ecent food-price and economic shocks have further jeopardized the food security of developing countries and poor people, pushing the estimated number of undernourished people over one billion. Known and unknown food-security risks appear to be on the rise. Increasing uncertainties raise critical questions about how to quickly, viably, and sustainably manage familiar risks and emerging new ones.

Many countries in Sub-Saharan Africa suffer from problems related to poverty, natural resource degradation, and the complex interactions between these phenomena (Cleaver and Schreiber 1994). In the northern Ethiopian highlands of Tigray region, problems of poverty and degradation are extremely severe: population density is very high, rainfall is scarce and erratic, and soil fertility is low. Under such conditions, farmers need to rely on external inputs and soil conservation practices in order to stabilize or increase yields.

The world’s farmers will likely need to produce enough food to feed 8 billion people by 2025, and to do so they must have enough water to raise their crops. Yet farmers are already competing with industry, domestic water users, and the environment for access to the world’s finite supply of water. Will available freshwater meet the rapidly growing demands for household, industrial, and environmental needs and still provide enough water to produce food for a burgeoning population?

Les nouvelles sur l’état de l’agriculture en Afrique sont en grande partie décourageantes, mais on entrevoit des lueurs d'espoir. Quelques efforts stimulants réalisés par des agriculteurs et chercheurs africains au cours des dix dernières années ont sensiblement augmenté la productivité agricole dans certains pays et pour certains produits. Ces cas peuvent servir de modèles pour de futurs efforts, mais seulement si les responsables des politiques de développement et les professionnels comprennent les processus qui ont amené ces résultats, et les éléments clé de leur succès.

Approximately 80 percent of poor people in Sub-Saharan Africa continue to depend on the agricultural sector for their livelihoods, but-unlike in other regions of the world-agriculture in Sub-Saharan Africa is characterized by very low yields due to agroecological features, poor access to services, lack of knowledge and inputs, and low levels of investment in infrastructure and irrigation. In addition, high population growth rates, especially in rural areas, intensify pressure on agricultural production and natural resources and further complicate the challenge of reducing poverty.

Under the regimes of Idi Amin (1971–79) and Milton Obote (1980–85), Uganda’s economy plunged into a prolonged crisis with negative real growth rates of GDP (Baffoe 2000). In 1987, under Yoweri Musevini, the Ugandan government introduced an economic recovery program in cooperation with the IMF and the World Bank, aiming at market liberalization, privatization, and de-centralization.

Desde 2007, se produjeron dos rondas de picos de los precios de los alimentos que han contribuido a que al hambre y la malnutrición de millones de personas.

Book chapter

This study explores the impact of changes in environmental conditions on household labor allocation to the collection of environmental goods such as fuelwood and leaf fodder for a sample of rural Nepali hill households. Households in rural areas of most developing countries often rely heavily on the surrounding environment for goods such as water, wood, and livestock fodder. Frequently these and other environmental products are collected from local common forestland, a task that in many areas is predominantly carried out by women.

This chapter focuses on the management of agricultural land by smallholder households in the highlands of Kenya. It draws mainly from several recent studies from the central highland areas near to the south and west of Mt. Kenya and the western highland areas to the north and west of Kisumu, which were led by the authors. The chapter also draws from a set of studies under the KAMPAP project.1 See the appendix for a description of the key papers used in this synthesis.

Agroecological zones (AEZs) are geographical areas exhibiting similar climatic conditions that determine their ability to support rainfed agriculture. At a regional scale, AEZs are influenced by latitude, elevation, and temperature, as well as seasonality, and rainfall amounts and distribution during the growing season.