"Irrigation is critical to food security and economic growth in contemporary India. The performance of irrigation systems is of serious concern to farmers who rely on them for their crops and livelihoods and to governments that have invested heavily in their development. The most severe problems...

In 1999 global population surpassed 6 billion people, and this number rises by about 70-80 million people each year. "Six Billion and Counting" examines the consequences of continuing population growth for the world's resource systems and for national and global food security. Leisinger,...

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 of...

International agricultural research is expanding beyond the development of annual crop technologies for individual farms to the development of longer-tern natural resource management techniques for entire landscapes. But technologies of practices with a long lag time between investment and...

This report assembles and assesses new evidence regarding investments in agricultural R&D, tracking global trends over the past several decades, and highlighting the critical importance that the accumulated stock of scientific knowledge has for today's productivity and for future innovations and...

"Since the early 1980s, almost all African governments have embarked on economic reform programs to reduce state intervention in the economy and to allow markets to play a larger role. In the agricultural sector these programs were designed to eliminate price controls on agricultural...

The devastating environmental effects of deforestation and the exploitation of other natural resources in the developing world have been well documented, yet their impact on local communities has received far less attention. This report looks at how land degradation and deforestation are being...

"The authors address questions such as: (1) how do parents allocate land and education between sons and daughters? (2) how do changing returns to land and human capital affect parents' investments in children? (3) what do gender differences in land and schooling mean for the welfare of men and...

The authors assess the role various strategies can play in augmenting global food supplies and combating hunger. They attempt to defuse the contentious debate surrounding the development and spread of genetically modified (GM) foods, which, they argue,can help meet the needs of the poor. The...

Over the past two decades, Bangladesh has transformed its food markets and food policies to free the country from the constant threat of famine. The authors, in this report, describe this remarkable transformation.