Converting from subsistence to market-oriented farming can increase income. Thanks to the ’Enabling Rural Innovation’ approach, family farmers in Uganda and Tanzania have succeeded in improving production and fetching better prices for their produce while safeguarding food security and sustainable management of natural resources. The recipe for success is that farmers take the development process in their own hands.

This booklet offers advice for
farmers and extension workers interested in using
conservation agriculture techniques to boost crop yields,
soil quality and water retention. These practices represent
some of the many ways we can become more climate smart,
which is essential if we are to sustainably produce more
food on less land to feed our growing planet.

Tim Fella, Senior Land Tenure and Conflict Advisor for USAID’s Land Tenure and Resource Management Office wrote an article that was featured in Devex's Newswire newsletter last week. An excerpt appears below.
As the International Year of Family Farming winds down, a new set of United Nations principles recognizes that in order to promote global food security, we need to acknowledge and promote family farmers as key investors in agriculture and food systems.

The global extreme poverty rate has
fallen by half since 1990, but progress within the
developing world has been uneven. Extreme poverty remains
widespread in most low-income countries while many
middle-income countries also continue to have substantial
levels with many people there who have escaped extreme
poverty remaining poor and vulnerable. Nor has there been
robust progress in sharing prosperity: in many developing

This paper seeks to provide evidence on
the extent of household vulnerability to exogenous economic
shocks in the Pacific region and consider policy options
that help to manage this risk. Characteristics of the region
such as remoteness, small size, dispersion, and urbanizing
populations lead to pronounced vulnerabilities. The paper
presents macroeconomic and distributional analysis and
complements it with results of a micro-simulation model

This report identifies the key drivers
of rapid poverty reduction in Bhutan over the recent years,
explaining why some dzongkhags are stuck in poverty or
reducing poverty is not significant while others prospered,
and whether female headed households have a harder time
reducing poverty. The exercise draws mainly on data from the
two rounds of Bhutan Living Standards Survey (2007 and 2012)
supplemented with focus group discussions carried out for

Conventional wisdom holds that
Sub-Saharan African farmers use few modern inputs despite
the fact that most growth-inducing and poverty-reducing
agricultural growth in the region is expected to come
largely from expanded use of inputs that embody improved
technologies, particularly improved seed, fertilizers and
other agro-chemicals, machinery, and irrigation. Yet
following several years of high food prices, concerted

Nonseparable household models outline
the links between agricultural production and household
consumption, yet empirical extensions to investigate the
effect of production on dietary diversity and diet
composition are limited. Although a significant literature
has investigated the calorie-income elasticity abstracting
from production, this paper provides an empirical
application of the nonseparable household model linking the

The Chinese central government has consistently taken decisive legal and policy measures over the past 35 years to secure, enhance, and expand farmers’ rights to farmland and forest land in order to reduce the gap in income and consumption between urban citizens and their counterparts in mountainous forest areas.

SELECTION OF INFORMATIONAL MATERIAL ON CONTRACT FARMING: Contract farming in general...Contract farming in Asian countries...CAMBODIA...PEOPLE’S REPUBLIC OF CHINA...REPUBLIC OF INDONESIA...JAPAN...LAO
PEOPLE'S DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC...MALAYSIA...REPUBLIC OF THE UNION OF MYANMAR...REPUBLIC OF THE PHILIPPINES...KINGDOM OF THAILAND...SOCIALIST REPUBLIC OF VIETNAM

The Guinean government assigns a
crucial role to agriculture in accelerating growth, reducing
poverty, and creating jobs. This role is inscribed in
Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper (PRSP) 3, which was
approved by the government in May 2013, following PRSP 2
(2007-2010) and PRSP 1 (2002-2006). As part of the revival
of its agricultural development strategy, the government
through the Ministry of Agriculture expressed its desire for