Sustainable food production and consumption are important goals for an increasing number of consumers, policy makers, and other actors along global food chains. This is also reflected in the 12th United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goal, which emphasizes the need for sustainable...

Persistent poverty and rapid urbanization are important development challenges in most African countries. Although the proportion of people living in extreme poverty in Africa could be reduced over the last few decades, the absolute number of people living below the poverty line continues to...

Equality for women in all areas of life is not only a fundamental human right, but is also a crucial prerequisite for achieving human development goals. Women constitute half of the world population and about 43 percent of the agricultural labor force, which makes the importance of research into...

The demand for agricultural land is globally increasing due to population growth and dietary diversification. As the availability of agricultural land is limited, much of the cropland expansion is occurring at the expense of tropical forests. During the past few decades, oil palm has become one...

Changes in land use, such as deforestation, expansion of sedentary agriculture and intensification of agricultural systems, significantly altered economic and ecological conditions in many regions of the world. In recent decades, one of the most rapid changes in land use was the expansion of...

The conversion of biologically rich areas into agricultural land undermines the capacity of these lands to sustain and maintain vital ecosystem functions. This is mostly the case when the conversion includes the simplification to a monoculture system such as that of oil palm. Oil palm grows best...

Global hunger, malnutrition, and poverty have declined over the past decades, but a situation of food and nutrition security for all is yet to be achieved, and extreme poverty is still widespread. Around 800 million people globally are still chronically undernourished, about 2 billion people...

Despite remarkable advances, overcoming rural poverty and food insecurity in developing countries remains one of the biggest challenges of the 21st century. Increasing production and income opportunities in the agricultural sector is one of the key factors to achieve these goals. While...

The general objective of this dissertation is to understand the relationship between economic growth, government expenditure in public services and infrastructure on different sectors of the population. Through three essays this dissertation pursues the objective by explicitly highlighting the...