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.

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.

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?

In the coming decades, the international community will face the challenges of reining in global climate change, ensuring food security for a growing population, and promoting sustainable development. Meeting these multiple challenges requires changes in the agricultural sector. Farmer-driven adaptation in Kenya and elsewhere in East Africa must include sustainable agricultural management practices. Many of these management practices also directly contribute to reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and increasing agricultural productivity and net revenues.

The paper departs from the standard practice that takes the estimated marginal effects of either the amount of credit received or membership in a credit program as measures of the impact of access to credit on household welfare. The marginal effects of the formal credit limit variable on household welfare, controlling for the credit limit from informal sources as well as the credit demanded from both sources, measure the marginal effects of access to formal credit.

The System-wide Program for Collective Action and Property Rights (CAPRi) sponsored an International Conference on Policy and Institutional Options for the Management of Rangelands in Dry Areas, May 7-11, 2001 in Hammamet, Tunisia. The conference focused on institutional aspects of rangeland management and brought together policy makers and researchers from North Africa, Sub-Saharan Africa and West Asia to discuss sustainable rangeland production strategies and livelihood of pastoral communities in dry areas.

This paper provides a review of the literature on migration, HIV/AIDS and urban food security, and attempts to draw the links between these three powerful dynamics which are at play in Southern and Eastern Africa. The aim of the paper is to stimulate discussion and provide a platform for developing an action research agenda to inform policy and programming within these three inter-connected sectors. This review demonstrates that migration, HIV/AIDS and urban food security interact in complex ways that are little researched and understood in the Southern and Eastern African context.

Biofuel demand is increasing because of a combination of growing energy needs; rising oil costs; the pursuit of clean, renewable sources of energy; and the desire to boost farm incomes in developed countries. In turn, the need for crops-such as maize and sugarcane-to be used as feedstocks for biofuels has increased dramatically. That demand has had a significant and increasing impact on global food systems. The effects of growing biofuel demand are interwoven with tightening grain markets, which reflect demographic shifts and improved diets.

Brief

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

"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.

Data from many countries show that the concentration of poverty and malnutrition is shifting from rural to urban areas. Although many rural people move to the cities seeking to improve their well-being, they often remain mired in poverty and squalor. Rampant violence, flimsy housing, and filthy living conditions, along with hunger and malnutrition, are becoming the daily lot for more and more people as cities grow.