FAO.org

The report intends to examine the short-term measures adopted by some 81 countries and is intended for policy makers and analysts.    Prices of staple foods, such as rice and vegetable oil, have doubled between January and May 2008. High food prices together with record petroleum and fertilizer prices have spurred inflation. Poorer households with a larger share of food in their total expenditures are suffering the most from high food prices, due to the erosion of purchasing power, which has a  negative impact on food security, nutrition and access to school and health services. Higher prices also result in [...]

Livestock contribute 40 percent of the global value of agricultural output and support the livelihoods and food security of almost a billion people. Rapidly rising incomes and urbanization, combined with underlying population growth, are driving demand for meat and other animal products in many developing countries. These changes and the speed with which they are occurring have created systemic risks for livelihoods, human and animal health and the environment. To meet the challenges and constraints of the twenty-first century, the livestock sector requires appropriate institutions, research, development interventions and governance that reflect the diversity within the sector and the multiple demands [...]

The rural sector’s lack of resilience to climatic accidents seems to be one of the main reasons for the transformation of climatic accidents into environmental, economic and social disasters for local communities. Thus, the integration of activities geared towards the improvement of community resilience seems to be of utmost priority. This can be achieved by integrating prevention and risk-management tools into already existing social safety-nets within the framework of food security and poverty reduction strategies. “Social protection initiatives are as much at risk from climate change as other development approaches. They are unlikely to succeed in reducing poverty if they do [...]

After sketching the mutual links between economic growth, agriculture, technology, poverty reduction and external factors, this paper analyses the implications of recent international price shocks on welfare and growth, notably energy and agricultural products, for Burkina Faso, a less industrialised, low-income, food-deficit, net oil-importing country. The socio-economic impacts of the above-mentioned external shocks are analysed by means of a Computable General Equilibrium model (CGE). The paper also discusses the extent to which technological changes in agriculture, specifically the introduction of “Good Agricultural Practices” (GAP) towards “conservation agriculture”, could mitigate the welfare and growth losses derived by international price shocks.  Additionally, it is shown [...]

Microcredit and micro-insurance, considered within the larger microfinance current, are two risk management tools currently being developed by governments and international development agencies to reduce vulnerability associated with poverty in rural areas. Discussions about credit protection increasingly invoke the need to create linkages with insurance services that are tailored to the risks rural people in developing countries face. Once a country’s financial and banking sectors have been developed, the pairing of these two instruments could do one of two things. It may present a veritable opportunity to emerge from the vicious cycle of poverty, or it may introduce an additional [...]

This applied work intends to examine the short-term measures adopted by some 81 countries and is intended for policy makers and analysts. Prices of staple foods, such as rice and vegetable oil, have doubled between January and May 2008. High food prices together with record petroleum and fertilizer prices have spurred inflation. Poorer households with a larger share of food in their total expenditures are suffering the most from high food prices, due to the erosion of purchasing power, which has a negative impact on food security, nutrition and access to school and health services. Higher prices also result in pressure [...]

This issue paper aims at introducing selected analytical approaches for quantitative analysis of the socio-economic impacts of policies. In the first part of the document, after considering a set of basic questions that a quantitative policy impact analysis has usually to address in order to be useful for informing decision-making processes; some definitions and insights on policy-relevant elements such as policy objectives, policy instruments and impact models are provided. The document then briefly describes the use of counterfactual analysis for socio-economic policy impact analysis. The second part of the work focuses on the review of selected quantitative analytical approaches frequently applied [...]

Politics and the political economy matter for whether and how reforms happen in developing as well as in developed countries. The World Bank as an institution and its individual country and task teams has been grappling with this issue for many years. The good practice framework described here is an attempt to summarize relevant analytic tools and approaches, to indicate how it can be used (more) systematically, and to make key lessons readily available. It also seeks to set out how such tools can be used in a way that is problem driven, that is, focused on specific issues and [...]

Food security is still largely misconceived as exclusively a matter of increased food production. As a result, comprehensive strategic approaches to hunger reduction have been insufficient. With this in mind, in 2004, through the FAO Netherlands Partnership Programme (FNPP), FAO began assisting several countries, namely Bhutan, Cambodia, Kenya, Mozambique and Zanzibar in integrating a specific and comprehensive food security and nutrition focus into their poverty reduction strategies or other national development frameworks. Through the fruitful collaboration between FAO and counterpart governments under the FNPP, each of the above-mentioned countries is now including food security and nutrition into major national policy [...]

How did the Asia-Pacific region rescue over 700 million people from extreme poverty between 1980 and 2005? What policy lessons can we learn and implement to improve conditions for the nearly 1 billion people in the region who continue to live in poverty? Examining Asia’s recent agricultural reform and trade liberalization experiences, in the context of current global crises, presents an occasion to reflect on past achievements and consider future opportunities. This publication synthesizes the proceedings and presents technical papers from a policy forum convened by FAO and China's Ministry of Agriculture. The first part summarizes key points from presentations, panel [...]