What's New

After being largely eliminated by structural adjustment programs in the 1980s and 1990s, large-scale input subsidy programs are regaining popularity throughout the developing world, particularly in Africa south of the Sahara. It's estimated that African countries spend, on average, 30 percent of their agriculture budgets on these programs, which aim to increase small farmers' investments in new technologies and increase agricultural production. Despite these programs' widespread use, however, debate abounds about how efficient input subsidy programs actually are.

Ethiopia faces many challenges, but the country is quickly shedding its label as one of the world’s poorest countries, finding itself today among the world’s 10 fastest growing economies. The question now at hand is how to sustain this historic growth, and emerge as a middle-income country by 2025. The Ethiopian government is turning to its leading—but one of its most underperforming— industries for the answer: agriculture.

In 2003, African leaders met in Maputo, Mozambique to try and stem the tide of Africa's long-standing hunger crisis. The need was critical - with Ethiopia experiencing widespread famine and drought threatening harvests throughout central and eastern Africa, the continent's food security challenges were becoming more daunting by the day.

The newest edition of the FEWS Net Monthly Price Watch was released last week, citing continuing high international maize and wheat prices. While maize prices saw drastic spikes in June and July 2012 due to drought conditions in the US, they leveled off, although at high levels, later in the year as more information regarding US crop conditions and global supplies became available. Wheat prices, on the other hand, rose steadily between May and November before leveling out in December.

One of the biggest challenges faced by smallholder farmers today is climate change, and the increasingly variable weather patterns that result from it. While farmers in some tropical regions may benefit from rising temperatures, the majority of the world's smallholders will face increased hardship as a result of warmer weather and uncertain rainfall. Future food security, particularly for developing countries, will depend on how populations react to and cope with the challenges presented by climate change.