Agriculture and Food

23 items available

Permanent URI for this collection

http://hdl.handle.net/10986/2151

A strong food and agriculture system is fundamental to economic growth, poverty reduction, environmental sustainability, and human health. The Agriculture and Food Series is intended to prompt public discussion and inform policies that will deliver higher incomes, reduce hunger, improve sustainability, and generate better health and nutrition from the food we grow and eat. It expands on the former Agriculture and Rural Development series by considering issues from farm to fork, in both rural and urban settings. Titles in this series undergo internal and external review under the management of the World Bank’s Agriculture and Food Global Practice.

Items in this collection

Now showing 1 - 10 of 14

Agricultural Land Redistribution : Toward Greater Consensus

(World Bank, 2009) Binswanger-Mkhize, Hans P. ; Bourguignon, Camille ; Brink, Rogier van den

The main focus of this book is land redistribution. To forge greater consensus among practitioners of land reform, and to enable them to make better choices among the many options, the book describes and analyzes alternative broad paths of implementation, using examples and the detailed implementation mechanisms that were used in those examples. The objectives of this book are to review and analyze: a) the growing consensus on the importance of land redistribution; b) the historical origins of land concentration and past attempts to redistribute land; c) ongoing land reform programs, their mechanisms, achievements, and limitations; d) the wide array of objectives, mechanisms, and tools for land redistribution that remain the focus of heated debate; and e) how to develop, implement, and monitor an effective national program of land redistribution.
Agribusiness and Innovation Systems in Africa

(World Bank, 2009) Larsen, Kurt ; Kim, Ronald ; Theus, Florian

The role of agriculture in sustainable development and poverty reduction for the vast majority of developing countries cannot be overemphasized. Forty-five percent of the developing world's population lives in households involved in agriculture, and twenty-seven percent in smallholder households, and most depend on agriculture for their livelihoods. The agricultural sector generates on average twenty-nine percent of gross domestic product (GDP), employs sixty-five percent of the labor force in agriculture-based countries, and is a key to generating overall growth. This book attempts to address these questions and challenges, by examining how agricultural innovation arises in four African countries, Ghana, Kenya, Tanzania, and Uganda, through agribusiness, public policies, and specific value chains for food staples, high value products, and livestock. Determinants of innovation are not viewed individually but within the context of a complex agricultural innovation system (AIS) involving many actors and interactions. The country reports are based on qualitative interviews with agribusiness representatives about their experiences in this area. The synthesis chapter preceding the country reports presents the main findings of the country reports, links common themes, and distills lessons learned.
Organization and Performance of Cotton Sectors in Africa : Learning from Reform Experience

(World Bank, 2009) Tschirley, David ; Poulton, Colin ; Labaste, Patrick

Cotton is a major source of foreign exchange earnings in more than 15 countries across all regions of Sub-Saharan African (SSA) and a crucial source of cash income for millions of rural people in these countries. The crop is, therefore, critical in the fight against rural poverty. The World Bank and other development institutions have been and are currently assisting many cotton exporting countries of SSA to improve their cotton sector performance through projects supporting investment as well as through policy and institutional reform. Many SSA countries have been implementing or are considering implementing reforms of their cotton industries. The ultimate objective of the reform programs is to strengthen the competitiveness of cotton production, processing, and exports in an increasingly demanding world market and to ensure long-term, sustainable, and equitable growth for these major sectors of many African economies. The reform programs generally entail redefining the role of the state; facilitating greater involvement of the private sector and farmer organizations; ensuring greater competition in input and output markets; improving productivity through research and development, extension, and technology dissemination; and seeking value addition through market development and processing of cotton lint and by-products. A number of SSA cotton sectors, especially in West and Central Africa (WCA), are currently facing serious short-term financial difficulties. It is important to clarify that the purpose of this report is not to provide quick solutions to these short-run problems. Rather, it is to step back, build up a reliable broad assessment of cotton sector performance from detailed empirical information, and thereby provide guidance for the design of strategies that will address the long-term challenges of cotton production and marketing in Africa. Finally, to ensure that a broad perspective was brought to bear, the study was entrusted to a team which includes independent researchers and experts in the field of cotton.
Gender in Agriculture Sourcebook

