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Agriculture and Rural Development

Getting to Sustainable Development, Inclusively and Efficiently

Rachel Kyte's picture

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Sustainable development is built on the triple bottom line: economic growth, environmental stewardship, and social development - or prosperity, planet, people. Without careful attention to all three, we cannot create a sustainable world.

In the 25 years since sustainable development was coined as a term, there has been progress, but the pathway to sustainable development must now be more inclusive green growth.

Cassava as an income-earning crop for small farmers

 

Sub-Saharan Africa produces more than 50 percent of the world’s cassava (aka manioc, Tapioca, and Yucca), but mainly as a subsistence crop.  Consumed by about 500 million Africans every day, it is the second most important source of carbohydrate in Sub-Saharan Africa, after maize. The leaves can also be consumed as a green vegetable, which provides protein and vitamins A and B. As an economy advances, cassava is also used for animal feed and industrial applications.

 

Described as the “Rambo of food crops” cassava would become even more productive in hotter temperatures and could be the best bet for African farmers threatened by climate change.

 

Cassava is drought resistant, can be grown on marginal land where other cereals do not do well, and requires little inputs. For these reasons it is grown widely by African small and poor farmers as a subsistence crop. However, cassava’s potential as an income-earning crop has not been widely tapped.

 

Cassava presents enormous opportunities for trade between areas with food surplus and food deficit. Currently, a large shortfall of the regional food supply is filled by cereals bought in the international market. For cassava to become an income-earning crop at intra-regional market for small farmers in Africa, two main obstacles remain: post-harvest processing and regional trade barriers.

Mind Your Cowpeas and Cues: Inference and External Validity in RCTs

Berk Ozler's picture

There is a minor buzz this week in Twitter and the development economics blogosphere about a paper (posted on the CSAE 2012 Conference website) that discusses a double blind experiment of providing different seeds of cowpeas to farmers in Tanzania.

From the World Water Forum: Feeding Nine Billion People

Julia Bucknall's picture

In a session on water’s role in food security at the 6th World Water Forum in Marseille, the director of the Food and Agriculture Organization, Mr. Alexander Mueller, has just outlined water's role in meeting the world's food challenges in the most graphic way. By 2050, when the global population is expected to reach nine billion, the world will need to produce 60-70% more food to meet the needs of a larger number of people whose consumption patterns are influenced by higher incomes and increased urbanization. At current rates of water usage in agriculture, that would require an additional 5,500km2 of water. That would mean having to find the amount of water that is stored in Egypt’s Aswan Dam 55 times every year.

Filling empty stomachs: when enough food is not enough

Leslie Elder's picture

Children having a bowl of soup (credit: Jamie Martin).

Save the Children’s recent report, A Life Free from Hunger: Tackling Child Malnutrition, reminds us that undernutrition is not a new crisis—and that the crisis will deepen if the global community fails to take serious action. If current trends persist, 11.7 million more children will be stunted in Sub-Saharan Africa by 2025, compared to 2010.

 

What can we do? Food is part of the answer, but it’s about the right food, at the right time—not just starchy staple foods that fill empty stomachs. According to Save the Children, more than half of children in some countries are eating diets of just three items: a staple food, a legume, and a vegetable (usually green leaves).

 

Availability of food and access to food are necessary but insufficient to ensure good nutrition. Insidiously, malnutrition (undernutrition) is not hunger, although malnourished children are often hungry. And undernutrition is frequently invisible, but increases the risk of child death; steals children’s growth; decreases cognitive potential, school performance, and adult productivity; and contributes to the development of non-communicable diseases later in life.

Global Youth Conference 2012: Addressing Youth Unemployment in South Asia

Kalpana Kochhar's picture

I’ve just concluded a discussion on addressing youth unemployment around the world with experts at the Global Youth Conference currently happening and wanted to hear your thought as well as share some of my own on South Asia. Indeed, South Asia has grown rapidly and has created more and mostly better jobs. The region created 800,000 new jobs per month in the last ten years boosting economic growth and reducing poverty. Arrive in any South Asian metropolis and you’re often hit by the richness of activity throughout its busy streets.

The region’s coming demographic transition of more young people entering the work force is expected to contribute nearly 40 percent of the growth in the world’s working age (15—64) population over the next several decades. However, youth in South Asia still face many challenges during their transition to adulthood including malnutrition, gender inequality and lack of access to quality education. More working age people with less children and elderly dependants to support will either become an asset for the region to continue growing or a curse depending on the enabling environment for the creation of productive jobs.

Những người phụ nữ đảm bảo tương lai Xanh cho Việt Nam

Dr. Ivan Kennedy's picture

Vietnam Development MarketplaceBài viết này đã được xuất bản bằng tiếng Anh ngày 22 tháng 9 năm 2011.

