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| Axel talks about his trip to Myanmar in a video below. |
You can feel the energy in Myanmar today—from the streets of Yangon, in the offices of government ministries and in rural villages. Dramatic political and economic changes are sweeping the country.
Bài 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.”
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| Map courtesy of Wikipedia through a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license. |
Taking development to the outlying provinces of Solomon Islands is not an easy ride. I found this out when going on a site visit to the Rural Development Program (RDP) at the country’s far western province of Choiseul.
At the Northwest region of Choiseul province where the island faces open waters that span to the Micronesian archipelago of the Pacific lies a village called Polo. The Polo community has a primary school that was established in 1957 when Solomon Islands was still a British Protectorate, prior to independence in 1978. Since its inception, the Polo school never had a permanent classroom building until two years ago when through the RDP participatory process, the community identified the school as their main need.
Higher prices have been making headlines in Thailand. Although wages and farm incomes are up, so are the prices of eggs, milk and fried rice. I am definitely feeling the pinch: the price of my favorite beverage—coconut water—has surged following a beetle infestation.
As prices go up, so does the pressure on the government to reign in the spiraling cost of living. But as we discussed in the recently released Thailand Economic Monitor - April 2011, the current inflation challenge is especially tough to tackle.
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(Available in Chinese)
Food prices have received a lot of attention recently. Understandably, much of the attention is on recent developments and short term prospects. But in this blog post I try to look back at some longer term trends, in order to look further ahead.
Since the early 2000s, food related prices have trended up (Figure 1). The deflator of agricultural value added has risen 8% per year on average since 2000, after falling during the second half of the 1990s. Producer Price Index (PPI) food prices (factory gate) have risen much less because prices of other inputs into the food processing industry have gone up less and rapid productivity growth in food processing has dampened the transmission of higher raw food prices.
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Remember the food and fuel crisis that preceded the global economic and financial meltdown? Many in the advanced economies have long forgotten it; people in developing countries have very vivid memories. Are we about to relive the crisis?
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| The Millennium Seed Bank at Wakehurst Place. (Photo: RBG Kew) |
To a tourist visiting Cambodia, or to a French consumer living in Cambodia (whose food habits require a complement of pasta and potatoes), rice will mainly mean the stunning landscapes of rice fields, yellow at harvest time, bright and liquid during the rainy season, with shades of green meanwhile.
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| Image courtesy of Caitfoto through a Creative Commons license |
Jobs and skills: more answers to your questions
Cities and PPPs: I’ve got Ulaanbaatar on my mind
World Bank opens largest set of development data --for free and in several languages
