More and better quality private sector investment in food systems will be needed if countries are to achieve their Sustainable Development Goals. The key challenge addressed in this paper is how investment in food systems can be redirected such that it is both adequate to drive dynamic food...

Understanding specialization patterns of countries in food production can provide relevant insights for the evaluation and design of policies seeking to achieve food security and sustainability, which are key to reach several Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). In this paper, we use production...

Cihanbeyli, located in Salt Lake (SL) Basin, is the largest county of Turkey in terms of its area. In total 56.105 people live in the county and its rural population is 7.005. According to data of 2011 year, Cihanbeyli's social development level is at the tenth of 31 counties of the Konya...

Economic research tends to focus on a reduced set of crops, leaving a vast array of crops under-researched. However, these 'marginal crops' have typically been farmed for centuries and are better suited for the local environment in which they are grown than crops prioritized within existing...

Indian agriculture is estimated to be consuming about 78 percent of total fresh water resources available in the country. Yet, more than half of the gross cropped area is still dependent on rains. Extremely skewed allocation of scarce irrigation water amongst crops and inefficient use of the...

This paper examines the prospects for organic agriculture (OA) and the production of biofuels as strategies for rural development in Cambodia and the Lao People’s Democratic Republic (Lao PDR). Both agricultural activities are growing worldwide, although there are some questions as to how...

This article considers the relationship between centralised, exogenous institutions and the embedded, endogenous institutions of rural governance in Europe through an examination of the evaluation procedures of the European LEADER programme. LEADER is presented in the literature as progressive...

This paper provides estimates of the costs of organic agriculture (OA) programs, and sets them in the context of the costs of attaining the United Nations' Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). It analyzes the costs of OA programs in four case studies: Wanzai, PRC; Wuyuan, PRC; Kandy, Sri Lanka; and...

The Rural Development Regulation (RDR) within the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP), as an exemplary manifestation of the New Rural Development Paradigm, has achieved significant results. Nevertheless, it has increasingly become liable to institutional complexity and central control in an...

The fundamental principles of the EU LEADER Programme are common in every member states. However the Programme was fit to the national legislative framework, institutional culture and social features, thus it was implemented with significant differences in the different EU countries/regions. Our...