Changes in climate and their impact on agricultural systems and rural economies are already evident throughout Europe and Central Asia (ECA). Adaptation measures now in use in Moldova, largely piecemeal efforts, will be insufficient to prevent impacts on agricultural production over the coming decades. There is growing interest at country and development partner levels to have a better understanding of the exposure, sensitivities, and impacts of climate change at farm level, and to develop and prioritize adaptation measures to mitigate the adverse consequences.

The urgent need to limit anthropogenic
carbon emissions has led to a global initiative to Reduce
Emissions from Deforestation and forest Degradation (REDD+).
But designing national architectures for REDD+ that
integrate local actions on forests with national-level
outcomes and do so effectively, efficiently, and equitably
continues to be challenging. One option to facilitate the
design and implementation of REDD+ is to learn from the

Whether the negative relationship
between farm size and productivity that is confirmed in a
large global literature holds in Africa is of considerable
policy relevance. This paper revisits this issue and
examines potential causes of the inverse productivity
relationship in Rwanda, where policy makers consider land
fragmentation and small farm sizes to be key bottlenecks for
the growth of the agricultural sector. Nationwide plot-level

Over the past century or so, a wide
assortment of pre-harvest agreements, joint ventures, deals,
and pledges that can be termed contract farming have been
brokered between farmers and buyers. During the 1980s and
1990s, contract farming was frequently criticized as a
potentially exploitative arrangement, which favored the more
powerful buyer and left the small-scale farmer and the
environment vulnerable to abuse. More recently, there is

Urban agriculture contributes to local
economic development, poverty alleviation, the social
inclusion of the urban poor and women, as well as to the
greening of the city and the productive reuse of urban
wastes. Urban agriculture encompasses a wide variety of
production systems in both urban as well as peri-urban
areas. This study examines the contribution of urban
agriculture to livelihoods, food security, health, and the

Within the next two decades Indonesia
aspires to generate prosperity, avoid a middle-income trap
and leave no one behind as it tries to catch up with
high-income economies. These are ambitious goals. Realizing
them requires sustained high growth and job creation, as
well as reduced inequality. Can Indonesia achieve them? This
report argues that the country has the potential to rise and
become more prosperous and equitable. But the risk of

This paper uses farm panel data from
Indonesia to examine dynamic patterns of land use, capital
investments, and wages in agriculture. The empirical
analysis shows that an increase in real wages has induced
the substitution of labor by machines among relatively large
farmers. Large farmers tend to increase the scale of
operation by renting in more land when real wages increase.
Machines and land are complementary if the scale of

Enabling the Business of Agriculture
2015 is a pilot assessment report on the agribusiness sector
enabling environment in 10 countries. This progress report
covers the methodology, key insights and lessons learned
from the pilot effort. Enabling the Business of Agriculture
2015 is a first step toward identifying areas and data sets
that can be used to build indicators in subsequent phases of
the project; the indicators will measure and monitor

Despite its vast agriculture potential,
Africa is increasingly dependent on food imports from the
rest of the world to satisfy its consumption needs. Food
output has not kept pace with population growth, and more
than 80 percent of production gains since 1980 have come
from the expansion of cropped areas rather than from greater
productivity of areas already cultivated. This paper looks
at the current requirements for seed trade in Africa, the

This discussion paper summarizes
observed and projected trends in extreme weather events,
present-day climate variability, and future climate change
and their impacts on China's different regions.
Findings are presented from China's national assessment
report on climate change (2007) and second national
assessment report on climate change (2011) as well as other
studies by Chinese and international experts. In addition to

This paper uses a stochastic dynamic
programming model to characterize the optimal
savings-consumption decisions and the role of livestock
inventories as a buffer stock in rural Ethiopia. The results
show that relatively land-rich households use accumulation
and liquidation of cattle and other animal inventories for
partial consumption smoothing, while low-income households
appear not to do so. The results highlight the need for