The food system challenges require simultaneous action across different sectors and concerted efforts of diverse players in food systems. While past efforts inclined towards boosting gricultural production, today’s focus has shifted to influencing transformative changes to the entire food systems continuum, from production and processing to marketing and distribution, using innovative solutions. Sub-Saharan Africa has been facing unprecedented challenges that affect the sustainability of food and agriculture systems, putting food and nutrition security at significant risk.

When the IFAD-funded project started in 1988, few people could have imagined that 15 years later the degraded plateaus would be covered with trees on land restored to production by individual smallholder farmers. And no one imagined that a village on a barren degraded plateau would one day produce enough vegetables to meet its own needs and produce a surplus for sale, because water levels in the wells had risen so much.

‘Over the past three decades hundreds of thousands of farmers in Burkina Faso and Niger, on the fringes of the Sahara Desert, have transformed large swathes of the region’s arid landscape into productive agricultural land, improving food security for about three million people. Once-denuded landscapes are now home to abundant trees, crops, and livestock.'

Key success factors
There were several reasons for the success of the restoration initiative.
• Implementation had the active participation of the local community; i.e., it was community- led restoration.
• Restoration produced short- and long-term economic and environmental benefits.
• It systematically included women, girls and youth in restoration activities.
• The former village leader had the leadership capacity to mobilize the local community.

The purpose of this thesis is to examine the nature and scope of the linkages between the resource environments, livelihoods and food security of households and individuals. These are analyzed using the livelihood systems framework with the biophysical environment as the entry point. The biophysical and socio-economic environments are investigated as the conditioning and influencing factors that help define the relationships along the production-consumption continuum. The context is spatial, in this case that of fragile areas, where most of the poor and food insecure live and work.

Land is an essential building block of civilization yet its contribution to our quality of life is perceived and valued in starkly different and often incompatible ways. Conflicts about land use are intensifying in many countries. The world has reached a point where we must reconcile these differences and rethink the way in which we use and manage the land.

About 88% of the population is concentrated in the highlands, which constitute less than half of the national territory; here the population density is 141 persons km-2. Agriculture is the main source of livelihood and national income in the country. Over 85% of the population directly depends on it and about half of the GDP is generated from the sector. However, agriculture is small-scale and subsistence oriented, and it is in a very low state of development.

This technical guide on Governing land for women and men aims to assist implementation of the Voluntary Guidelines on the Responsible Governance of Tenure of Land, Fisheries and Forests in the Context of National Food Security (FAO, 2012b) by providing guidance that supports the Guidelines’ principle of gender equality in tenure governance. At the beginning of each module, reference is made to the relevant provisions in the Guidelines.

Decisions about resource tenure – or who can use what resources of the land for how long, and under what conditions – are among the most critical for forests and livelihoods in many contexts.

Food security in Africa needs abundant, affordable and nutritious food for the growing population.
•Smallholder farmers lack sufficient land or economic incentives to invest in agriculture.
•The above issues create a ‘wicked problem’ – a conundrum for future food security.

The State of Agricultural Commodity Markets presents commodity market issues in an objective and accessible way to policy-makers, commodity market observers and stakeholders interested in agricultural commodity market developments and their impacts on countries at different levels of economic development.

This playbook details 23 behavior change strategies to help food service companies support diners in choosing more sustainable, plant-rich dishes when shopping or dining out – action that’s important for meeting global emissions goals and achieving the Paris Agreement on climate change.