• What are the differences between individual regions in terms of their responses in FDI flows to the crisis? Why did the crisis affect FDI to developing countries later than developed countries?
• What are the prospects for FDI in 2009 as well as for the medium term?
• How has the crisis affected national and international policies related to FDI? Has the path of more liberalizations been continued or reversed?
• In the midst of a major industrial restructuring, which companies are the winners and losers in the universe of the world´s largest TNCs?
• Why is agriculture such a special industry for developing countries - and what are its longer term prospects? What role can TNCs play in improving the productivity of agriculture in developing economies?
• How robust is the renewed interest by TNCs in agriculture? Who are the new investors and how do they differ from traditional TNCs? What are the pros and cons of developing country farmers being drawn into global agribusiness value chains?
• What can developing countries expect from the renewal of FDI in agriculture? Given the past record, will this time the impact of TNCs in agriculture be different?
• How does TNC participation in agricuture affect socially sensitive issues, including those related to food security and the food crisis; as well as the non-food uses of agricultural produce for biofuels?
• What policy challenges does TNC involvement in agriculture raise? How are they being addressed within the framework national economic strategies, with the aim of maximizing benefits and minimizing costs from TNC involvement?
• Are policy makers sufficiently prepared to meet the challenges? How can the international community support them?

According to WIR09, after decades of slow growth, TNCs´ interest and participation in agriculture - including FDI - is again on the rise. Despite this rise, in most countries today only a small share of FDI goes to agriculture. There are nevertheless some developing countries, including least developed countries (LDCs), where the share of agriculture in inward FDI is relatively important. Renewed interest of foreign investors in agricultural investment is significant enough to raise questions about whether FDI and other forms of TNC participation in agriculture can contribute to the development of this long neglected industry. WIR09 suggests an integrated policy approach that takes into account all concerns arising from TNC involvement.

INTRODUCTION: In Doha the “Development Round” was started with the priority objective, especially for the agricultural negotiations, of a radical improvement on market access for LDCs and DCs as well as a drastic reduction of all internal support trade distorting measures.
EU complied with Doha commitments through a radical CAP reform, which shifted internal support from product to producer. The reform also implied a cut on rural development expenditure accomplishing multilateral agreements. In observance of the same international agreements on market access by LDCs, the EU implemented the Everything But Arms programme in order to allow zero tariff import of all products other than arms.
The Doha objectives have to be achieved within 2004, thus straight after Cancún there must be an effort to fulfil some parts of the agreement, especially where there is considerable divergence between industrialized and less developed countries. Such divergences refer not only to North-South but also to internal conflicts within the major groups of countries.

There’s a World Bank (WB) offensive going on over the formulation of the agrarian policy of the national States with a double objective: on one hand, to market land access through the neoliberal change of the state apparatus, in order to favor the free flow of workforce in the countryside, stimulate private investment on rural economy and potentialize the subordinate integration of punctual parcels of the peasantry to the agro-industrial circuit, ruled by big corporations; on the other hand, to alleviate rural poverty in a focused manner, specially on situations where social tensions on the countryside may reach “dangerous” levels for the safety of private capital and/or the stability of the present political order (see World Bank, 2002, 2003 and 2004).
The data testify this movement. Between 1990 and 2004 the WB agreed on 45 loan operations with 32 countries for projects related to its agrarian policy. Counting finished and ongoing projects, we observe that the Latin America and Caribbean region corresponds to 33,3% of the total, Eastern Europe and Central Asia, 26,6%, East Asia and Pacific region, 24,4%, Africa and Middle East, 13,4% and South Asia, 2,2%. We also note that the WB has been significantly increasing the approval of such projects: between 1990 and 1994, 3; from 1995 to 1999, 19, totalizing US$ 700 millions; from 2000 to 2004, 25, totalizing US$ 1 billion in loans (Suárez, 2005). At the same time, the WB has been articulating courses and workshops in several countries...

