Weighing up the ODDs: options, development and diversification

The growing trend of development and diversification in the British countryside stems from three main causes: the decline in farm incomes, the growing influx of non-agricultural commerce into rural areas and a change in planning policies. Even before the foot and mouth disaster, farm incomes have been in decline over the last five years, falling by as much as 90% overall in that period according to the figures issued by the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food (MAFF). Farmers have responded to this situation in many ways, but notably through diversification. This paper examines some of the options available

The agriculture-nutrition-income nexus in Tonga

Increasing reliance on imported foods, limited access to affordable nutritious local foods, and exposure to climate change and natural disasters are negatively impacting the health, well-being and livelihoods of Tongans. More than 50% of agricultural land is fallow. Oceanic and coastal fisheries resources are being depleted. The private sector is reluctant to increase investments in food processing facilities. 99% of the population is at high or moderate risk of developing noncommunicable diseases (NCDs); obesity, cardio-vascular disease, diabetes and hypertension are prevalent. Limited coordination exists among the various agencies implementing policies and programmes that address the agriculture, food and nutrition challenges. Key recommendations are give in this Technical Brief to meet the above challenges

Farming and food production and development in the Shropshire Hills Environmentally Sensitive Area, 1997-2008

European agricultural and environmental policy has evolved considerably over the last 15 years. In this paper the changes in farm businesses in an Environmentally Sensitive Area in England are evaluated based on two surveys with the same farmers at the start and end of this period. The rate of participation in the environmental scheme had increased significantly at a time when Government led goals in this area had developed and become more output focussed. A combination of policy, market and animal health status changes had encouraged a number to leave cattle production, and though remaining with stock and grass they had decided against any extensive development in the direction of pluriactivity – with or without Government encouragement. This left the future of this group in some uncertainty given that two significant forms of financial support, the environmental scheme and the Hill Farm Allowance, were due to close

Transforming aquatic agricultural systems towards gender equality: a five country review

Aquatic agricultural systems (AAS) are systems in which the annual production dynamics of freshwater and/or coastal ecosystems contribute significantly to total household income. Improving the livelihood security and wellbeing of the estimated 250 million poor people dependent on AAS in Bangladesh, Cambodia, the Philippines, the Solomon Islands and Zambia is the goal of the Worldfish Center-led Consortium Research Program (CRP), “Harnessing the development potential of aquatic agricultural systems for development.” One component expected to contribute to sustainably achieving this goal is enhancing the gender and wider social equity of the social, economic and political systems within which the AAS function. The CRP’s focus on social equity, and particularly gender equity, responds to the limited progress to date in enhancing the inclusiveness of development outcomes through interventions that offer improved availability of resources and technologies without addressing the wider social constraints that marginalized populations face in making use of them. The CRP aims to both offer improved availability and address the wider social constraints in order to determine whether a multi-level approach that engages with individuals, households and communities, as well as the wider social, economic and political contexts in which they function, is more successful in extending development’s benefits to women and other excluded groups. Designing the research in development initiatives to test this hypothesis requires a solid understanding of each CRP country’s social, cultural and economic contexts and of the variations across them. This paper provides an initial input into developing this knowledge, based on a review of literature on agriculture, aquaculture and gender relations within the five focal countries. Before delving into the findings of the literature review, the paper first justifies the expectation that successfully achieving lasting wellbeing improvements for poor women and men dependent on AAS rests in part on advances in gender equity, and in light of this justification, presents the AAS CRP’s conceptual frame

日本の農林水産物・食品輸出の現状と課題

Currently, Japan’s agriculture, forestry, and fisheries industry is facing adifficult situation due to a decline in total agricultural output, the number offarmers and the amount of arable land sold, and the aging of the farmingpopulation. The Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries (MAFF)has proposed the expansion of exports of Japanese agricultural, forestry,and fishery products as an important means to strengthen the agriculture,forestry, and fishery industries and to increase sales of Japanese food andfood products in overseas markets.Against this backdrop, in the “Revitalization of Japan Strategy” approvedby the Cabinet in June 2013, the then Abe Cabinet formulated a strategy toincrease the value of exports of agricultural, forestry, and fishery productsand foods to 1 trillion yen by 2020 in order to promote rural development,agricultural and forestry production, and increase farm income. This goalwas achieved one year later, due in part to subsequent promotionalmeasures by the Japanese government and various prefectures.Based on the achievement of this target, in 2020, the “Strategy forExpanding Exports of Agricultural, Forestry, Fishery, and Food Products”policy was presented, which further targets an annual export value of 5trillion yen by 2030. Since this is a very high goal, it remains to be seenwhat concrete measures will be implemented by the Ministry ofAgriculture, Forestry, and Fisheries, prefectural governments, theJapanese government, agricultural cooperatives, food-related companies,and individual agricultural enterprises to promote the export of agricultural, forestry, and fishery products and foods.The purpose of this paper is to analyze the current status and challengesof Japan’s exports of agricultural, forestry, fisheries, and food products inorder to clarify how to achieve the target of 5 trillion yen in exports ofagricultural, forestry, fisheries, and food products in 2030 and to developregional and farm household economies

