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Households living in rural areas of developing countries rely on rain-fed agriculture for their livelihoods and, as such, are highly dependent on climatic conditions. This paper aims at presenting empirical evidence from Zambia to better understand the linkages between climatic shocks, livelihood diversification and welfare outcomes with the goal of highlighting potential policy entry points to incentivize the types of diversification aimed at improving food security and resilience to climate shocks. We also investigate the role of different institutions in shaping diversification decisions to shed some light into potential policy levers at institutional level. We analyze diversification of crops, livestock and income using nationally representative household data from [...]

The purpose of this document is to provide a full description of FAO’s partial equilibrium modelling system known as GAPS. GAPS has been developed by FAO to study the development of global food markets in the long-term and to assess how socioeconomic fluctuations, climate change and investment pay-offs may affect future global food demand. GAPS is a simple self-contained model which specifies demand and supply for agricultural and food commodities with global coverage and great detail for low and middle income countries. It is shaped around FAOSTAT data on production and commodity balance sheets, which enables a detailed specification of agricultural and food commodities. Furthermore, GAPS allows to assess [...]

The calls for action are numerous: at the United Nations Rio+20 Conference on Sustainable Development in September 2012, governments reaffirmed the fundamental right of everyone to be free from hunger. The same year, the UN Secretary General launched the “Zero Hunger Challenge” campaign to end hunger globally. The United Nations 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, endorsed in September 2015, confirms the importance of achieving food security, and eradicating hunger is the second Sustainable Development Goal (SDG 2). Since 1990, much progress has been made in reducing hunger. Yet, challenges to food security and nutrition remain as pressing as ever. Around [...]

Social protection has helped lift millions of people out of extreme poverty.  However, seventy percent of the world population, particularly in rural areas, still lack social protection coverage. Benjamin Davis, Strategic Programme Leader ad interim of the FAO Strategic Programme on Rural Poverty Reduction together with Natalia Winder Rossi, Social Protection Team Leader of the FAO Social Policies and Rural Institutions Division explain how enhancing social protection systems in rural areas can contribute to reducing poverty and ending hunger. They describe the FAO policy work, including key policy messages. See all videos in the Policy and Governance series :  AR  CH  EN [...]

This brochure describes FAO's area of work on on facilitating the implementation of Article 14 of CEDAW for rural women's empowerment and food security under Strategic Objective 1 implemented by the Cross Cutting Theme on Gender. The brochure contains a rational for why it is important to address gender inequalities for food security and nutrition through political commitment and by incorporating the perspective of gender equality and the empowerment of rural women in sectoral and cross-sectoral policies and strategies. It then describes what FAO can do to support its Member Countries to comply with CEDAW and thus to formulate gender-equitable [...]

Uganda is putting significant efforts toward addressing the constraints responsible for its low agricultural productivity, which affects farmers’ incomes and therefore, their food security. The biggest developments are being seen in improving the added value of its production, as well as in supporting strategic commodities such as livestock and rice. 

The National Inputs Voucher Scheme (NAIVS) will be ending at the close of this cropping year (2013/2014). NAIVS provided access to fertilizer and seeds through subsidized input packages for maize and rice. The Big Results Now (BRN) initiative was launched in 2013, which aims to modernize the agriculture sector by promoting public-private partnership and mainstream market oriented measures.

From 2003, the Zero Hunger Program and subsequently, in 2011, the Brazil Without Poverty Plan, marked a deliberate convergence of the purposes and actions focused on farmers and family farmers in Brazil. This allowed simultaneous access to social policies and polices focused on agriculture and livestock activities, through a permanent set of public policies, such as rural credit, climate and income insurance, technical assistance and commercialization. This happened in parallel to affirmative actions related to gender, ethnicity and rural youth. To deal with such complex themes such as eradicating hunger and extreme poverty, the Federal Government began to integrate traditionally [...]

The video shows the results and impacts the Livelihood Empowerment Against Poverty (LEAP) programme is having in Ghana. LEAP is a cash transfer programme for the poorest families in Ghana to reduce poverty and enhance long term human development. LEAP is managed by Ghana's Ministry of Gender, Children and Social Protection. The University of North Carolina and the Institute for Statistical, Social and Economic Research at the University of Ghana carried out the impact evaluation, in conjunction with UNICEF and FAO's PtoP team.

This document offers a methodological introduction to Social Accounting Matrices (SAMs) for analysing socio-economic impact of agricultural and rural development policies. Firstly, the concept and the structure of an SAM are presented. Next, the concept of policy "instrument" and "objective" variables are introduced and applied for SAM-based policy impact analysis. The module concludes by discussing the multipliers matrix as an instrument for analysing policy impact and presenting some examples. This paper is part of the FAO Policy series: EASYPol-Resources for policy making (in agriculture, rural development and food security). You can find other EASYPol series' resources in the Resources section of [...]