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2009-01-01
Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO);
The purpose of the Sourcebook is to act as a guide for practitioners and technical staff in addressing gender issues and integrating gender-responsive actions in the design and implementation of agricultural projects and programs. It speaks not with gender specialists on how to improve their skills but rather reaches out to technical experts to guide them in thinking through how to integrate gender dimensions into their operations. The Sourcebook aims to deliver practical advice, guidelines, principles, and descriptions and illustrations of approaches that have worked so far to achieve the goal of effective gender mainstreaming in the agricultural operations of development agencies. It captures and expands the main messages of the World Development Report 2008: Agriculture for Development and is considered an important tool to facilitate the operationalization and implementation of the report's key principles on gender equality and women's empowerment.
2017-01-01
Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO);
The purpose of this report is to help mobilize the concrete and concerted actions required to realize these global agendas. It contributes to a common understanding of the major long-term trends and challenges that will determine the future of food security and nutrition, rural poverty, the efficiency of food systems, and the sustainability and resilience of rural livelihoods, agricultural systems and their natural resource base.
2005-12-01
RUAF - Resource Centres on Urban Agriculture and Food Security;
City authorities of growing cities have to cope with a diversity of needs of their citizens. Increasingly, they see the relation between agriculture in and immediately around cities and many urban issues. Open green spaces in the city may combine different functions, such as an improvement of access to fresh perishable food with a healthy environment, leisure or sports and a connection to the rural and natural. Municipal authorities all over the world have come to understand the role urban and periurban farmers can play in maintaining these green zones in the city and likewise, innovative farmers in and around cities are increasingly aware of the needs of the urban population and have started to come up with creative responses to urban demands. It is recognised by different urban actors that instead of specialisation of farmers into agro-industries as separate from for instance urban and periurban parks, it may be cheaper and more environmentally sound to combine these functions. This issue of the UA Magazine presents to you a number of examples of (combinations of) these different function of urban agriculture. It also includes contribution on alternative urban design and how to value agriculture against the cost of the current food system or current urban land uses. It is argued that farmers should be aware of the "externalities" of their work and "internalise" these in the exploitation of their land. The positive externalities can provide them with additional income, while the negative ones involve costs. Several examples in this issue show that the parties concerned can work together towards a fairer sharing of the many different costs and benefits of this "multifunctional" urban and periurban agriculture. Agriculture within cities has different functions. A major function is food supply, but the sustainability of urban agriculture is related to this multifunctionality. This means that urban agriculture should adapt and develop with the city according to wishes of stakeholders who represent these diverse other functions. Therefore, new forms of governance, institutions, and policies are needed, to be constructed by seeking synergies and involving multiple stakeholders in these processes.
2003-01-01
Community Food Security Coalition;
Health professionals increasingly recognize the value of farm-and garden-scale urban agriculture. Growing food and non-food crops in and near cities contributes to healthy communities by engaging residents in work and recreation that improves individual and public well-being. This article outlines the benefits of urban agriculture with regard to nutrition, food security, exercise, mental health, and social and physical urban environments. Potential risks are reviewed. Practical recommendations for health professionals to increase the positive benefits of urban agriculture are provided.
2012-01-01
United States Agency for International Development (USAID);
This document presents women's empowerment in agriculture index. Women play a critical and potentially transformative role in agricultural growth in developing countries, but they face persistent obstacles and economic constraints limiting further inclusion in agriculture. The Women's Empowerment in Agriculture Index (WEAI) measures the empowerment, agency, and inclusion of women in the agriculture sector in an effort to identify ways to overcome those obstacles and constraints.
The Index is a significant innovation in its field and aims to increase understanding of the connections between women's empowerment, food security, and agricultural growth. It measures the roles and extent of women's engagement in the agriculture sector in five domains: (1) decisions about agricultural production, (2) access to and decision making power over productive resources, (3) control over use of income, (4) leadership in the community, and (5) time use. It also measures women's empowerment relative to men within their households.
