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Publications
How unequal is the global distribution of agricultural land?
10/2026
This brief draws on the Global Database of Land Distribution and Inequality (LINEQ) – a new harmonized dataset covering 177 countries across all decadal rounds of the FAO World Programme for the Census of Agriculture – to assess the levels, patterns, and drivers of agricultural land inequality globally and across regions.
Strengthening coffee traceability in Rwanda to boost trade compliance
04/2026
This policy brief summarizes Rwanda’s journey to embed traceability in the coffee value chain. Over the last few years, greater emphasis has been placed on tracking and tracing transactions in the coffee value chain to meet regulatory requirements for exports and to monitor trends in the sector.
Resilience toolbox for context-specific resilience programming
04/2026
The policy brief is a compendium of the FAO technical guide “Resilience toolbox – An applied resource to guide context-specific programming for resilience to food insecurity”. It provides practical, evidence-based guidance to translate knowledge and risk-informed financing into coordinated, context-specific interventions.
Global crop production patterns across landholding scales to inform policies
11/2025
Background paper for The State of Food and Agriculture 2025. The State of Food and Agriculture 2025 presents the most comprehensive global assessment to date of who produces the world’s food. Covering 77 countries and 120 crops, the report finds that while farms larger than 50 hectares supply about 60 percent of global dietary energy, smallholders under 2 hectares remain crucial for local food security, producing nearly 60 percent of food in low, and lower-middle-income countries.
Tackling land degradation for sustainable agrifood systems
11/2025
Background paper for The State of Food and Agriculture 2025. Land degradation poses a significant threat to global food security, affecting approximately 1.7 billion people by limiting agricultural yields. This policy brief explores the multifaceted nature of land degradation, defined as the long-term decline in land’s capacity to provide essential ecosystem functions and services.
Two in three Afghan households show resilience gains in last year
10/2025
This policy brief reviews progress in strengthening household resilience to food insecurity in Afghanistan using the E-Resilience Index Measurement and Analysis (E-RIMA) tool.
Record reporting as 34 African countries track resilience to food insecurity shocks
11/2024
This policy brief outlines the African Union Commission’s (AUC) progress in tracking resilience to food insecurity, climate variability, and other shocks under the Malabo Declaration. With support from FAO and its digital Resilience Index Measurement and Analysis tool (e-RIMA), resilience reporting advanced from only 8 African countries in 2019 to 34 in 2023.
Navigating the distributional challenges of agrifood systems transformation
11/2024
Background paper to The State of Food and Agriculture 2024. True cost accounting (TCA) allows estimating the hidden costs and benefits of agrifood systems. TCA can measure and value (the environmental, social, health and economic) costs and benefits generated by agrifood systems to improve decision-making.
Agricultural yields and production in the Comoros
12/2023
This policy brief provides a snapshot of agricultural production, productivity and fertilizer use in the Comoros, a small island developing state, where up-to-date information on the agrifood systems has been lacking.
Revealing the hidden costs of agrifood systems to enhance their value
10/2023
Agrifood systems are invaluable to society. However, they also contribute to climate change and natural resource degradation while failing to provide healthy diets to all. Many of these impacts are not included in market prices and are thus hidden.
Sustaining restoration of the Great Green Wall through sustainable livelihoods in Nigeria
08/2023
Evaluation of the Action Against Desertification Programme (AAD) in Northern Nigeria. To address the lack of baseline information, a counterfactual scenario was built based on ex ante spatial program information and a combination of machine learning and quasi-experimental impact evaluation techniques.
Africa’s unique transformation from a household livelihood strategies perspective
07/2023
Livelihood diversification continues to be the norm rather than the exception globally. This means that, to be successful, livelihood support interventions need to consider households’ decisions in terms of the distribution of labour, time and risk management strategies.
Price elasticities of major food categories to inform fiscal reform in Costa Rica
07/2023
In the context of fiscal reform in Costa Rica (value added tax revision), the definition of a new basic tax basket – canasta básica tributaria (CBT), incorporating nutritional criteria – is underway in the country. Measuring price elasticities is essential because it allows knowing the extent to which food demand reacts to price changes, anticipating changes in the quantities demanded as a result of fiscal policy changes, ...
Farmer income and decoupled direct payments in North Macedonia
04/2023
This policy brief summarizes the key findings and policy recommendations of the corresponding working paper “Decoupling direct payments in North Macedonia: impacts on farmer income”. North Macedonia’s ambition to join the European Union requires reforms of the agricultural sector and subsidy system.
Policy orientations for food security resilience with gender sensitivity in the Gambia
04/2023
This brief summarizes the findings of the working paper "Resilience to food insecurity and gender differential decomposition in the Gambia", which aims to analyse the key drivers of household resilience to food insecurity and assess differences in resilience capacity and food security indexes across male- and female-headed households.
Commodity investment needs in the eyes of Ugandan farmers and experts
03/2023
This policy brief highlights the main findings from the FAO Agricultural Development Economics Technical Study ‘Identifying commodity-specific priority investments in selected districts of Uganda’. The findings include a ranking from one to eight of priority investment areas from the perspective of farmers and local experts, who ultimately produce or support the production of the five commodities.
Promoting the development of family farming in Peru
03/2023
The policy brief provides the main results and highlights of the FAO Agricultural Development Economics Technical Study “La agricultura familiar en el Perú: brechas, retos y oportunidades”. The analysis applies a family farming typology based on the level of the farm’s net agricultural income as well as the national poverty lines.
Towards a more sustainable supply and use of evidence in agricultural policy in Benin
02/2023
This policy brief summarizes the findings from the FAO Agricultural Development Economics Working Paper 23–01 ‘An ecosystemic framework for analysing evidence-informed policy systems for agricultural transformation – Case study of Benin’, drawing on ecological science and social network analysis to develop and test a framework to map agricultural evidence-policy systems and understand their sustainability in Benin.
Understanding poverty and food insecurity at the household level
12/2022
This policy brief introduces a working paper conducted by FAO that sheds light on the household-level relationship between poverty and food insecurity in various countries of sub-Saharan Africa and Latin America. The paper finds a solid correlation between household poverty and food insecurity in all the examined countries, meaning that poor households are significantly more likely to be food insecure.
Enhancing welfare and livelihoods through agricultural transformation in Ethiopia
12/2022
This policy brief highlights the main findings of a study assessing the food security and livelihoods impacts of widespread agricultural interventions, primarily aiming at increasing agricultural yields.