What's New

Ensuring that small-scale farmers and producers enjoy a bigger piece of the financial pie is the aim of a new web resource on agricultural development.

The Value Chains Knowledge Clearinghouse , led by the CGIAR Research Program on Policies, Institutions, and Markets , is based on the concept of Value Chains Development (VCD). The approach seeks to build new or strengthen existing commercial ties between two or more actors, such as businesses and consumers. Several NGOs, donors, and governments have adopted VCD as a key element of their rural poverty reduction strategies.

At the L’Aquila G-8 summit in 2009, governments and organizations committed more than $20 billion to agriculture and rural development as a means of promoting food and nutrition security.

Within the overarching frameworks of the L’Aquila Food Security Initiative (AFSI), the Paris Declaration on Aid Effectiveness, and the Accra Agenda for Action, Ghana also committed to improving aid accountability and development effectiveness via “demand-driven development cooperation” and a “donor-coordinated approach.”

With the recent passage of both the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) in the European Union and the Farm Bill in the United States, the EU and US are headed down “divergent paths” in the way their agricultural policies support their own farmers. Nevertheless, both policies feature large public expenditures towards farm subsidies. What type of impact will these policies have on international food security and production and public costs in the US and EU and how will they address the major global food security challenges of the 21st century?

India’s monsoon season is off to its weakest start in five years, sparking fears over the potential for drought and increased food prices throughout the country. During the first half of June, cumulative rainfall for India as a whole was 45 percent below average, according to the Ministry of Agriculture’s Department of Agriculture and Cooperation ; India’s Meteorological Department is predicting that total monsoons this season will reach only 93 percent of the long period average.

Food price volatility can present problems for an array of stakeholders, including countries managing their export portfolios, commodity traders, and especially farmers, as unpredictable prices may result in variable income and food insecurity.