Publications > Food & Agriculture

Chapter Six of the World Disasters Report 2011 (September 2011)

This paper outlines what policies and partnerships are needed from governments, donors and global institutions to strengthen the world food system and eradicate hunger and malnutrition. It argues that policy-making at all levels is too top down, and that governments are spending too little on agriculture and social protection, and insufficiently on key areas such as extension services, agricultural research and, crucially, women farmers. Agricultural aid from donors is little better and needs fundamental reform while global institutions have yet to deliver on fine rhetoric.

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Report for International Food Security Network (February 2011)

This report shows that some governments around the world are taking decisive action against hunger. Malawi’s Farm Inputs Subsidy Programme, India’s National Rural Employment Guarantee programme and Brazil’s Zero Hunger programme are all proving significant successes in reducing hunger. This study highlights the reasons for success of these programmes and points to lessons learned that should be considered by other governments that are failing to prioritise the eradication of hunger. The case studies show that the combination of civil society pressure and government commitment to the Right to Food is key to reducing the scourge of global hunger.

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Report for ActionAid-Uganda (May 2010)

This report is an analysis of the Ugandan government’s agriculture budget. It looks at spending levels, the efficiency of spending and the extent to which the budget focuses on providing key services to small farmers – extension services, access to inputs, agricultural research and credit. It argues that there are six urgent budgetary changes the government – and donors – need to make if hunger and farm productivity are to be seriously addressed.

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Report for ActionAid (April 2010)

This report – based on extensive work in Uganda, Malawi and Kenya and a comprehensive global literature review – analyzes the level and quality of agriculture spending on key areas likely to benefit women and men smallholder farmers the most. These include extension services, rural credit, the provision of farming inputs and agricultural research and development. It has a particular focus on the failure of governments and donors to prioritise spending on the people that do most farming in developing countries – women.

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Briefing for ActionAid (March 2010)

For the first time in history, more than one billion people – one-sixth of humanity – are hungry. The world is moving further away from meeting the Millennium Development Goal target to halve hunger by 2015. Governments and donors are not spending enough on services that really matter to poor farmers such as low-cost credit and public agricultural extension services. This briefing outlines how they must reinvest in smallholder farmers.

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Report for ActionAid (June 2009)

This report assesses government progress towards achieving the targets set by the Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Programme (CAADP). It finds that the overwhelming majority of African governments are failing to meet their commitments to spend 10 per cent of national budgets on agriculture and to double spending on research and development. Donors are also failing to meet their aid commitments to African agriculture.

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Report for the Fairtrade Foundation (February 2009)

This report analyses the challenges faced by the world’s 450 million smallholder farmers as a result of the food price crisis. It considers the effects of the crisis on fairtrade producers around the world, asking whether fairtrade producers are in a better position to cope with price volatility. The report includes a case study of Uganda, based on field research and interviews with coffee, tea and vanilla growers.

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Paper for ActionAid (September 2008)

This paper is an analysis of overseas aid to agriculture, showing how aid levels have dramatically declined over the past two decades, how the focus of aid spending is not geared to the needs of poor farmers and how aid has been used to push a neo-liberal economic model of agriculture that has increased poverty and hunger.

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Report for Norwegian Church Aid and Aprodev European NGO Network (February 2007)

This detailed report is an analysis of the impact on hunger-prone people of the economic reforms promoted by the World Bank and IMF over the past 15 years. It contains a synthesis report plus case studies on Ethiopia, Malawi and Zambia. It argues that both World Bank liberalisation policies and many government intervention policies are, in their messy, unstrategic combination, serving to increase hunger.

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