The International Assessment of Agricultural Knowledge, Science, and Technology for Development (IAASTD) looks realistically at how we could effectively use agriculture/AKST to help us meet development and sustainability goals. An unprecedented three-year collaborative effort, the IAASTD involved more than 400 authors in 110 countries and cost more than $11 million. It reports on the advances and setbacks of the past fifty years and offers options for the next fifty years. The results of the project are contained in seven reports: a Global Report, five regional Sub-Global Assessments, and a Synthesis Report. The Global Report gives the key findings of the Assessment, and the five Sub-Global Assessments address regional challenges. The volumes present options for action. All of the reports have been extensively peer-reviewed by governments and experts and all have been approved by a panel of participating governments. The Sub-Global Assessments all utilize a similar and consistent framework: examining and reporting on the impacts of AKST on hunger, poverty, nutrition, human health, and environmental/social sustainability. The five Sub-Global Assessments cover the following regions: Central and West Asia and North Africa (CWANA) East and South Asia and the Pacific (ESAP) Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) North America and Europe (NAE) Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA)

Using a combination of global, national and household level analysis this study examines the potential effects of agricultural policy and trade reform.

This comprehensive overview of local food systems explores alternative definitions of local food, estimates market size and reach, describes the characteristics of local consumers and producers, and examines early indications of the economic and health impacts of local food systems. Defining ¿local¿ based on marketing arrangements, such as farmers selling directly to consumers at regional farmers¿ markets or to schools, is well recognized. Statistics suggest that local food markets account for a small, but growing, share of U.S. agricultural production. For smaller farms, direct marketing to consumers accounts for a higher percentage of their sales than for larger farms. Charts and tables.

Using a political-economic approach supplemented with insights from human ecology, this volume analyzes the long-term dynamics of food security and economic growth. The book begins by discussing the nature of preindustrial food crises and the changes that have occurred since the 19th century with the ascent of technical science and the fossil fuel revolution. It explains how these changes improved living standards but that the realization of this improvement was usually dependent on government support for smallholder modernization. The author sets out how the evolution of food security in different regions has been influenced by farm policy choices and how these choices were shaped by local societal characteristics, international relations and changing configurations in metropolitan countries. Separate chapters are devoted to the interaction of this evolution with debates on food security and economic growth and with international economic policies. The final chapters highlight the new challenges for global food security that will arise as traditional sources of biomass production and the more easily extractable reserves of fossil biomass become depleted or can no longer be used. Overall, the book emphasizes the inadequacy of current explanations with regard to these challenges. It explores what is needed to ensure a sustainable future and calls for a rethinking of these issues; a necessary reflection in today's unstable global political situation.

The fourth report in the Global Environment Outlook series provides a comprehensive, scientifically credible, policy-relevant and up-to-date assessment of, and outlook for, the state of the global environment. Environment for development is the GEO-4 underlying theme and the report pays special attention to the role and impact of the environment on human well-being as well as to the use of environmental valuation as a tool for decision-making. GEO-4's 2007 publication date marks the half-way point for the Millennium Development Goals, The environment, as well as being the subject of MDG 7, is also a thread that runs through all the goals. Includes Errata.

If irrigated production is to make a significant contribution to food security and economic growth in Sub Saharan Africa, it will have to be re-structured across the region as a whole. This is the main conclusion of a study undertaken by FAO to analyse the drivers of demand for irrigated production in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). Steeply rising commercial food import bills for staple crops across SSA are indicative of the level demand that is not being met from domestic production. The increase of area under equipped/spate irrigation for the whole of Africa over the last ten years amounts to 1.27 million ha, which is equal to about 127 000 ha a year. This rate of growth has proved too low to have an impact on food import bills and buffer regional food security. However, within subregional trading groups there is scope for consolidation of market supply. Irrigated production opportunities in SSA could be realised where natural resources and markets coincide, but only through a great deal more attention to costs of production, price formation, effective water allocation mechanisms, economically efficient water use and strong, responsive institutions.

Agricultural trade liberalization has been resisted by many developing-country policymakers, including those in the Middle East and North Africa, for fear it could hurt domestic farmers and exacerbate poverty. The authors of Trade Liberalization and Poverty in the Middle East and North Africa argue, however, that this concern about liberalization might be misplaced. Drawing on case studies from Egypt, Morocco, Syria, and Tunisia, the study uses household survey data and computable general equilibrium models to simulate the effects of various liberalization scenarios on different types of households in these countries, especially poor households. The results indicate that agricultural trade barriers are not an effective means of protecting the poor and that the benefits from many forms of agricultural trade liberalization to the region's consumers outweigh the costs to producers. If complemented with other domestic programs-including agricultural research and extension, information services, disease control, and social safety nets-the reforms have the potential to reduce poverty in these nations. The study findings are a valuable resource for policymakers and development specialists evaluating the role trade liberalization can play in economic development and poverty reduction.