Myanmar is a low-income agrarian country
with a high poverty rate. The livelihood of many poor people
depends on the performance of agriculture, especially the
rice sector. Rice accounts for 70 percent of Myanmar s total
cultivated area and 30 percent of the value of its
agricultural production. Increasing returns to rice
production will be the key to increasing farm wages and
incomes in the short to medium run. Higher rice production

This paper constitutes the third and final volume of a series of assessments of the World Bank Group's engagement with climate change issues. The first focused on World Bank involvement in policy issues related to greenhouse gas mitigation. It was mainly concerned with the potential for energy price reform and energy efficiency policies to yield dividends in growth, fiscal savings, and climate change mitigation. The second volume examined project-level lessons related to greenhouse gas mitigation.

Estudio de caso de una Asociación de productores que acceden a la tierra en época de la Reforma Agraria, para dedicarse a la producción de cacao en medio de un escenario marcado por el agronegocio

The inspiration for this sourcebook came from a 2014 meeting of researchers, practitioners and policy makers in Addis Ababa under the auspices of an event co-convened by the Global Water Initiative East Africa (GWI EA), the International Water Management Institute (IWMI) and the Water, Land and Ecosystems programme of the CG system. The event agreed there was a pressing need for greater regional consolidation of knowledge on improving water management for smallholder farmers.

This is a desk appraisal of the Alliances for Religions and Conservations (ARC) done for the Norwegian Agency for Development Cooperation (Norad) by the Department of International Environment and Development Studies, Noragric, at the Norwegian University of Life Sciences (NMBU).

If the marginal gains from investment in physical capital depend positively on knowledge, but a household cannot hire skilled labor to compensate for low skills, then even if it has access to credit, the household will achieve lower returns than an educated household. If, as is common, the income-poor are less educated because of failures in the credit market, and because they live in areas where there is less access to schooling, then the poor will also have lower returns on investments. The author tests this argument for the case of irrigation infrastructure in Vietnam.

If states would interact more synergistically with communities, they could tap local energies and resources for development-- and help create a development-oriented society and polity in the process. The authors analyze experience in several countries to identify the actions required for state-community synergies in development. Two actions that seem especially important: 1) Broadening the distribution of power within communities, to facilitate collective action and reduce the potential for local capture.

Most of the poor in the developing countries are smallholder farmers. Improving their productivity is essential for reducing poverty. Despite small landholdings, a high degree of land fragmentation, and rising labor costs, agricultural production in China has steadily increased. If one treats the farm household as the unit of analysis, it would be difficult to explain the conundrum. When seeing agricultural production from the lens of division of labor, the puzzle can be easily solved.

A profile of the Lao People's Democratic Republic by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. Data is provided on economic indicators; food, nutrition and food security; population and labor force; land use and agricultural inputs; water resources and irrigation; agricultural production and trade; fisheries production and trade; and forestry production and trade.

Over the past century or so, a wide
assortment of pre-harvest agreements, joint ventures, deals,
and pledges that can be termed contract farming have been
brokered between farmers and buyers. During the 1980s and
1990s, contract farming was frequently criticized as a
potentially exploitative arrangement, which favored the more
powerful buyer and left the small-scale farmer and the
environment vulnerable to abuse. More recently, there is

This publication is a lobby material to advocate the passage of the National Land Use Act. As one of the major outputs of the high level experts forum held last June 4, 2015, this abridged version of the proceedings highlights the experts’ discussion, answering the following key questions related to agriculture:

Professor Kjell Havnevik is retiring from the Nordic Africa Institute (NAI) in 2015. For four decades, he has carried out research, taught and supervised students as well as participated in policy debates on different aspects of agriculture, the environment and African and international development policies. His output has been voluminous and is internationally recognised. His academic record includes research and teaching positions at universities and research institutes in Tanzania, Norway and Sweden as well as shorter assignments in several other countries.