Agriculture and Political Reform in Japan : The Koizumi Legacy

Given former Prime Minister Koizumis reformist zeal, agriculture might have been expected to be high on his list of targets for so-called structural reform. However, an investigation of the record of his administration on agricultural policy reveals only modest achievements in terms of policy innovation for agriculture and farm trade. To some extent Japans farming sector has been impacted by processes of fiscal reform and deregulation as well as cutbacks in rural public works. Koizumi-initiated reforms to the policymaking process have also served to reduce the power of individual ruling Liberal Democratic Party politicians as representatives of special interests. However, the bureaucratic, party and interest group actors within the agricultural policy community retain their independent policymaking authority over the farm sector. Furthermore, the vertically segmented nature of Japans policymaking process will continue to limit the possibility of trade-offs between agriculture and business over issues such as Free Trade Agreements (FTAs).agriculture, Political Reform, Japan

Japan: Shadow WTO Agricultural Domestic Support Notifications

"The purpose of this paper is to provide a comprehensive review of Japan's agricultural domestic policy since 1995 in the context of the current international negotiations in the WTO Doha Round, which has as one aim further reductions of trade-distorting support among member countries. An overwhelming majority of farmers in Japan own small plots of rice paddy fields and earn their living mainly on their off-farm income. They go out into rice paddy fields in their spare time as a subsidiary business. Traditional small farming communities are powerful voting groups that seek to maintain their political power. By exerting political pressures on the authorities, farmers can obtain large returns through the manipulation of farmland use regulations, even though such manipulation causes social harm by preventing efficient land use. These inefficiencies in land use are a major reason why Japan is the only country whose food self-sufficiency rate keeps declining in spite of its heavy agricultural protection. In this sense, Japan is in sharp contrast to European and North American countries, where heavy agricultural domestic supports have resulted in an increased output of agricultural commodities and subsequent distortions in international markets. Apparently, Japan's attitude towards agricultural domestic policy reform is one of compliance with the WTO, which requests member countries to reduce their Aggregate Measure of Support (AMS) through trimming trade-distorting (amber box) support and/or transforming traditional-type agricultural subsidies to decoupled-type ones. Japan reduced its amber box support by nearly 80 percent between 1995 and 2000. This drastic reduction is mainly attributable to Japan's removal of rice from the amber box in 1998. In addition, following the WTO's principle of decoupling, Japan launched an extensive agricultural subsidy reform in 2007. This paper, however, shows the ironical realities of Japanese agricultural policy. Neither a sharp reduction of amber box support nor Japan's 2007 reform necessarily mean there will be a reduction of trade-distorting effects. On the contrary, the 2007 reform may in fact stimulate domestic rice production. In 2007, Japan's AMS is as little as 18 percent of its commitment level from the Uruguay Round WTO agreements. In addition, this paper projects that Japan's overall trade-distorting support (OTDS) for 2013 will be 469 billion yen, which is much less than the limit of 1,635 billion yen that is proposed in the modalities under discussion in July 2008 for the WTO Doha Round. Thus, the WTO Doha Round negotiations on domestic support policy are unlikely to restrict Japan's domestic agricultural support policy." from authors' abstractJapan's agricultural support, WTO Doha Round, WTO compliance, Notification of domestic support, trade,

Environmental Management for Agriculture (EMA) and Sustainable Agriculture

John Tzilivakis and Kathleen Lewis, ‘Environmental Management for Agriculture (EMA) and Sustainable Agriculture’, paper presented at the 2nd European Conference of the European Federation for Information Technology in Agriculture, Food and the Environment, 27 – 30 September 1999, Bonn, Germany.Submitted Versio

The Impact of Investments in Maize Research and Dissemination in Zambia Part I: Main Report

Michigan State University (MSU) is currently assessing the impact of agricultural research on various commodities in seven African countries: Cameroon (maize, cowpea, sorghum), Kenya (maize, wheat), Malawi (maize), Mali (maize), Niger (sorghum, cowpea, millet), Uganda (oilseeds), and Zambia (maize). These countries were selected because they represent a variety of agro-ecological regions, and because their research systems have received significant levels of funding from USAID. The country studies undertaken by MSU are part of a series of research works recently commissioned to help USAID and the U.S. Congress analyze the effectiveness of aid given to strengthen national agricultural research systems in Africa. In Zambia, MSU collaborated with the Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Fisheries (MAFF) and the University of Zambia's Rural Development Studies Bureau (RDSB) to assess the impact of investments in maize research and dissemination made during the late 1970s and early 1980s. This research resulted in the release of ten new hybrids and open-pollinated varieties between 1984-88. Major support for maize research and dissemination came from the Government of Zambia (GRZ), the Centro Internaciónal de Mejoramiento de Maiz y Trigo (CIMMYT), the Food and Agriculture Organization/United Nations Development Program (FAO/UNDP), the Swedish International Development Authority (SIDA) and the United States Agency for International Development (USAID).food security, food policy, maize, Crop Production/Industries, Research and Development/Tech Change/Emerging Technologies, Downloads July 2008 - June 2009: 19, Q18,

Agricultural tenancy reform: the end of law; or a new popular culture?

This paper applies a reading of the postmodernisation of law to the incremental reform of agricultural holdings legislation over the last century. In charting the shifting legal basis of agricultural tenancies, from ‘black letter’ positivism to the cultural contextuality of sumptuary law, the paper theorises that the underlying political imperative has been allied to the changing significance of property ownership and use. Rather than reflecting the long-term official desire to maintain the let sector in British agriculture, however, the paper argues that this process has had other aims. In particular, it has been about an annexation of law to legitimise the retention of landowner power while presenting a rhetorical ‘democratisation’ of farming, away from its plutocratic associations and towards a new narrative of ‘depersonalised’ business