Latin America

This report by IFAD shows how drylands support important ecosystems and a great variety of biodiversity, as well as their vital role in the livelihoods and cultural identity of many smallholders. It reveals the crucial role the world’s drylands play in buffering the negative impacts of climate change, land degradation and drought. »

This report by OECD and FAO brings together the commodity, policy and country expertise of both organisations and input from collaborating member countries to provide an assessment of medium-term prospects of national, regionaland global agricultural commodity markets. The Outlook provides supply, demand, trade andprice estimates of major agricultural commodities for 41 countries and 12 geographical regions. The special theme chapter of this year’s edition focusses on the prospects and challenges of the agricultural sector in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). »

The workshop on “Landscape approaches for mountain community sustainable development in a time of climate change: Policy consultation and South-South exchange” was organised by the Center for Chinese Agricultural Policy (CCAP, China), Asociación ANDES (Peru) and IIED, on 19-22 May 2016, in Lijiang and the Stone Village, Yunnan, China. The workshop brought together different stakeholders from China, Peru, the Albertine Rift region in Africa and UN agencies to explore the role of different community-led landscape approaches in agrobiodiversity conservation, climate resilience, with a particular focus on mountains. »

This article, published in the Environmental Research Letters journal, presents a map of mean agricultural area, classified by the amount of land per farming household, at subnational resolutions across three key global regions using a novel integration of household microdata and agricultural landscape data. These data meet a critical need, as improved understanding of the prevalence and distribution of smallholder farming is essential for effective policy development for food security, poverty reduction, and conservation agendas. »

This report assesses the extent to which inclusive business models promote women’s economic empowerment. As a commercially viable business model, inclusive business bears considerable potential for women’s economic advancement, though not every inclusive business will inevitably do so. It is important to distinguish two ways in which inclusive business is relevant to women’s economic empowerment. »

This study, led by CIAT in collaboration with the Earlham Institute and Yale University highlights genetic elements that could accelerate the breeding of vital forage crops for animal nutrition in Africa and Latin America. The study identifies plants that undergo a biological phenomenon where they can reproduce clonally by apomixis. This means that they do not require egg cells to be fertilised by a male sperm or pollen grain. As result, the progeny (genetic descendants) are clones from the mother plant. A molecular diagnosis for reproduction enables quicker selection of the Brachiaria hybrid plants. By identifying candidate genes and genome regions linked to apomixis, this study opens the door to the use of molecular markers to efficiently select apomictic or sexual plants, a technique called marker-assisted selection (MAS). »