study was conducted with the goal of describing the current frame conditions of pasture use in Georgia and identifying the bottlenecks and obstacles that restrict the productivity of Georgian pastures and limit the income generated by Georgian farmers from pasture related agricultural activities. Whenever possible, findings were elaborated into concrete proposals for action, addressing the legislator, donors, or project implementers.

A landscape epidemiology modeling framework is presented which integrates the simulation outputs from an established spatial agent-based model (ABM) of malaria with a geographic information system (GIS). For a study area in Kenya, five landscape scenarios are constructed with varying coverage levels of two mosquito-control interventions. For each scenario, maps are presented to show the average distributions of three output indices obtained from the results of 750 simulation runs. Hot spot analysis is performed to detect statistically significant hot spots and cold spots.