For decades, the rural development and poverty alleviation agenda in sub-Saharan Africa has emphasised support for smallholder farming and little else. Foreign large-scale miners and other industrial operators have complied, establishing agriculture-support services and programs for communities...

Proceedings of the 2012 Parliamentary Conference, with Sir John Beddington; Professor Jonathon Foley; Dr Derek Byerlee; Dr Frank Rijsberman and others

Increasing population and consumption are placing unprecedented demands on agriculture and natural resources across the planet. Today, approximately a billion people are chronically malnourished while our agricultural systems are concurrently degrading land, water, biodiversity and climate on a...

Applying the general question of aid effectiveness to the sector of education, this paper reveals an overall positive effect of development assistance on primary enrolment. However, even the most optimistic estimates clearly show that at any realistic rate of growth, aid will never be able to...

Rural communities in the Upper Midwest continue to experience economic restructuring, caused not only by area agricultural changes, but also by mining and local manufacturing shutdowns. Focusing on two states, Minnesota and North Dakota, this study details the repercussions, and response, of...

This paper empirically assesses the impact of specialisation on the synchronisation of regional business cycles in two core countries of EMU, namely France and Germany. Several specialisation indices are introduced and some first stylised facts about interregional business cycle correlations are...

This talk will explore the crucial linkages between urbanisation and food security, based on our recent and ongoing research studies. Urbanisation is often cited as one of the significant factors threatening food security. First of all, urbanisation leads to land use conversion from agricultural...