Với tầm nhìn đột phá, một số phụ nữ Việt nam đã trở thành những nhà lãnh đạo công nghệ đi đầu trong quá trình đổi mới nông nghiệp. Từ phòng thí nghiệm, đến nhà máy, trang trại, phụ nữ luôn là những người tiên phong đối trong từng bước của chuỗi cung ứng của dự án “Ổn định sản xuất lúa gạo sử dụng phân đạm hiệu quả.”

A New Mechanism for South-South Knowledge

Susana Carrillo's picture

In my previous blog entry, I mentioned the expected growing engagement between Brazil and Sub-Saharan African countries in 2012, to exchange knowledge and further economic and social development.

Uplifting Flood-Affected Lives in Pakistan

South Asia's picture

 

For the first time ever, more than one million households ravaged by the devastating floods of 2010 are being uplifted through a unique cash transfer approach in Pakistan, employing innovative use of payment technology, control and accountability mechanisms, making it possible to give back to the flood-affected families their right to life!

Wildlife Friendly Rice Captures Elite Market

Karen Wachtel Nielsen's picture

The Wildlife Conservation Society was awarded a DM grant in 2008 to pilot Cambodia's first market for payment for environmental services generated from agriculture using a "wildlife-friendly" branding and marketing strategy. Here is an update after 4 seasons.

Photo Credit: Karen Nielsen

In early 2009, when Ibis Rice first hit the dining tables of ten of Siem Reap’s elite and socially responsible hotels and restaurants, Le Meridien Angkor was amongst them. Going on the basis of a tasty sample and the willingness to aid conservation in Cambodia, these early supporters were vital to the fledgling enterprise. Today many have joined the ranks of Wildlife Friendly® establishments, both here and in Phnom Penh.

Africa: In search of the Brazilian economic miracle

Susana Carrillo's picture

También disponible en español
 

África: en busca del milagro económico brasileño

 
During the second half of 2011, relations between Africa and Brazil continued to flourish as part of the historic trade, cultural and economic rapprochement of the two economic juggernauts. Specifically, African governments asked for more financing from the South American country to implement development projects, according to Brazil’s National Bank of Economic and Social Development (BNDES).

Key reasons for intensifying this relationship include the fact that Brazil is now the world’s sixth-largest economy (after China, the United States, France, Germany and Japan) and that it has become a major player in South-South cooperation.

Rejuvenating the Cacao Industry in Trinidad & Tobago

Jan Engels's picture

Photo Credit: www.trinitario-cacao.orgA relic cacao tree nestles deep in the valleys of the Northern Range of the island of Trinidad in a sleepy cacao village called Brasso Seco. Moss hangs from this tree creating an eerie effect; its ripe, rough, “lagarta” (alligator) shaped pods only hint at their fascinating contents of pale-coloured, prized Criollo-influenced, flavourful beans.  

This is the realisation of a cacao collector’s dream: ancient Trinitario cacao from the place where Trinitario originated.  Likewise, across the numerous valleys in villages of Aripo, Lopinot, Naranjho, Cumana in North Trinidad and the steep terrains of Moriah, Runnemede and Lanse Fourmi in Western Tobago, cacao trees of mainly relic Trinitario genotype still survive, carefully conserved in farmers’ fields over the decades spanning from when cocoa reigned as king, in the Caribbean islands of Trinidad and Tobago, to the present day.  The chocolate world owes these dedicated farmers a debt of gratitude.

Cacao scientists from Bioversity International and the University of British Colombia at Vancouver, joined forces with some from the Cocoa Research Section of the Ministry of Food Production, Land and Marine Affairs (MFPLMA) and the Cocoa Research Unit (CRU) of the University of the West Indies (UWI), St. Augustine, Trinidad and Tobago and conceived and fine-tuned an ambitious project to promote and utilise the latent treasures contained in the vast acreages of relic cacao still remarkably preserved in Trinidad and Tobago.

Should We Still Worry About Food Prices?

Otaviano Canuto's picture

Food prices are finally coming down after a year of spikes and high volatility. But we must remain vigilant. Prices of certain foods remain very high, and millions of people around the world are still at risk of suffering from malnutrition and hunger.

Let’s get to the numbers first.

Notes from the field: Sometimes you’re the windshield, sometimes you’re the bug

Markus Goldstein's picture

So this past week I was in Ghana following up on some of the projects I am working on there with one of my colleagues.   We were designing an agricultural impact evaluation with some of our counterparts, following up on the analysis of the second round of a land tenure impact evaluation and a financial literacy intervention, and exploring the possibility of some work in the rural financial sector.   In no particular order, here are some of the things I learned and some things I am still wondering about:


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