This is a condensed version of an article presented at the workshop “Rural development, globalization and crisis”, during the XXV Congress of the Latin-American Sociology Association (ALAS), carried from august 22-26, 2005, in Porto Alegre / Brazil. Text available at www.landaction.org and other webpages. Translated  from Portuguese by Clayton Mendonça Cunha Filho.

RP2006/69
Yianna Lambrou and Regina Laub
Gender, Local Knowledge, and Lessons Learnt in Documenting and Conserving Agrobiodiversity
This paper explores the linkages between gender, local knowledge systems and agrobiodiversity for food security by using the case study of LinKS, a regional FAO project in Mozambique, Swaziland, Zimbabwe and Tanzania over a period of eight years and now concluded. The project aimed to raise awareness on how rural men and women use and manage agrobiodiversity, and to promote the importance of local knowledge for food security and sustainable agrobiodiversity at local, institutional and policy levels by working with a diverse range of stakeholders to strengthen their ability to recognize and value farmers’ knowledge and to use gender-sensitive and participatory approaches in their work. This was done through three key activities: capacity building, research and communication. The results of the LinKS study show clearly that men and women farmers hold very specific local knowledge about the plants and animals they manage. Local knowledge, gender and agrobiodiversity are closely interrelated. If one of these elements is threatened, the risk of losing agrobiodiversity increases...

	Crop production systems management
	Livestock production systems management
	Diseases and pests of animals and plants
	Nutrition and consumer protection
	Forestry management and conservation
	Fisheries and aquaculture management and conservation
	Sustainable natural resources management
	Rural infrastructure and agro-industries
	Food and agriculture policy
	Trade and marketing
	Gender and equity in rural societies
	Rural livelihood and food security

The State of Food Agriculture Reports
The complete series

2008 Biofuels: prospects, risks and opportunities
The implications of the recent rapid growth in production of biofuels based on agricultural commodities. The boom in liquid biofuels has been largely induced by policies in developed countries. More than at any time in the past three decades, the world’s attention is focused this year on food and agriculture. A variety of factors have combined to raise food prices to the highest levels since the 1970s (in real terms), with serious implications for food security among poor populations around the world. One of the most frequently mentioned contributing factors is the rapid recent growth in the use of agricultural commodities – including some food crops – for the production of biofuels. Yet the impact of biofuels on food prices remains the subject of considerable debate, as does their potential to contribute to energy security, climate-change mitigation and agricultural development. Even while this debate continues, countries around the world confront important choices about policies and investments regarding biofuels. These were among the topics discussed at FAO in June 2008 by delegations from 181 countries attending the High-Level Conference on World Food Security: the Challenges of Climate Change and Bioenergy. Given the urgency of these choices and the magnitude of their potential consequences, participants at the Conference agreed that careful assessment of the prospects, risks and opportunities posed by biofuels is essential. This is the focus of FAO’s 2008 report on the State of Food and Agriculture.

The State of Food and Agriculture 2005 examines the linkages among agriculture, trade and poverty and asks whether international agricultural trade, and its further reform, can help overcome extreme poverty and hunger.

The global statistics on poverty and hunger are all too familiar. An estimated 1.2 billion people live on less than one dollar a day and FAO's most recent estimates indicate that 852 million people lack sufficient food for an active and healthy life. There is now also an increased awareness that extreme poverty and hunger are largely rural phenomena. Most of the world's poor and hungry people live in rural areas and depend on agriculture for their livelihoods. To the extent that agriculture is affected by trade, trade will necessarily affect the livelihoods and food security of the world's most vulnerable people.

The global economy is becoming increasingly integrated through trade, and agriculture is part of this larger trend. For some countries, agricultural trade expansion - sparked by agricultural and trade policy reforms - has contributed to a period of rapid pro-poor economic growth. Indeed, some of the countries that have been most successful in reducing hunger and extreme poverty have relied on trade in agricultural products, either exports or imports or both, as an essential element of their development strategy.

Many of the poorest countries however, have not had the same positive experience. Rather, they are becoming more marginalized and vulnerable, depending on imports for a rising share of their food needs without being able to expand and diversify their agricultural or non-agricultural exports. FAO believes that the reform process under way must consider the specific circumstances of these countries, particularly their stage of agricultural development and the complementary policies needed to ensure their successful integration into global agricultural markets.

