Many dryland regions are considered less favoured areas as they face a variety of either biophysical or socio-economic constraints to agricultural production and sustaining livelihoods. Growing population numbers, limited infrastructure and market access, land tenure problems as well as...

This paper considers how the design of agricultural policies and programmes might be modified to better achieve policy objectives in the context of severe HIV epidemics and underscores the central role of agricultural policy in mitigating the spread and impacts of the epidemic. Based 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...

Rapid economic and income growth, urbanization, and globalization are leading to a dramatic shift of Asian diets away from staples and increasingly towards livestock and dairy products, vegetables and fruit, and fats and oils. While the diversification of diets away from the traditional...

The pattern of crop genetic diversity has changed over the past two centuries with the modernization of agriculture, accelerating with the advent of the green revolution. Since the green revolution, the locus of agricultural research has shifted from the public to the private sector. The growing...

This paper examines the change in the nature of food demand in India in the last twenty years. It identifies two distinct stages of diet transition associated with the period of economic growth. During the first stage, income-induced diet diversification, consumers move away from inferior goods...

Broad changes are taking place in agrifood systems worldwide. These changes are driven by economic development, increase in per caput incomes, changing technology and urbanization. Consumers are changing their dietary preferences and shopping habits, resulting in substantial organizational and...

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....

The past four decades have seen two waves of agricultural technology development and diffusion to developing countries. The first wave was initiated by the Green Revolution in which an explicit strategy for technology development and diffusion targeting poor farmers in poor countries made...

This paper reviews agricultural and food security performances of developing countries after the Uruguay Round. In particular, issues and trends relevant to the interests of the low income food deficit and the net food importing countries are examined as the world prepares for further trade...