Yet the current situation differs from
2007-2008 in critical respects. First, recent international
price increases are more widespread across agricultural
commodities than in 2008, when price spikes were led by few
grains such as wheat and rice. Second, natural resources are
affecting food production: land and water constraints are
more binding than in the past and weather induced production
shortfalls are more of a factor now than it was 2008.

Across the developing world, public
goods exert significant impacts on the local rural economy
in general and agricultural productivity and welfare
outcomes in particular. Economic and social-cultural
heterogeneity have, however, long been documented as
detrimental to collective capacity to provide public goods.
In particular, women are often under-represented in local
leadership and decision-making processes, as are young

The purpose of this Agriculture Business Indicators Study was to isolate the success factors and construct
indicators that reflect the performance of the agriculture sector in Nigeria and that benchmark it in terms
directly comparable to agriculture sectors in other developing countries. Providing policy makers and public
officials with access to this type of empirical information is seen as way to stimulate and inform policy
dialogue about what reforms are needed and about how scarce public resources can be most effectively

In the Pacific island countries, which
are small and far from world markets, labor mobility
represents the most significant and substantial opportunity
for overcoming geographic constraints on employment. This
report presents a brief overview of employment challenges in
small Pacific island countries and recommendations for
addressing them. The report contributes to an ongoing World
Bank analytical program examining the linkages between

Climate change is a huge challenge for
the agriculture and rural development (ARD) sector in
Romania. On the one hand, agriculture is a source of
greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and must therefore be
expected to contribute towards the climate change mitigation
goals of the Europe 2020 strategy. European farmers,
foresters, rural businesses, and other local people
therefore need to start paying much greater attention to

The Guinean government assigns a
crucial role to agriculture in accelerating growth, reducing
poverty, and creating jobs. This role is inscribed in
Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper (PRSP) 3, which was
approved by the government in May 2013, following PRSP 2
(2007-2010) and PRSP 1 (2002-2006). As part of the revival
of its agricultural development strategy, the government
through the Ministry of Agriculture expressed its desire for

The importance of agriculture in the
economies of sub-Saharan African countries cannot be
overemphasized. With agriculture accounting for about 65
percent of the region's employment and 75 percent of
its domestic trade, significant progress in reducing hunger
and poverty across the region depends on the development and
transformation of the agricultural sector. Transforming
agriculture from largely a subsistence enterprise to a

Although a high rate of urbanization and
a high incidence of rural poverty are two distinct features
of many developing countries, there is little knowledge of
the effects of the former on the latter. Using a large
sample of Indian districts from the 1983-1999 period, the
authors find that urbanization has a substantial and
systematic poverty-reducing effect in the surrounding rural
areas. The results obtained through an instrumental variable

The report starts with background on the
history, scope, and character of displacement in Georgia.
Although there is a lack of comprehensive data on Georgian
internally displaced persons, or IDPs' living
conditions and livelihood status, this section collates what
information exists. Part two defines livelihood support,
maps out the sector as currently implemented in Georgia, and
describes the types of activities in place to boost IDP

This volume presents a synthesis of the multi-country collaborative program of analytical and advisory activities titled reducing vulnerability to climate change in European and Central Asian (ECA) agricultural systems. Climate change and its impacts on agricultural systems and rural economies are already evident throughout the ECA region. Adaptation measures now in use in the region-largely piecemeal efforts-would be insufficient to prevent impacts on agricultural production over the coming decades.

Agriculture remains fundamental for
Nicaragua from both a macroeconomic and social view. It is
the largest sector of the Nicaraguan economy, and it remains
the single biggest employer with around 30 percent of the
labor force and including processed foods, like meat and
sugar, agriculture accounts for around 40 percent of total
exports value. Nicaragua appears to be gradually losing
competitive edge of some of its key agricultural exports

This paper contributes to the
long-standing debate on the merits of decentralized
beneficiary targeting in the administration of development
programs, focusing on the large-scale Malawi Farm Input
Subsidy Program. Nationally-representative household survey
data are used to systematically analyze the decentralized
targeting performance of the program during the 2009-2010
agricultural season. The analysis begins with a standard