In a world of rapidly changing conditions, enhancing the adaptability and hence the resilience of family farms is crucial to their viability. Here, diversity plays an important role, as the following article demonstrates.

Is there good reason to make family farms a focus of global attention for a year? Or is it not rather reckless to advocate a concept while completely disregarding the fact that the necessary conditions are often not in place? A few entirely personal thoughts on the International Year of Family Farming.

Includes the figures and what they tell us: the vast majority of farms in the world today are small and getter smaller; small farms are being squeezed onto less than a quarter of global agricultural land; we’re fast losing farms and farmers in many places, while big farms are getting bigger; despite their scarce and dwindling resources, small farmers continue to be the world’s major food producers; small farms not only produce most of the food, they are also the most productive; most small farmers are women, but their contributions are ignored and marginalised.

In the past 50 years, Indian agriculture has undergone a major transformation, from dependence on food aid to becoming a consistent net food exporter. The gradual reforms in the agricultural sector (following the broader macro-reforms of the early 1990s) spurred some unprecedented innovations and changes in the food sector driven by private investment. These impressive achievements must now be viewed in light of the policy and investment imperatives that lie ahead.

The paper explores whether one of the
largest programs in the world for women's empowerment
and rural livelihoods, the Indira Kranti Patham in Andhra
Pradesh, India, has had an impact on the economic and social
wellbeing of households that participate in the program. The
analysis usespanel data for 4,250 households from two rounds
of a survey conducted in 2004 and 2008 in five districts.
Propensity score matching was used to construct control

Tanzania is largely an agriculture-based
economy. This sector accounts for over three-quarters of
national employment, and approximately 25 percent of gross
domestic product (GDP). The national agricultural input
voucher scheme (NAIVS) is a market smart input subsidy
program designed in response to the sharp rise in global
grain and fertilizer prices in 2007 and 2008. The main aim
of the program is to raise maize and rice production, and

In countries such as Georgia, the risks
of climate change for the agricultural sector are a
particularly immediate and important problem because the
majority of the rural population depends either directly or
indirectly on agriculture for their livelihoods. The most
effective plans for adapting the sector to climate change
will involve both human capital and physical capital
enhancements; however, many of these investments can also

The extent to which households should be
allowed to transfer their land rights in post-socialist
transition economies is of considerable policy interest. The
authors use data from Vietnam, a transition country that
allows rental and sales of land use rights, to identify
factors conducive to the development of land markets and to
assess the extent to which land transfers enhance productive
efficiency and transfer land to the poor. They find that

Within any economy, agriculture is the
sector that is most sensitive to climate change. In Armenia,
however, the risks are even more pronounced because the
majority of the rural population depends on agriculture for
their livelihoods. This publication outlines the policy
options available to Armenia, based on a rigorous evaluation
of the impacts of climate change on agricultural systems. It
provides a solid foundation for taking strategic and, in

The World development report 2010:
development and climate change highlights the link between
biotechnology, development, and environment. Aside from
recognizing biotechnology's potential to improve crop
productivity, increase crop adaptation to climatic stresses
such as drought, and mitigate greenhouse gas emissions, the
report emphasizes the need to establish science-based
regulatory systems 'so that risks and benefits can be

The livelihoods of communities in rural
areas of Peru are predominantly dependent on
climate-sensitive sectors such as agriculture. Given their
close connection with the environment, the understanding of
how these communities perceive risks and how they adapt to
and cope with climate hazards is important for identifying
entry points for efforts aimed at building resilience. In
this context, it is assumed that the successful use of

This paper seeks to clarify how
valuation should be conducted to answer specific
environmental policy questions. In particular, it looks at
how valuation should be used to examine four distinct
aspects of the value of ecosystems: 1) Determining the value
of the total flow of benefits from ecosystems; 2)
Determining the net benefits of interventions that alter
ecosystem conditions: 3) Examining how the costs and