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This paper examines the distributional impacts of agricultural policies versus those of cash transfers using a tax–benefit microsimulation model for Zambia for the policy year 2020. The analysis also considers the behavioural impacts of input subsidies and social cash transfers. The results indicate that Zambian agricultural policies reduce headcount poverty by 3–5 percentage points, depending on whether only their direct impacts or also behavioural impacts that lead to changes in agricultural production are taken into account. The paper also considers policy reforms where the goal is to achieve similar, or even greater, poverty reduction with smaller government net expenditure. The results [...]

This paper assesses the food security impacts of widespread agricultural interventions, aiming at increasing agricultural yields, and explores the role played by adjustments in rural households’ livelihood strategies in mediating those impacts. Our empirical strategy combines project and remote-sensing data with a household panel survey and exploits the timing and geographic variation in the roll-out of interventions implemented from 2011 to 2016 by the Ethiopian Agricultural Transformation Agency (ATA), recently renamed as Agricultural Transformation Institute (ATI).Results show that agricultural interventions are effectively associated with higher agricultural yields, better food security outcomes and adjustments in livelihood strategies. However, when exploring the [...]

The brochure provides data disaggregated by sex on various issues under the following topics: Small family farms and women's decision-making roles in agriculture Secure rights over land Employment, work and time use in agricultural contexts Access to digitalization and financial services Food security It also identifies some of the areas in the rural and agricultural contexts where there is only a partial understanding of the reality due to the lack of sex‑disaggregated data and gender-relevant statistics.

The 2022 Global Report on Food Crises (GRFC 2022) highlights the remarkably high severity and numbers of people in Crisis or worse (IPC/CH Phase 3 or above) or equivalent in 53 countries/territories, driven by persistent conflict, pre-existing and COVID-19-related economic shocks, and weather extremes. The number identified in the 2022 edition is the highest in the report’s six-year existence. The report is produced by the Global Network against Food Crises (which includes WFP), an international alliance working to address the root causes of extreme hunger.

The FAO-IFPRI study, of which this policy brief is a summary, focuses on the use of tractors because they are among the most versatile farm mechanization tools and are universal power sources for all other driven implements and equipment in agriculture, with significant potential to replace animal draught power and human power, including children’s muscle power. Tractor use is typically also the first type of machine-powered equipment in use at lower levels of agricultural development, the context where most child labour is found.Mechanization is mostly assumed to reduce child labour, as it is expected to be labour saving in general. [...]

Land and labour rights can intersect in multiple ways. Investments in large-scale plantations often entail trade-offs between job creation and compressions of land rights. Also, labour relations can involve tenure dimensions, for example where estate managers sublet plots for workers to complement wages with food production for their family or local markets. Casual or seasonal employment and limited application of labour legislation can create precarity not only in workers’ employment but also in their tenure rights, with entire families dependent upon the employment status of one individual – thus perpetuating generational labour obligations, affecting relations within the family and the [...]

This report addresses the subject of decent rural employment for youth in the forestry sector. It is based on case studies carried out across different processes in the value chain within the sector in Uganda, ranging from seedbed development through to plantation management, saw logging and trading.Findings indicate that a considerable number of Uganda’s legal and policy frameworks emphasize the participation of youth in the labour market, especially given that young people constitute a large majority of the country’s population. However, only a few of these frameworks focus on decent work, whether for young people or the country’s workers more [...]

The COVID-19 pandemic is, directly and indirectly, impacting health and well-being around the globe. Illness and containment measures are compounding the social and economic disadvantages of the most vulnerable in society. These social and economic impacts stand to cause devastating setbacks to efforts to achieve the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. Pervasive inequalities between rural and urban inhabitants, rich and poor, women and men will exacerbate these effects. People in areas impacted by severe climate change, conflict, forced displacement, and migration will be even more vulnerable.Vulnerable groups include rural women, youth and children, indigenous people, the elderly, and people with [...]

COVID-19 has quickly morphed from an unprecedented health crisis to a massive economic shock—and, unless immediate and decisive action is taken to sustain consumption levels and prevent disruptions to food supply chains, it could easily lead into a global food crisis. Public employment programmes (PEP) - which refer to a wide array of interventions including public works, cash for work, and temporary or emergency employment programmes - have a long track record of deployment in response to cyclical shocks, seasonal deprivation, and severe macro-economic crisis involving sharp income loss and large under- and unemployment. PEPs, in fact, have a key role [...]

The gender equality and livestock strategy 2021-2025 presents the priority areas for gender mainstreaming in the REU Livestock Programme. These priorities were identified throughout a participatory process by key stakeholder in the Livestock Sector in Europe and Central Asia. The main priority areas are the following:1) Collect and analyze sex-disaggregated data in livestock in a systematic manner2) Secure vulnerable livestock farmers' access to productive resources3) Increase access of vulnerable groups to capacity development (e.g. women, refugees, internally displaced people, youth and other disadvantaged groups)Under these priority areas the strategy outlines specific objectives and outputs.