This study explores the impact of changes in land tenure institutions on women’s land rights and the efficiency of tree resource management in western Ghana, where cocoa is the dominant crop. Although communal land tenure aims to provide equitable access to land for all households, women’s land rights in the region are weaker than those of men, as is often the case under customary land tenure systems (Lastarria-Cornhiel 1997).

Across Africa buying and selling connects people. For a small-scale farmer, this trade takes place primarily within a limited geographic area based on access to market centers of a given size. The maps illustrate these areas using different colors to represent marketsheds—geographical areas and associated populations that are part of real or potential trade networks with a given market. From any location within a marketshed, it takes less time to travel to the corresponding market compared to any neighboring markets.

Livestock have diverse functions for the livelihood of farmers in mixed croplivestock systems in the highlands of East Africa. Livestock provide food in the form of meat and milk, nonfood items such as draft power, manure, and transport services as inputs into food crop production, and fuel for cooking. Livestock are also a source of cash income through sale of the above items, animals, hides, and skins. Furthermore, they act as a store of wealth and determine social status within the community.

A "gender map" of agriculture in Sub-Saharan Africa in order to better understand how to target agricultural interventions to women and men farmers.

Book chapter

The Asian financial crisis led to a major devaluation of the Indonesian exchange rate, macro instability, and the need for a “structural adjustment” program. The real devaluation affects prices throughout the economy and has a major impact on growth, production, deforestation, and income distribution in the Sumatera region. This paper uses computable general equilibrium (CGE) models —a national model and a regional model of Sumatera— that focus on agriculture to explore the impact of a real devaluation on the economy of Sumatera.

This report is timely input into the ongoing development agenda for Africa South of the Sahara (SSA).

"Although achieving in situ conservation is possible without changing farmers’ customary management of crops as common pool resources, an alternative approach is to negotiate a bioprospecting contract with providers of the resource that involves direct payment and royalties. This bioprospecting mechanism implies a change in the customary treatment of crop genetic resources as common pool goods and is in line with national ownership mandated by the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD).

"Earlier briefs in this series make the case that there is added value for the agricultural and health sectors in working more closely together to address problems of human well-being that fall at the intersection of the two sectors. Yet the divisions between the two sectors are wide and difficult to bridge. Building the space and providing sufficient incentives and resources for collaborative activities between them will require changes in government policy—itself not a straightforward endeavor.

Book chapter

Participants in this workshop reviewed and discussed findings from the research project‚ Policies for Sustainable Land Management in the Highlands of Tigray, Northern Ethiopia, begun in January 1998, and from other related research being conducted in the highlands of Tigray by Mekelle University and its collaborators.

Agricultural development has traditionally focused on raising productivity and maximizing production of cereals. In this regard, the world’s farmers and farming systems have made enormous advances, multiplying cereal production several times over in the past half century. Yet hunger, malnutrition, and poor health remain widespread and persistent problems. Nearly 1 billion people still go hungry, and billions more are malnourished.