Agriculture and Food
18 items available
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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
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Publication
Gender in Agriculture Sourcebook
(Washington, DC : World Bank, 2009)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. -
Publication
Sustainable Land Management Sourcebook
(Washington, DC, 2008)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. -
Publication
Changing the Face of the Waters : The Promise and Challenge of Sustainable Aquaculture
(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2007)This study provides strategic orientations and recommendations for Bank client countries and suggests approaches for the Bank's role in a rapidly changing industry with high economic potential. It identifies priorities and options for policy adjustments, catalytic investments, and entry points for the Bank and other investors to foster environmentally friendly, wealth-creating, and sustainable aquaculture. The objectives of the study are to inform and provide guidance on sustainable aquaculture to decision makers in the international development community and in client countries of international finance institutions. The study focuses on several critical issues and challenges: 1) Harnessing the contribution of aquaculture to economic development, including poverty alleviation and wealth creation, to employment and to food security and trade, particularly for least developed countries (LDCs); 2) Building environmentally sustainable aquaculture, including the role of aquaculture in the broader suite of environmental management measures; 3) Creating the enabling conditions for sustainable aquaculture, including the governance, policy, and regulatory frameworks, and identifying the roles of the public and private sectors; and 4) Developing and transferring human and institutional capacity in governance, technologies, and business models with special reference to the application of lessons from Asia to Sub-Saharan Africa and Latin America.