This book is a challenge to those who see the drylands as naturally vulnerable to food insecurity and poverty. 

It argues that improving agricultural productivity in dryland environments is possible by working with climatic uncertainty rather than seeking to control it – a view that runs contrary to decade of development practice in arid and semi-arid lands.

Across China, Kenya and India – and most other dryland countries – family farmers and herders relate to the inherent variability of the drylands as a resource to be valued, rather than a problem to be avoided. 

Jordan is dominated by arid climate with limited arable land and water resources. This study focuses on crop production and water resources under trends of anticipated climate change and population growth to analyse how these affect water and food security in the country. It finds that recession of irrigated areas led to lesser food production and food security. Results indicate that climate change and population growth increase and intensify problems of water scarcity and food insecurity.

This paper examines how, over the past 10 years, Kyrgyzstan has privatised most of its agricultural land and distributed it to individual households. These households either farm alone or join together and farm cooperatively. This research seeks to examine whether women have been adversely affected in the process of privatisation, asset ownership, or business development.

Climate change poses severe threats on agriculture. Even though some countries may experience beneficial change to agricultural gross domestic product (GDP), the majority, particularly developing countries, will experience significant negative impacts. This paper by the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations (FAO) promotes an integrative, holistic framework for climate change adaptation. It presents the potential impacts of climate change and the different approaches to adaptation, as well as knowledge gained through FAO's experience in the field.

The violence which followed the contested December 2007 Kenyan election was, arguably, an opportunity for historical grievances to be settled. This paper focuses on the land issue in regards to Kenya, asserting that land is a primary cause of conflcit in the country as it has been the crux of economic, cultural and socio-economic change.

The objective of this technical paper is to shed insights on ways of reversing the spiraling decline of the land and the economy in rural Rwanda, with focus on the forces behind productivity decline in the Rwandan agricultural sector. The results are based on collaborative research between the Rwandan Ministry of Agriculture and Michigan State University.Among the key findings are that Rwandan farmers need to sustain and intensify their farming by pro-tecting the soil against erosion.

In Mesoamerica, coffee is an important part of agricultural GDP and export revenues which supports about half a million farmers, and employs millions of people on the farms and all along the supply chain. This policy brief summarises the potential risks and impacts of climate change on coffee farming in the region. Traditional coffee agroforests provide important ecosystem services and conserve significant carbon stocks.

This paper provides an overview of what we know about farm size distributions, the emerging land markets, the role of tenure systems, tenure reforms and land policies in shaping the distribution of increasingly scarce land resources. The primary focus is on Africa while making some comparisons with Asia. Climate risk and change have serious implications for household vulnerability and food security. While there is a need to absorb further population growth in rural areas, a rapid rise in rural-urban migration is inevitable.

The triple challenge of rapid population growth, declining agricultural productivity, and natural resource degradation are not isolated from one another; they are intimately related. However, strategic planning and development programming tend to focus on individual sectors such as the environment, agriculture, and population; they do not explicitly take into account the compatibilities and inconsistencies among them. Farm households and their livelihood strategies are at the core of the intersectoral linkages approach advocated in this chapter.

CAADP Policy Brief 10by Kate Wellard-Dyer

This paper explores gender and issues of land access and administration in rural development. It argues that increasing social, economic and technological changes are requiring a re-examination of the institutional arrangements used to administer who has rights to what resources and under what conditions.

Analyses the effects of smallholder commercialization on foodcrop input use and productivity in rural Kenya.