This report examines the different channels through which trade openness (and reforms to achieve it) can affect a country’s food security. The overall conclusion is that trade openness has a positive net impact on food security, although specific constituencies, including some poor households,...

Rural development policy addresses the welfare of rural households and communities. With a majority of the world's poor located in rural areas, the resilience of rural poverty in industrialized countries, and a significant share of environmental degradation the byproduct of rural poverty, the...

The Special Safeguard Mechanism (SSM) is intended to provide contingent protection to poor farmers in developing countries from negative shocks to import prices or from surges in imports. The effects of stochastic import prices and volumes are analysed in a partial equilibrium framework to...

The discovery of transgenes in maize landraces in Mexico, a center of diversity for this crop, raises questions about the potential impact of transgene diffusion on maize diversity. The concept of diversity and farmers’ role in maintaining diversity is quite complex. Farmers’ behavior is...