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Agriculture and Rural Development

Planet of the Apps: Making small farms competitive

Julian Lampietti's picture
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Photo: Shutterstock

Apps have revolutionized everything from getting to work, keeping in touch with faraway friends, and dating (though the jury’s still out on this one). Can apps be the salvation of the world’s farms that are under two hectares in size – a group that most people think is going the same way as humans in Planet of the Apes?

Economies of scale in agriculture (or any other sector) occur when the average cost per unit of production decreases as farm size increases and conventional wisdom suggests that farms need to get bigger to be competitive. And this is exactly what is happening in richer countries, though the trend is less clear in poorer countries.

Women rise to unlock opportunities for SDG implementation

Mahmoud Mohieldin's picture
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Lucy Odiwa, an entrepreneur in Tanzania whose firm, promotes safer and more sustainable methods for handling menstrual health hygiene management (MHM) won the first place in the SDGs&Her competition. © Womenchoice Industries

Visit any community and you will see women breathing life into every part of the economy and society, be it in agriculture, healthcare, marketing, sales, manufacturing, or invention. Through their presence in every walk of life, women make significant contributions to the 2030 Agenda, including its 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), the most ambitious set of goals that the international community has ever set for itself
 
However, despite representing 50% of the population, women remain over-represented among the world’s poorest and most vulnerable groups and under-represented as leaders and drivers of change. The lack of recognition of women’s contributions, particularly through their businesses and economic activities, has severely limited their access to finance, new markets and knowledge – necessary for economic growth and poverty reduction.

Why strengthening land rights strengthens development

Mahmoud Mohieldin's picture
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Aerial view of the landscape around Halimun Salak National Park, West Java, Indonesia.
© Kate Evans/CIFOR

This blog post was originally published on Project Syndicate.

Today, only 30% of the world’s population has legally registered rights to their land and home, with the poor and politically marginalized especially likely to suffer from insecure land tenure. Unless this changes, the 2015 United Nations Sustainable Development Goals will be impossible to achieve.

For most of the world’s poor and vulnerable people, secure property rights, including land tenure, are a rarely accessible luxury. Unless this changes, the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) will be impossible to achieve.

Land tenure determines who can use land, for how long, and under what conditions. Tenure arrangements may be based both on official laws and policies, and on informal customs. If those arrangements are secure, users of land have an incentive not just to implement best practices for their use of it (paying attention to, say, environmental impacts), but also to invest more.

Amp up your 2018 Spring Meetings experience

Bassam Sebti's picture


Our 2018 Spring Meetings is just around the corner and it’s time to get organized. Mainstage speakers include representatives from top-notch institutions such as LinkedIn, Oxford University, Financial Times, Brookings Institution — in addition to influencers Bill Gates and Jeff Weiner.

Connect, engage and watch to take full advantage of everything the #WBGMeetings has to offer. 

Breaking ground to make climate-smart agriculture ‘the new normal’

Martien van Nieuwkoop's picture
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Farmers in India and beyond will benefit as climate-smart agriculture scales up around the world. © ICRISAT
Farmers in India and beyond will benefit as climate-smart agriculture scales up around the world. © ICRISAT


Once a conference room talking point, Climate-smart agriculture is now an action item for farmers, extension workers, agribusinesses, and other stakeholders throughout the agricultural sector.  

In the last few years, CSA—which is an approach to agriculture that boosts productivity and resilience, and reduces GHG emissions- has gained momentum as understanding of its critical importance to the food system has risen. Nearly every government representative and farmer I meet during my missions (most recently in Bangladesh, Nepal and Pakistan) expresses genuine interest in making CSA part of their farming routines and agricultural sector.  At COP 23 in Bonn, there was a major breakthrough for CSA as stakeholders agreed to focus on concrete ways for countries and stakeholders to implement climate actions in agriculture on the ground.

