Global food production has more than doubled over the past 40 years, growing faster than population, and will likely keep pace in the 21st century. Yet today one-eighth of the world's people lack secure access to the food they need to live active and healthy lives. This volume describes how...

Secure land rights are a critical, but often overlooked, factor in achieving household food security and improved nutritional status in rural areas of developing countries. This study evaluates the impact of India’s land-allocation and registration program in West Bengal, a program that...

This paper examines the mechanisms that transmit isolation into poverty in Madagascar using household survey data combined with a census of administrative communes. Given the importance of agriculture to the rural poor, where nine out of ten poor persons is engaged in farming, we concentrate on...

The authors of this book identify the factors affecting land inheritance and schooling across generations in the Philippines, Indonesia, and Ghana-countries with very different social and cultural traditions. Based on household surveys at each site, the authors examine how these factors affect...

In 1987, an improved resource management system that incorporates velvet bean (Mucuna pruriens var. utilis) to address soil fertility and weed (Imperata cylindrica) infestation was introduced to the small-scale farmers in a densely populated area of the derived savannas in Benin Republic (West...

In view of the market failures and the state failures inherent in providing agricultural extension, community-based approaches, which involve farmers‘ groups, have gained increasing importance in recent years as a third way to provide this service. The paper discusses the conceptual...

"It has often been argued that new agricultural technologies lead to poverty reduction. This paper argues that any changes in poverty situation attributed to those who adopt new agricultural technology (treatment group) without a counterfactual comparison of carefully selected nonadopters...

Learning from successes in agricultural development is now more urgent than ever. Progress in feeding the world’s billions has slowed, while the challenge of meeting future food needs remains enormous and is subject to new uncertainties in the global food and agricultural systems. In the late...

Learning from successes in agricultural development is now more urgent than ever. Progress in feeding the world’s billions has slowed, while the challenge of meeting future food needs remains enormous and is subject to new uncertainties in the global food and agricultural systems. In the late...

Le monde doit accélérer ses progrès dans la réduction de la pauvreté et de la faim. Aujourd’hui, une personne sur six à travers le monde ne mange pas à sa faim et souffre de malnutrition – une proportion tragiquement élevée – et beaucoup d’autres n’ont pas les moyens de manger...