'Economists explain the food crisis as a perfect storm: rising demand for resource-intensive foods like meat, protracted drought, and more land being used to grow fuel instead of food.

More critical thinkers point out that long before biofuels became a household word, international trade rules had bankrupted millions of small farmers in the global south. Because of huge government subsidies to factory farms in the US and Europe, food imported from these countries became cheaper than food prod more...

'PRETORIA, South Africa, July 4, 2008/African Press Organization (APO)/ — Survey Finds Farm Workers Vulnerable to HIV, Particularly Women - An HIV prevalence survey among 10 farms in the Hoedspruit area of the Limpopo Province in South Africa has found that farm workers are highly vulnerable to HIV.'

Community members have identified the emerging issues and priority areas for strengthening information and knowledge systems for e-Agriculture.

How can we make agricultural information and information technology truly accessible?” was the challenge made at the IAALD-AFITA-WCCA World Conference 2008 in Japan in August, one taking up by an e-Agriculture participatory panel discussion focusing on multi-stakeholder partnerships and the roles of mobile phones in support of agricultural development. These particular areas have been actively considered during 2008 by the e-Agriculture community through online forums and other face-to-face ev more...

'Food grain prices more than doubled between January 2006 and June 2008. Over 60 percent of this increase has occurred since January 2008 alone. As a result of the current increases in food prices, many of the 2.3 billion people living on less than US$2 a day will became poorer and another 100 million will fall into poverty. Rising food prices may negatively impact human development in four dimensions, each difficult to reverse and with implications for years, sometimes generations, to come:1 more...

Most farmers, especially the small-scale and poor, are not benefiting from higher food prices. Fertilizer and operating costs have increased as well, and a large proportion of small farmers are net buyers of food commodities, rather than sellers. For food producers who have sufficient capacity, however, price hikes may stimulate increased production.
This potential upside offers an opportunity to promote agricultural and rural development in many low-income food-deficit countries.

'This document is an output from the OECD Development and Climate Change project, an activity being jointly overseen by the Working Party on Global and Structural Policies (WPGSP) of the Environment Directorate, and the Network on Environment and Development Co-operation of the Development Co-operation Directorate. The overall objective of the project is to provide guidance on how to mainstream responses to climate change within economic development planning and assistance policies, with natural more...

Bangladesh has already achieved one of the key Millennium Development Goals (MDG) - gender parity in primary and secondary schooling. The country is on track to achieve most of the MDG goals, even the difficult ones like infant and maternal mortality by 2015. However, disasters induced by climate change pose a serious threat to the development vision of Bangladesh. Frequent flood, tornados, landslides, spread of water salinity, drop in land productivity, bone-shivering cold spells, drought are s more...

‘Developing country governments are increasingly aware that they have a major responsibility for rural development and food security, but lack the capacity and solutions to meet the challenge. This poses a great challenge for developing countries, especially sub-Saharan Africa, where it has been estimated that 50% of the total population would go hungry by the year 2000 (FAO 1998:2). Policy- and decision-makers thus have to identify possible and appropriate solutions that ensure rural developm more...

This Report on Agricultural Workers and their Contribution to Sustainable Agriculture and Rural Development focuses on the 450 million women and men who are employed as waged agricultural workers, and who are at the very heart of the food production system. The Report demonstrates that these waged agricultural workers who account for over 40% of the total agricultural workforce remain largely invisible to policy and decision-makers in governments, agricultural and rural development agencies, int more...