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Book (series)The state of food and agriculture, 2003-2004
Agrigultural Biotechnology: meeting the needs of the poor?
2004This edition of The State of Food and Agriculture explores the potential for agricultural biotechnology to address the needs of the worlds poor and food-insecure. Agriculture continues to face serious challenges, including feeding an additional two billion people by the year 2030 from an increasingly fragile natural resource base. The effective transfer of existing technologies to poor rural communities and the development of new and safe biotechnologies can greatly enhance the prospects f or sustainably improving agricultural productivity today and in the future. But technology alone cannot solve the problems of the poor and some aspects of biotechnology, particularly the socioeconomic impacts and the food safety and environmental implications, need to be carefully assessed. -
Book (series)The State of Food Insecurity in the World 2004
Monitoring progress towards the World Food Summit and Millennium Development Goals
2004The sixth edition of The State of Food Insecurity in the World reports that the number of chronically hungry people in the developing world has fallen by only 9 million since the World Food Summit baseline period of 1990–1992. The conclusion is inescapable – we must do better. Looking at the impressive progress that more than 30 countries in all developing regions have made in reducing hunger, the report highlights another clear and compelling lesson – we can do better. And for the f irst time, The State of Food Insecurity in the World 2004 presents provisional estimates of the staggering costs that hunger inflicts on households and nations – the millions of lives ravaged by premature death and disability, the billions of dollars in lost productivity and earnings. On both moral and pragmatic grounds, these estimates lead to one more unavoidable conclusion – we cannot afford not to do better. The report also includes a special feature examining the impact that the rapid growth of cities and incomes in developing countries and the globalization of the food industry have had on hunger, food security and nutrition. The State of Food Insecurity in the World 2004 concludes with an urgent appeal to scale up action, resources and commitment in order to achieve the World Food Summit goal. That goal of cutting the number of hungry people in half by the year 2015 can still be reached if we just focus our efforts over the next ten years on simple, low-cost, targete d actions that will improve food security quickly for very large numbers of people. Hunger cannot wait. -
Book (stand-alone)The State of Agricultural Commodity Markets (SOCO) 2004 2004Technical developments that increase productivity and reduce costs mean that the long-term trend in real agricultural commodity prices on international markets is gradually downwards but that trend is dominated by significant short-term variability. Many developing countries, and especially the least developed countries, continue to depend on just a few agricultural commodities for the bulk of their export earnings. For them, commodity price variability has a strong impact on incomes, employment and government revenues, compromising macroeconomic planning and development efforts more generally. However, developing countries are also as a group increasingly reliant on food imports. The least developed countries are already net food importers. In these circumstances, falling international food prices are obviously beneficial but increasing reliance on imported food also means greater exposure to the variability in international food prices and hence food import bills. Developing countrie s need to contend with variability of international commodity prices in their efforts to increase their export earnings or manage their food import bills. At the same time, they must also contend with the market distortions introduced by the import tariffs and export and production subsidies used by both developed and developing countries, and by the market power in many commodity value chains of large transnational companies. The traditional international responses to commodity market instabili ty based on market interventions or compensation schemes are not currently favoured and new approaches are needed. These new approaches, such as marketbased price risk management, are aimed less at preventing price swings than at helping producers and consumers predict and manage better their adverse impacts.
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