The initial success of microfinance programs in the 1970s led pioneers to think that many essential problems of the poor might be resolved by access to credit alone -- the ability to acquire assets, to start businesses, to finance emergency needs and to insure against illness and disaster. Part...

"Given that Sub-Saharan Africa has the highest incidence of poverty and malnutrition in the world, the stagnation in per capita grain production there is worrisome. Since 1970, per capita grain production in Sub-Saharan Africa has declined more than 10 percent. Increasing the productivity of...

Due to the predominance of direct, specific interventions in nutrition for development, the health sector tends to own nutrition, with interventions customarily implemented through health programs. The premise that the agriculture sector should also be a vehicle for improved nutrition is...

"Public-private partnerships offer potentially important opportunities for pro-poor agricultural research in developing countries. Yet in the international agricultural research community-and with regard to the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR) itself-we see few...

"Public-private partnerships (PPPs) in agricultural research and development are increasingly viewed as an effective means of conducting advanced research, developing new technologies, and deploying new products for the benefit of small-scale, resource-poor farmers and other marginalized groups...

Despite a wide range of reform initiatives in agricultural extension in India in the past decades, the coverage of, access to, and quality of information provided to marginalized and poor farmers is uneven. This paper aims to ascertain why farmers are not accessing information and where...

In 2013 the Bureaus of Agriculture in the regional states of Amhara, Oromia, and Southern Nations, Nationalities, and Peoples of Ethiopia supported a program of direct marketing of certified seed by seed producers to farmers across 31 woredas (districts). This program stands in contrast to the...