2014-01-01
Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA);
As the second in the series of the African Agriculture Status Report, this volume seeks to provide an in-depth and comprehensive analysis of emerging issues and challenges faced by African smallholder farmers, and allow scholars and professionals to contribute practical and evidence-based solutions. The Report documents the effects of climate change on smallholders in Africa, the ongoing adaptation by farmers and livestock keepers, constraints to adoption of climate-smart technologies, and highlights areas where investments in African agriculture have the potential to be most productive. It seeks to help African agricultural policy makers and stakeholders identify climate change issues and challenges, as well as appropriate climatesmart agriculture practices and policies that can help smallholder farmers sustain and improve their livelihoods -- that can increase productivity and incomes, enhance adaptation and build resilience to climate change, and reduce GHG emissions by Africa's agricultural producers and processors.
2007-09-27
Community Food Security Coalition;
This report highlights a variety of approaches for supporting the success of limited resource farmers and ranchers. It features examples from the work of 14 organizations that directly support limited resource producers, and summaries of 36 state and local government policies and practices that support these producers, sometimes indirectly. This publication will be especially valuable to organizations working with limited resource producers (or other local and family-scale farmers), Food Policy Councils, and advocates working on farm policy issues at the local and state levels. It was authored by Martin Bailkey and produced by the Food Policy Council Program of the Community Food Security Coalition, with support from the USDA Risk Management Agency.
1999-08-01
International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI);
The competition for limited water resources between agriculture and more highly valued domestic and industrial water uses is rapidly increasing and will likely require the transfer of water out of agriculture. This paper reviews and synthesizes the available evidence of the effects of water transfers from agricultural to urban and industrial areas on local and regional rural economies; and analyzes the possible impacts of a large reallocation on global food supply and demand. It concludes with a discussion of the potential for water policy reform and demand management to minimize adverse impacts when water is reallocated from agriculture. It is argued that comprehensive reforms are required to mitigate the potentially adverse impacts of water transfers for local communities and to sustain crop yield and output growth to meet rising food demands at the global level. Key policy reforms include the establishment of secure water rights to users; the decentralization and privatization of water management functions to appropriate levels; the use of incentives including pricing reform, especially in urban contexts, and markets in tradable property rights; and the introduction of appropriate water-saving technologies.
2013-01-01
Rockefeller Archive Center;
Before I begin, I want to affirm that the title of this research report will also be the title of my dissertation. During the aftermath of the Great Depression, images of poverty and disease characterized descriptions of life in Puerto Rico. The island was particularly infamous for its malnutrition situation, especially among children. Public health experts associated this problem with the deficiencies of the island's traditional diet, ignorance of "basic" nutrition principles, and the difficult economic situation. The Rockefeller Foundation (RF) had an important role in the creation of knowledge about the public health and nutrition situation in Puerto Rico by sponsoring various research programs at the Puerto Rico School of Tropical Medicine (STM). The RF also played an important part in the implementations of public health interventions and its representatives on the island contributed to debates about the nature and magnitude of Puerto Rico's malnutrition problem.
2007-01-01
Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO);
This case study presents the status of conservation agriculture in Ghana. It is one in a series of eight case studies about conservation agriculture in Africa, which were developed within the framework of a collaboration between CIRAD (French Agricultural Research Centre for International Development), FAO (Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations), RELMA-in-ICRAF (Regional Land Management Unit of the World Agroforestry Centre) and ACT (African Conservation Tillage Network).
2014-06-01
Agriculture for Impact;
A continent full of promise, Africa's transformation can be realised by catalysing an entrepreneurial environment that starts on the farm. Harnessing and enabling the entrepreneurial skill and spirit of smallholder farmers, young people and women in the rural economy should be at the forefront of every food security and growth agenda.
2008-03-15
Bread for the World Institute;
A spike in global food prices has increased hunger, and a prolonged period of higher prices threatens to stall or reverse progress in achieving the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). Increasing agricultural productivity in poor countries is critical to reducing hunger. Of the more than 854 million poor people who are chronically hungry, 75 percent live in rural areas and depend on agriculture for their earnings, either directly, as farmers or hired workers, or indirectly in sectors that derive from farming. Increased productivity in the agricultural sector leads to more work and more production of food. Over the last twenty years, instead of increasing support for agriculture and rural development, most donors have been partners in a progressive decline in support. Aid by itself isn't enough. Developing countries themselves have to provide supportive policies, along with additional investments, for donor resources to be effective.
