Although irrigation in Africa has the potential to boost agricultural productivities by at least 50 percent, food production on the continent is almost entirely rainfed. The area equipped for irrigation, currently slightly more than 13 million hectares, makes up just 6 percent of the total...

While agricultural production statistics are reported on a geopolitical – often national - basis we often need to know the status of production or productivity within specific sub-regions, watersheds, or agro-ecological zones. Such re-aggregations are typically made using expert judgments or...

"From a theoretical perspective crop yields should tend to converge over time and space as: growth in yield potential exhibits diminishing returns; an increasing share of farmers shift to using high yielding varieties (HYVs); barriers to the free flow of knowledge and information are removed; and...

"Climate change continues to have major impact on crop productivity all over the world. While many researchers have evaluated the possible impact of global warming on crop yields using mainly indirect crop simulation models, there are relatively few direct assessments on the impact of observed...

"Agricultural development strategies delineate priorities for actions to enhance agricultural and overall development. They are usually put forward by individual countries based on assessments of national needs. Seldom are attempts made to identify strategic priorities for agricultural...

"Agricultural production statistics reported at country or sub-national geopolitical scales are used in a wide range of economic analyses, and spatially explicit (geo-referenced) production data are increasingly needed to support improved approaches to the planning and implementation of...

This study aims to explore and quantify systematic similarities and differences between four major global cropping systems products: the dataset of monthly irrigated and rainfed crop areas around the year 2000 (MIRCA2000), the spatial production allocation model (SPAM), the global agroecological...

In this paper we describe how biophysical data can be used, in conjunction with agroecological concepts and multimarket economic models, to systematically evaluate the effects of agricultural R&D in ways that inform research priority setting and resource allocation decisions. Agroecological...

Two increasingly shared perspectives within the international development community are that (a) geography matters, and (b) many government interventions would be more successful if they were better targeted. This paper unites these two notions by exploring the opportunities for, and benefits...

"Sustained, well-targeted, and effectively used investments in R&D have reaped handsome rewards from improved agricultural productivity and cheaper, higher quality foods and fibers. As we begin a new millennium, the global patterns of investments in agricultural R&D are changing in ways that may...