This momentum is reflected in the Bank’s own actions. In 2016, the World Bank Group released its climate change action plan, where we committed to delivering CSA at scale to increase the efficiency and resilience of food systems. Since the Bank started tracking CSA in 2011, our CSA investments have grown steadily, reaching a record US$ 1 billion in 2017. We expect to maintain and even increase that level next year as our efforts to scale up CSA intensify.

To close the gap in women’s land rights, we need to do a better job of measuring it

M. Mercedes Stickler's picture
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A woman holding her land certificate in rural Zambia. © Jeremy Green
A woman holding her land certificate in rural Zambia. © Jeremy Green

There is broad global agreement that secure property rights help eradicate poverty and that securing women’s land rights reduces gender inequality. But our understanding remains strikingly limited when it comes to the extent to which women’s land rights are – or are not – secure and the impact of women’s tenure security (or lack thereof) on women’s empowerment.

This is true even in Africa, where the most studies have been published, due to shortcomings in both the quality and quantity of research on these questions.

Why technology will disrupt and transform Africa’s agriculture sector—in a good way

Simeon Ehui's picture
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© Dasan Bobo/World Bank
© Dasan Bobo/World Bank


Agriculture is critical to some of Africa’s biggest development goals. The sector is an engine of job creation: Farming alone currently accounts for about 60 percent of total employment in sub-Saharan Africa, while the share of jobs across the food system is potentially much larger. In Ethiopia, Malawi, Mozambique, Tanzania, Uganda, and Zambia, the food system is projected to add more jobs than the rest of the economy between 2010 and 2025. Agriculture is also a driver of inclusive and sustainable growth, and the foundation of a food system that provides nutritious, safe, and affordable food. 

2017 in Review: Look at the posts you engaged with the most on social media

Zubedah Robinson's picture

2018 is here, and we hope your new year is off to a positive start! Thank you for being a part of the global movement to help end poverty. For every like, share, “heart”, retweet, you name it, thanks for engaging with our content!

Every year brings new highlights, challenges, and priorities, and 2017 was no different. Here is a look at some of the content you engaged with the most on social media in the past year:

Twitter:

No one should be driven into bankruptcy simply because they have to pay for healthcare for themselves or their loved ones. So unsurprisingly, you showed strong  support for #HealthforAll during the Universal Health Coverage Forum in December.

We were also very impressed to see how strongly you feel about preserving our planet. During last month’s One Planet Summit, several of you replied to the news of the World Bank’s announcement on phasing out financing of oil and gas exploration, with positivity. For example @RalienBekkers said: “Great, everyone should follow”:
Do you believe that no country can attain its full potential without the equal participation of both women and men in the country’s economy? Many of you agreed that women shouldn’t be restricted from doing some jobs, just because they are women:
 

To transform agricultural extension, give youth a voice

Hope Mpata's picture
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​© Neil Palmer/CIAT ​
© Neil Palmer/CIAT


At the recent Africa Agriculture Extension week in Durban, there was a common refrain: "Demand for food in Africa is growing and expected to double by 2050." This is why we see continued growth and employment opportunities in the agricultural value chain and why agriculture extension—or training-- is more important than ever.

So what exactly is agriculture extension? Agricultural extension focuses on delivering advisory services for technologies that help crop, livestock, and fishery farmers, among others. Extension workers are trainers, advisors, project managers, community developers and policy advocators. They also conduct administrative support for local governments and help farmers make decisions and share knowledge. Agriculture extension, which services smallholder farmers throughout the value chain, is crucial in achieving food, nutrition and income security.

An opportunity to reinvent our food system and unlock human capital too

Robert Jones's picture
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A woman sorts seaweed after harvesting it in Rote, Indonesia. © Robert Jones
A woman sorts seaweed after harvesting it in Rote, Indonesia. © Robert Jones

What if we had the chance to reinvent the world’s food system and make local, more sustainable, nourishing and diverse food the new norm rather than the exception? 
 
It might seem far-fetched, but with 9 billion people expected on our planet by 2050, and one out of three children in South Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa stunted from poor nutrition, it's a necessity. Today, one in ten fellow citizens suffer from hunger and global food waste is at an all-time high.  

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