Una serie de estudios recientes han encontrado que los supermercados se han transformado en un actor dominante de los sistemas agroalimentarios de América Latina y el Caribe.

Cultural methods such as crop fertilization can affect susceptibility of plants to insect pests by altering plant tissue nutrient levels. Research shows that the ability of a crop plant to resist or tolerate insect pests and diseases is tied to optimal physical, chemical and mainly biological properties of soils. Soils...

Small-scale, family fishing enterprises manage to persist despite the difficult economic and ecological changes and disruptions they almost constantly have experienced during the past several decades. Drawing upon long-term ethnographic and historical research in the Bigouden region of France, this paper asks why and how family-based fishing enterprises continue in...

En el debate por reformar la actual Constitución, nuevamente se ha planteado la conveniencia o no de mantener el régimen de protección de las comunidades campesinas, restableciendo las llamadas "tres íes" sobre la propiedad de sus tierras: imprescriptibles, inembargables e inalienables, tal como lo prescribieron las Constituciones de 1920 y...

The eastern Africa region faces serious and worsening problems of food security, decreasing per capita food production and massive poverty. Agriculture in this region is dominated by smallholder farmers. Yield levels on these farms are generally very low for a variety of reasons. One important reason is the declining soil...

This project, designed to reduce rural poverty, focused particularly on small farmers, unemployed young people and rural women. It was in line with the government's strategic development aims in mountain areas with a high incidence of poverty.  The project served as a platform for continuing policy dialogue with the government on...

Mountains of the world cover about one-fifth of the land surface, are home to one-tenth of the world's population, and provide livelihood to some of the poorest communities in the world. Mountain lakes and streams are a source of freshwater for countless riparian human communities, support industries, provide water for...

This brief explains the potential of conservation agriculture to retain soil moisture, through rainwater harvesting and optimizing soil moisture.

This paper was prepared as an initial scoping study for the Sahel and West Africa Club (SWAC) Secretariat to provide the basis for developing a longer term programme of work to examine the transformations underway in West African agriculture, and the challenges faced by smallholder production systems. The following question...

This leaflet covers the main aspects of soil moisture in Conservation Agriculture

This leaflet explains how to improve soil fertility, achieving conservation of soil organic matter (SOM).

The Livelihood Support Programme (LSP) evolved from the belief that FAO could have a greater impact on reducing poverty and food insecurity, if its wealth of talent and experience were integrated into a more flexible and demand-responsive team approach. The LSP, which is executed by FAO with funding provided by...

These guidelines provide general principles and basic considerations for those involved in providing microfinance services to fisheries and aquaculture and for those who intend to include fishing and fish farming communities as part of the client base of their operation. The guidelines further elaborate on lending models, methodologies and policies...

This paper provides a micro-level foundation for discussions of land allocation and its relation to income poverty within the smallholder sectors of Eastern and Southern Africa. Results are drawn from nationally-representative household surveys between 1990 and 2000 in five countries: Ethiopia, Kenya, Rwanda, Mozambique, and Zambia. The paper shows that...

This paper aims at presenting an analytical reference that allows understanding pluriactivity as a strategy for social and economic reproduction for rural families. In the introduction, we present the context in which the study of family farming and pluriactivity emerges in Brazil. In the first section, we discuss the origin...

This report presents the results of work in progress. It applies GIS techniques and newly available geo-referenced data to understand conditions underlying poverty and hunger in the world, with special reference to mountain environments and populations. Following the system developed by the United Nations Environment Programme – World Conservation Monitoring...

The objective of the Nutrition Country Profiles (NCP) is to provide concise analytical summaries describing the food and nutrition situation in individual countries with background statistics on food-related factors. The profiles present consistent and comparable statistics in a standard format. This pre-defined format combines a set of graphics, tables and...

The objective of the Nutrition Country Profiles (NCP) is to provide concise analytical summaries describing the food and nutrition situation in individual countries with background statistics on food-related factors. The profiles present consistent and comparable statistics in a standard format. This pre-defined format combines a set of graphics, tables and...

L’agriculture dans les Alpes peut assurer son avenir par la production et la commercialisation régionale de produits de qualité. La production de spécialités – viande, lait et légumes bio, etc. - permet d’exploiter des niches commerciales. Il convient pour ce faire de privilégier et de favoriser une exploitation des surfaces...

Contract farming, has in one form or another, been practiced since time immemorial and is a common feature of commercializing agriculture in developing countries as well as in developed countries. Its pre-eminence in developing countries is attributed to a response in the trend towards coordination of agricultural production and processing...