FAO has long recognized that agricultural trade is vital for food security, poverty alleviation and economic growth. Food imports are a fundamental means of supplementing local production in ensuring the provision of minimum supplies of basic foodstuffs in many countries. Agricultural exports are an important source of foreign exchange earnings and rural income in many developing countries. Reducing trade-distorting agricultural subsidies and barriers to agricultural trade can serve as a catalyst for growth as producers worldwide could then compete on the basis of their comparative advantage.

However, international trade in agricultural products is characterized by a number of problems that do not allow competition on the basis of comparative advantage. The markets for many temperate-zone products and basic food commodities are substantially distorted by government subsidies and protection, particularly in Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries. Some developed countries continue to subsidize their farmers and, where this leads to market surpluses, even their agricultural exports. For other agricultural products, particularly tropical ones such as coffee, tea, natural fibres, tropical fruits and vegetables, the problems include high as well as complex and seasonal tariffs and significant tariff escalation.

This edition of The State of Food and Agriculture explores the potential for agricultural biotechnology to address the needs of the world's 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 for 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 socio-economic impacts and the food safety and environmental implications, need to be carefully assessed.

Developing biotechnology in ways that contribute to the sustainable development of agriculture, fisheries and forestry can help significantly in meeting the food and livelihood needs of a growing population. The study of genomics and molecular markers, for example, can facilitate breeding and conservation programmes and provide new tools in the fight against plant and animal diseases. It is clear from the survey of current and emerging applications of biotechnology in this report that biotechnology encompasses far more than genetic engineering. But it is the ability to move genes between unrelated species that gives genetic engineering its enormous power and elicits such profound concern. FAO recognizes the need for a balanced and comprehensive approach to biotechnological development, taking into consideration the opportunities and risks.

Biotechnology offers opportunities to increase the availability and variety of food, increasing overall agricultural productivity while reducing seasonal variations in food supplies. Through the introduction of pest-resistant and stress-tolerant crops, biotechnology could lower the risk of crop failure under difficult biological and climatic conditions. Furthermore, biotechnology could help reduce environmental damage caused by toxic agricultural chemicals. Following a first generation of genetically engineered crops, which aimed primarily at reducing production constraints and costs, a second generation now targets the bio-availability of nutrients and the nutritional quality of products. Examples are found in the production of varieties of rice and canola that contain appreciable amounts of beta-carotene. This precursor of vitamin A is in short supply in the diets of many, particularly in the developing world where it could help to alleviate or reduce chronic vitamin A deficiencies. Research is under way to raise levels of other vitamins, minerals and proteins in crops, such as potatoes and cassava.

This issue of The State of Food and Agriculture reviews the historical record of agricultural research in promoting economic growth and food security. The Green Revolution, which lifted millions of people out of poverty, came about through an international programme of public-sector agricultural research specifically aimed at creating and transferring technologies to the developing world as free public goods. The Gene Revolution, by contrast, is currently being driven primarily by the private sector, which naturally focuses on developing products for large commercial markets. This raises serious questions about the type of research that is being performed and the likelihood that the poor will benefit.

From The World Bank Group archives
Public and Private Roles in Agricultural Development
Proceedings if the Twelfth Agricultural Symposium
J. R. Anderson and C. de Haan, editors - 1992
File Copy 11505
From the Foreword: The tradition of the Annual Agricultural Symposium is now well established...Our deliberations got off to a spirited start with the Opening Address of Mr. Mahbub ul Haq, formerly of the World Bank and of many senior positions in Pakistan and, most recently, of UNDP. His address "The Myth of Friendly Markets" led to a vigorous debate with participation by many of the very large audience of Bank staff.
The theme of this year's Symposium - Public and Private Roles in Agricultural Development- is one that is to the fore of debate on many aspects of Bank operations...the contributions ranged accross roles in marketing, credit, research, extension, input supply, seeds, veterinary services, and grassroots development initiatives.