(Washington, DC : World Bank, 2009) World Bank ; Food and Agriculture Organization ; International Fund for Agricultural Development

Three out of every four poor people in developing countries live in rural areas, and most of them depend directly or indirectly on agriculture for their livelihoods. In many parts of the world, women are the main farmers or producers, but their roles remain largely unrecognized. The 2008 World development report: agriculture for development highlights the vital role of agriculture in sustainable development and its importance in achieving the millennium development goal of halving by 2015 the share of people suffering from extreme poverty and hunger. Climate change and rising food prices are reminders of the need to focus on food security and agriculture for development; and the material presented in the gender in agriculture sourcebook suggests that accounting for the different roles of women and men and gender equality in access to resources and opportunities is a necessary condition for doing so. This sourcebook is a particularly timely resource. It combines descriptive accounts of national and international experience in investing in agriculture with practical operational guidance on to how to design agriculture for development strategies that capitalize effectively on the unique properties of agricultural growth and rural development involving women and men as a high-impact source of poverty reduction. It looks at gender equality and women's empowerment, and the associated principles have the potential to make a difference in the lives of hundreds of millions of rural poor.
The Sunken Billions : The Economic Justification for Fisheries Reform

(World Bank, 2009) World Bank ; Food and Agriculture Organization

This study and previous studies indicate that the current marine catch could be achieved with approximately half of the current global fishing effort. In other words, there is massive overcapacity in the global fleet. The excess fleets competing for the limited fish resources result in stagnant productivity and economic inefficiency. In response to the decline in physical productivity, the global fleet has attempted to maintain profitability by reducing labor costs, lobbying for subsidies, and increasing investment in technology. Partly as a result of the poor economic performance, real income levels of fishers remain depressed as the costs per unit of harvest have increased. Although the recent changes in food and fuel prices have altered the fishery economy, over the past decade real landed fish prices have stagnated, exacerbating the problem. The value of the marine capture seafood production at the point of harvest is some 20 percent of the $400 billion global food fish market. The market strength of processors and retailers and the growth of aquaculture, which now accounts for some 50 percent of food fish production, have contributed to downward pressure on producer prices. In technical terms, this study estimates the loss of potential economic rent in the global fishery. For the purposes of this study, economic rent is considered broadly equivalent to net economic benefits, which is the term used throughout most of the report. This study estimated the difference between the potential and actual net economic benefits from global marine fisheries using 2004 as the base year. The estimate was made using a model that aggregated the world's highly diverse fisheries into a single fishery. This made it possible to use the available global fisheries data such as production, value of production, and global fisheries profits as inputs to the model.
Forests Sourcebook : Practical Guidance for Sustaining Forests in Development Cooperation

(Washington, DC : World Bank, 2008) World Bank

The Forests Sourcebook is divided into two parts. The first contains an introduction to the book plus seven chapters covering topics associated with enhancing the contribution of forests to poverty reduction, engaging the private sector, meeting the growing demand for forest products, optimizing forest functions at the landscape level, improving forest governance, mainstreaming forest considerations into macro policy dialogue, and monitoring forest sector activities. Each chapter provides relevant background and context with a general overview of the fundamental issues, constraints, policies, and institutional requirements that need to be considered for specific topics. The second part provides guidance for implementing the World Bank's safeguard on forests. This section of the Forests Sourcebook has five chapters. Chapter eighth provides a brief introduction to the World Bank's Forests Policy (OP 4.36). Chapter ninth is on applying OP 4.36. This chapter includes a discussion of the main requirements of OP 4.36, guidelines for implementation (including preparation, appraisal, and supervision requirements), definitions, and guidance on identifying critical forests and critical natural habitats through environmental assessment, which includes a discussion on protecting forests through conservation offsets. Chapter tenth is on consultation and communication in forest projects. Chapters eleventh and twelfth discuss the Forest Certification Assessment Guide and the World Bank's Indigenous Peoples policy, respectively.
Sustainable Land Management Sourcebook

