The purpose of the present Conceptual Framework document, developed in the context of FAO’s “Initiative to Review and Update National Agricultural, Rural Development and Food Security Strategies and Policies”, is to propose a flexible general approach to addressing food security through...

The negative correlation between resource endowments and GDP growth remains one of the most robust findings in the empirical growth literature, and has been coined the “resource curse hypothesis”. The policy consequences of this result are potentially far reaching. If natural resources are...

Countries in the ACP region will face significant challenges in the years to come as they try to step up economic growth, deal with increasingly integrated world markets and meet the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), especially those focused on hunger and poverty. These efforts will take...

The aim of this article is to study the relations between social capital (SC) and the result of the efforts made by poor groups to reduce their poverty and social exclusion. To this end, SC is defined as the ability to obtain benefits from networks of social relations. This definition is then...

Increasing problems of rural unemployment in Indonesia are at the core of this report. Numbers of unemployed increased dramatically after the 1997 economic crisis and millions of people searched to be reabsorbed in rural labour markets. Agricultural land is scarce, however, and entry barriers...

This report documents the main findings of the vulnerable profiling work carried out in Viet Nam, in cooperation with national partners and under the framework of a UNDP “Policy and Strategy for Sustainable Food Security in Viet Nam” project, as a means to support the planning of appropriate...

Alleviating hunger and poverty has been and continues to be the pre-dominant policy challenge facing global and national decision makers. This paper argues that policy interventions for addressing this challenge should be designed in the context of emerging global, regional and national trends....

Adequate public research capacity is key to the appropriate development of biotechnology, including genetically modified (GM) crops. While commercial crops can be introduced without intensive local research (i.e. insect resistant GM cotton), introducing products of public research depend on...

This paper provides an assessment of the agricultural diversification trends in South Asia. In the first part food consumption and crop production patterns in the region during the last twenty years are reviewed. Next, the agronomic and economic options for and constraints to diversification in...

Paying for the provision of environmental services is a recent policy innovation that is attracting much attention in both developed and developing countries. The innovation involves a move away from command and control environmental policies, harnessing market forces to obtain more efficient...