Producing food and energy side-by-side may offer one of the best formulas for boosting countries' food and energy security while simultaneously reducing poverty according to this new FAO report.
Foreign firms are coming to farm in IndiaThat Indian firms, some of them backed by the government, have gone scouting for land abroad to farm crops for consumption back home is well-known. Reversing the trend, now many Gulf countries are getting a toehold in India that will allow them to farm here and export the food back.
This guide stresses that low-income, food-deficit countries have been hit hard by high food prices in recent years. Many of these countries have to pay larger food import bills when food prices are soaring.
The post WTO policy reforms in the field of agricultural trade induced changes in the institutional and market conditions that led to the entry of the private sector in agribusiness and brought a shift in the relative position of different players in the market. It has created sharp discontinuities in the role of the state and the functioning of the market.
There is great demand for insights on how to structure agricultural investments in ways that leave land and share value with local farmers and communities. And in many parts of the world, there is growing experience with models for structuring agricultural investments other than large-scale land acquisitions.
Narayanappa Maranna, 40, owns five acres of farm land in Mallenamadagu village on the Andhra Pradesh-Karnataka border, about 155 km away from Bangalore. Till 2006, Maranna was cultivating groundnut, paddy and ragi (finger millets).
The policy for promotion of agro-processing industries and agri-business seeks to address the entire value chain in agro-processing and marketing, including development of the supply chain, market development and diversification.
This report examines a range of business models that can be used to structure agricultural investments in lower- and middle-income countries, and that provide an alternative to large-scale land acquisitions (plantations that are wholly owned by, or on long leases to, investors without inclusion of smallholders or small enterprises in the value chain).
