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Many social protection programmes, including cash transfers, public works programmes and asset transfers, target women as main beneficiaries or recipients of benefits. Extending social protection to rural populations has great potential for fostering rural women’s economic empowerment. However, to tap into this potential, more needs to be done. There is much scope for making social protection policies and programmes more gender sensitive and for better aligning them with agricultural and rural development policies to help address gender inequalities. Recognizing this potential and capitalizing on existing evidence, FAO seeks to enhance the contribution of social protection to gender equality and women’s empowerment [...]

Many social protection programmes, including cash transfers, public works programmes and asset transfers, target women as main beneficiaries or recipients of benefits. Extending social protection to rural populations has great potential for fostering rural women’s economic empowerment. However, to tap into this potential, more needs to be done. There is much scope for making social protection policies and programmes more gender sensitive and for better aligning them with agricultural and rural development policies to help address gender inequalities. Recognizing this potential and capitalizing on existing evidence, FAO seeks to enhance the contribution of social protection to gender equality and women’s empowerment [...]

Kyrgyzstan experienced an extremely cold winter in 2012, with heavy snowfall followed by a significant spring run-off. This harsh winter led to considerable livestock mortality and price rises for animal products, with a substantial impact on the welfare of livestock herding households. On average, households affected by the harsh winter experienced a 5 percent reduction in food consumption expenditure in the first year following the shock, and 8 percent reduction four years later with respect to households not exposed to this shock (Figure 1). The significant and persistent impact of the harsh winter is particularly evident for the wealthiest households, [...]

This edition of The State of Agricultural Commodity Markets focuses on the complex and underexplored intersection between agricultural trade, climate change and food security. The report makes an important contribution to the policy debates on climate change adaptation and mitigation under the Paris Agreement and the multilateral agricultural trade rules. The report discusses policies – both domestic support and trade measures – that can promote food security, adaptation and mitigation, and improve the livelihoods of family farmers around the world. Given both the slow- and rapid-onset impacts of climate change, policies that can significantly promote climate change adaptation and mitigation [...]

FAO promotes the use and scale up of Cash+ as a tool for emergency response, strengthening resilience and reducing rural poverty. The Cash+ model supports the enhancement of vibrant and diversified livelihoods, providing an important safety net against shocks and stresses for poor and vulnerable rural households. As such, the model has great transformative potential. Cash+ is a tool for quick-impact humanitarian response and recovery as well as serving as a component of long-term social protection and resilience programmes. FAO’s work on Cash+ is based on field experience and research, which show the potential of this tool to sustainably enhance the [...]

In Lesotho, social protection plays an important role in protecting poor and vulnerable people from natural hazards saving lives and livelihoods, while also enhancing families’ capacity to cope, respond and withstand threats and crises.  In 2009 rural poor in Lesotho started receiving cash transfers through the Child Grant Programme. This brought positive impacts on the local economy, education and school enrolment, children living standards and agriculture production.  Cash transfers are a powerful tool to combat hunger and poverty. This video highlights and raise awareness on how social protection impacts can be maximized. 

During the period 2007-2017, Nigeria’s agriculture sector has undergone major reforms. The introduction of the Agricultural Transformation Agenda (ATA) reformed the input delivery system, strengthened famers’ resilience to shocks and enhanced agricultural credit. In 2016, the government launched the Social Investment programme which aims at strengthening school feeding, conditional cash transfers and food bio-fortification programmes. 

In recent years, government's investments in agriculture have focused on increasing land under irrigation, subsidizing inputs, strengthening the agricultural extension service and reforming agricultural sector institutions through the privatization of a number of parastatals. Although agriculture represents the largest contributor to Kenya's GDP, the allocation of public expenditure to the sector has remained below the five percent over the past decade.

The paper discusses the role that social protection can play in saving livelihoods while also enhancing the capacity of households to respond, cope and withstand threats and crises. The paper builds on FAO Social Protection Framework (FAO, 2017) and focuses on the role of social protection systems in humanitarian contexts, with a closer look at protracted crises and a discussion on the importance of shock-sensitive and responsive systems, even in stable contexts. The paper acknowledges that strengthening resilience at national and community levels requires a multisector approach, where risk-informed social protection interventions, including cash transfers, can become a critical component.The paper [...]

In this paper, we evaluate the impact of this proposed change to the existing FISP design and implementation mechanisms by utilizing two waves of the Living Standards Measurement Study - Integrated Surveys on Agriculture (LSMS-ISA)survey merged with historical climate data. We estimate how the demand for agricultural inputs varies according to a variation in the targeting criteria and identify more efficient farmers that should be eligible for the FISP.