Initially hailed a huge success, Malawi’s effort to boost agriculture with fertiliser subsidies appears to have met with failure. The author has a look at what went wrong, arguing that developments must be assessed against the backdrop of politics.

Last year Angola earned 48 billion US dollars from petroleum. Yet the country that was once Africa’s largest agricultural producer is reduced to importing food. Now the government and private investors want to develop the agricultural sector, in the hope that Angola could become a new Brazil. But will there still be room for small-scale farmers?

Many a dogma produced by agricultural policies over the past decades has proved disastrous for African agriculture. Ms Rhoda Peace Tumusiime, Commissioner of Rural Economy and Agriculture of the African Union (AU), looks at lessons learnt and suggests ways to bring progress to Africa’s rural regions.

For a long time, the agricultural policies of the Mercosur states ignored family farming, focusing on promoting individual crops and export production instead. Rural development was not on the agenda. Only after the turn of the millennium did a process of rethinking set in.

Agricultural development has moved up the agenda. Today it has not only to reduce poverty and hunger, but also become environmentally sustainable and climate smart. Disputes over agricultural policies are highly visible, but consensus exists on fundamentals for growth. It is not just what to do that matters, but also how to do it. Increasingly, the search is not for optimal policy, but for ‘good fit’, or even ‘good-enough’ policy.

The basic role for agricultural policies consists of providing the core investments and services that farmers need to develop their operations into viable farm businesses. Focusing on the sector’s enabling environment benefits both agriculture and the wider rural economy, facilitating the construction of diversified rural economies. Such policies are likely to be more effective in the long term than subsidies or market interventions, which have the opposite tendency.

Policy-makers often lack information and analytical capacity to effectively monitor how policies impact on different stakeholders. The MAFAP initiative of the Food and Agriculture Organization seeks to bridge this gap.

The changes in global agricultural markets over the past decade have major implications on agricultural policy. What are the challenges and opportunities for development-oriented agricultural policy-making? And what advisory capacities are needed to deliver substantive advice to developing countries’ governments? The answers to these questions constitute a new agenda for contemporary capacity development for agricultural policy advice.

Com a edição da Medida Provisória 759, o Governo Federal propõe ao Congresso Nacional um modelo de reforma agrária mais transparente, eficaz e ágil para corrigir irregularidades do passado e garantir ao trabalhador rural assentado o direito de acesso às políticas públicas do setor. 

A MP 759 também prevê mudanças na titulação urbana, além dos ajustes ao Programa de Reforma Agrária. No que se refere ao meio rural, a medida corrige contradições que, em última instância, inviabilizam a promoção do bem-estar de agricultores familiares e o desenvolvimento sustentável do campo

O II Plano Nacional de Segurança Alimentar e Nutricional 2016-2019 é constituído pelo conjunto de ações do governo federal que buscam garantir a segurança alimentar e nutricional e o direito humano à alimentação adequada à população brasileira.

O kit pedagógico “Governação comunitária de florestas para crianças” destina-se a todos os compartes, profissionais, investigadores, professores e educadores envolvidos com as florestas comunitárias e que queiram abordar a governação comunitária de recursos naturais e a educação para a cidadania democrática com crianças e jovens. Procurando responder aos desafios atuais da governação comunitária de florestas, apresenta-se um modelo pedagógico que pretende apoiar a criação de Escolas de Verão para as florestas comunitárias.

Esta revista é um produto do Projeto Gestão Florestal para a Produção Sustentável na Amazônia, uma realização do Governo Brasileiro por incumbência do Ministério do Meio Ambiente (MMA) e intermédio do Serviço Florestal Brasileiro e do Instituto Chico Mendes de Conservação da Biodiversidade no contexto da Cooperação Brasil-Alemanha para o Desenvolvimento Sustentável. O Ministério Federal de Cooperação Econômica e Desenvolvimento (BMZ) da Alemanha apoia a execução do Projeto por meio da cooperação financeira do Banco Kreditanstalt für Wiederaufbau (KfW).