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Attempts have been made to institutionalize government programmes in favour of long-term and comprehensive strategies: notably, the introduction and reinforcement of conditional cash transfer programmes and free food distribution systems. Input distributions continue to be the main policy instrument to support farmers.

In Brazil, the government has successfully adopted an integrated approach for combating malnutrition and hunger. Under the well-known Zero Hunger strategy (“Fome Zero”) and subsequent Brazil Without Misery plan (“Brasil Sem Miséria”), innovative social programmes were launched to target more poor women and children. 

Innovative and integrated actions to modernize and facilitate the transformation from subsistence to commercial agriculture are foremost on Ethiopia’s agenda. Initiatives to address soil depletion with the end goal of sustainably increasing productivity, building resilience in efforts to promote food sufficiency of vulnerable households, and tapping livestock sector potential to generate foreign exchange, are just three of the key policy trends that have emerged over the 2007─2013 period in Ethiopia. For more country policy briefs by FAPDA please see here.

Burkina Faso has succeeded in achieving the Maputo Declaration target by allocating at least 10 percent of the national budget to agriculture almost every year since 2003. Most of these expenditures have been allocated to support the production of cotton, one of the country’s main exports, through input subsidies and minimum prices to producers. However, a large portion of the country’s agricultural investments as well as social safety net programmes remain heavily dependent on donor funding. For more country policy briefs by FAPDA please see here.

Download the FAO VCA-Tool  This analytical tool allows users to systematically gather, store and manage data for the implementation of cost-benefit and value-added analyses. Users can build different scenarios and analyze the socio-economic impact of various policies — such as domestic prices liberalization, opening to international trade, new technologies adoption. Users can use the software to build a baseline scenario which corresponds to a benchmark situation; once users generate the policy measures or changes in the value chain, their impacts will modify the original reference scenario.  The software is the complementary tool to the "Value Chain Analysis for Policy Making: Methodological Guidelines for [...]

Para erradicar el hambre será necesario aumentar significativamente las inversiones agrícolas y, lo que es más importante, deberá mejorarse la calidad de las inversiones de manera que beneficien a quienes más lo necesitan. En los Principios del CSA para la inversión responsable en la agricultura y los sistemas alimentarios (los Principios del CSA) se reconoce que el punto de partida para definir el modo en que la inversión responsable en la agricultura y los sistemas alimentarios puede contribuir a la seguridad alimentaria y la nutrición es el reconocimiento y el respeto de los derechos humanos. Constituyen un conjunto de 10 principios [...]

Developing countries are increasingly using agrocorridors to develop their agricultural sectors. These corridors promote inclusive agribusiness growth, building on a linear agglomeration of people and activities along existing transportation infrastructure. Based on initiatives in Central Asia, the Greater Mekong Subregion, Indonesia, Mozambique, Peru and the United Republic of Tanzania, this report shows how agrocorridors help improve physical connectivity and functioning of markets, while generating economies of scale in agriculture. Agrocorridors do this because they integrate public and private investments in “hardware” (transport and agribusiness infrastructure), “software” (policy and regulatory framework) and “orgware” (institutional strengthening and capacity building). The goal of [...]

Aimed at policy-makers, project designers and field practitioners, this publication provides the conceptual foundation for a new set of FAO handbooks on sustainable food value chain development. It defines the concept of a sustainable food value chain, presents a development paradigm that integrates the multidimensional concepts of sustainability and value added, highlights ten guiding principles, and discusses the potential and limitations of the approach. By doing so, this handbook makes a strong case for placing sustainable food value chain development at the heart of any strategy aimed at reducing poverty and hunger in the long run.

As renewed international efforts are needed to curb greenhouse gas emissions, the livestock sector can contribute its part. An important emitter of greenhouse gas, it also has the potential to  significantly reduce its emissions. This report provides a unique global assessment of the magnitude, the sources and pathways of emissions from different livestock production systems and supply chains.  Relying on life cycle assessment, statistical analysis and scenario building, it also prov ides estimates of the sector’s mitigation potential  and identifies concrete options to reduce emissions. The report is a useful resource for stakeholders from livestock producers to policy-makers, researchers and [...]

In order to acquire an in - depth understanding of potential benefits, constraints and costs of foreign investment in agriculture and of the business models that are more conducive to development, FAO has undertaken research in developing countries.  The research aims to provide better knowledge on the trends and impacts of foreign direct investment on host communities and countries, to gather evidence on inclusive business models, to identify good practices and to develop guidance for host gov ernments.  This publication summarizes the results of this research, in particular through the presentation of the main findings of case studies in nine [...]