(Washington, DC, 2008) World Bank

This sourcebook is intended to be a ready reference for practitioners (including World Bank stakeholders, clients in borrowing countries, and World Bank project leaders) seeking state-of-the-art information about good land management approaches, innovations for investments, and close monitoring for potential scaling up. This sourcebook is divided into three parts: the first part identifies the need and scope for sustainable land management (SLM) and food production in relation to cross-sector issues such as freshwater and forest resources, regional climate and air quality, and interactions with existing and emerging infectious diseases. It introduces the concept of production landscapes and analysis of trade-offs and establishes a framework for linking indicators that provide a measure of the outcomes of SLM. It then categorizes the diversity of land management (that is, farming) systems globally and the strategies for improving household livelihoods in each type of system. For the farming system types, a set of SLM principles and common but important issues for future investments are identified. The second part of the sourcebook focuses on three major farming system types and presents a range of investment notes and innovative activity profiles. The third part provides users of the source book with easy-to access, web-based resources relevant for land and natural resource managers. The resources are available in the public domain, and readers can access the web sites of various international and national agencies.
Reforming Agricultural Trade for Developing Countries : Volume 2. Quantifyng the Impact of Multilateral Trade Reform

(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2007) McCalla, Alex F. ; Nash, John ; McCalla, Alex F. ; Nash, John

Reforming agricultural trade for developing countries is a two-volume set. The first volume is subtitled Key issues for a pro- development outcome of the Doha Round, and it is focused on specific concerns that are being encountered in the agricultural negotiations, and on strategies for dealing with them to arrive at a final agreement that will significantly spur growth and reduce poverty in developing countries. The companion volume is subtitled Quantifying the impact of multilateral trade reform. It comprises chapters that take different approaches to modeling trade reform and quantifying the resulting benefits and costs to various players in the negotiations. The study explains the differences in results that come out of these different approaches, and compares them to some other recent estimates of the gains from global trade reform.
Enhancing Agricultural Innovation : How to Go Beyond the Strengthening of Research Systems

(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2007) World Bank

Agricultural development depends to a great extent on how successfully knowledge is generated and applied. Investments in knowledge, especially in the form of science and technology, have been featured prominently and consistently in most strategies to promote sustainable and equitable agricultural development at the national level. Although many of these investments have been quite successful, the context for agriculture is changing rapidly-sometimes radically-and the process of knowledge generation and use has been transformed as well. It is increasingly recognized that traditional agricultural science and technology investments such as research and extension, although necessary, are not sufficient to enable agricultural innovation. As this paper will demonstrate, new perspectives on the nature of the agricultural innovation process can yield practical approaches to agricultural development that may be more suited to this changing context. This paper includes the following headings: (i) reasons for assessing the value of the innovation systems perspective; (ii) the innovation systems concept - a framework for analysis; (iii) research methodology and case study descriptions; (iv) innovation system capacity - a comparative analysis of case studies; (v) reviewing the innovation systems concept in light of the case studies; (vi) toward a framework for diagnosis and intervention; and (vii) conclusions.
Reforming Agricultural Trade for Developing Countries : Volume 1. Key Issues for a Pro-Development Outcome of the Doha Round

(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2007) McCalla, Alex F. ; Nash, John ; McCalla, Alex F. ; Nash, John

Reforming agricultural trade for developing countries is a two-volume set. The first volume is subtitled Key issues for a pro- development outcome of the Doha Round, and it is focused on specific concerns that are being encountered in the agricultural negotiations, and on strategies for dealing with them to arrive at a final agreement that will significantly spur growth and reduce poverty in developing countries. The companion volume is subtitled Quantifying the impact of multilateral trade reform. It comprises chapters that take different approaches to modeling trade reform and quantifying the resulting benefits and costs to various players in the negotiations. The study explains the differences in results that come out of these different approaches, and compares them to some other recent estimates of the gains from global trade reform.