The reform of the European sugar market organization (SMO), which has until now been excepted from the general restructuring of the EU Common Agricultural Policy, must be seen as an important building block in the project of liberalizing the international agricultural markets. The reform will...

For several months now, worldwide food prices have exploded. This has had severe impacts on many developing countries, ranging from increases in poverty and hunger and problems with inflation and balances of payment to national instabilities. The extreme price boom is likely to prove more...

Aid for Trade (AfT) is a new concept for a variety of activities carried out to support the ability of developing countries to engage in trade. What is new in AfT is its bundling of these activities under one roof, its institutional and political links, particularly its embeddedness in trade...

Agriculture is a sector significant for economic growth and the reduction of poverty and hunger in Africa. The Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Programme (CAADP) is Africa’s attempt to self-reliantly re-activate the agricultural sector. In the framework of the African Union (AU),...

The Doha Round of World Trade Organization (WTO)talks is in its death throes. It could provide urgently needed stimuli for a rule-based enhancement of international trade, but there is currently no consensus on some of the main sticking-points. Probably the most important of these is the...

There is no getting away from it: wood is, and will remain crucial for meeting global energy demands, in particular those of the poor. Although wood provides ‘only’ about 10% of total global primary energy, it is the most important source of energy in many parts of the developing world....

To discuss and plan overall development as well as specific interventions in rural areas of developing countries, it is important to have a comprehensive conceptual model at hand that facilitates communication across sectors involved and which allows generalisations across countries. It should...

Irrigation can help to improve and stabilise agricultural productivity, thereby contributing to food security and to resilience against climate change. Irrigation – either full or supplementary – reduces reliance on erratic rainfall/droughts and increases yields; it extends cropping periods...

The majority of the population in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) lives in rural areas and is directly or indirectly dependent on agriculture. As land is usually tilled by smallholders manually with a hand hoe, or mattock, the worker’s output and productivity (and with it, their income) is low, and...

The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) adopted within the framework of the United Nations’ 2030 Agenda are universal and apply to all countries, whereby each country is free to establish its own priorities. In order to address the concern that support for the problems of poverty endemic in...