Our research examines how the changing cultural norms and legal status in Ecuador have impacted women’s empowerment in the agricultural sector and in rural communities. Cacao provides a particularly relevant case because of its economic and ecological importance to Ecuador and the region. The...

Ecuadorian women have traditionally been sidelined from full participation in the economy and have lacked equal political rights. Yet, Ecuador has made advances in gender equality in recent years. Women now have greater access to educational and career opportunities, equality in inheritance and...

The potential of agricultural biotechnology to produce seed traits that reduce yield risk generates widespread excitement. Hopes are high that in an era of tightening water constraints and climate change drought tolerant (DT) crop varieties will stabilize food production and allow for greater...

This document reviews the potential agricultural technologies that exist or can feasibly be produced to help promote poverty reduction and food security in Mali in the next 5 to 10 years. Overall there are a plethora of good technologies either available, in the pipeline, or feasible with a...

We assess the relative impacts of receiving cash versus food transfers using a randomized design. Drawing on data collected in eastern Niger, we find that households randomized to receive a food basket experienced larger, positive impact on measures of food consumption and diet quality than...

Pro-poor growth has been identified as one of the most promising pathways to achieve the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) or any subsequent set of goals aiming to reduce poverty worldwide. Related research has developed a multitude of instruments to measure pro-poor growth using absolute and...

The Global Food Price Crisis of 2007-2011 had mixed effects on the poor in developing nations. By some estimates, the Crisis lifted nearly 24 million poor farmers out of poverty; however, it also cast 68 million net food buyers into poverty. In this paper, we analyze the distributional impacts...

A growing body of research supports the \economic insecurity" theory of obesity, which posits that uncertainty with respect to one's material well- being may be an important root cause of the modern obesity epidemic. This literature has been limited in the past by a lack of reliable measures of...

We test the hypotheses that subsidies on hybrid seed change maize production, total household income, the severity of poverty, and relative deprivation among smallholder maize growers in Zambia. The analysis contributes to the literature by measuring the quantitative effects of seed (as compared...