2011 Global Hunger Index

2011 Global Hunger Index
Author:
Publisher:
Total Pages: 59
Release: 2011
Genre: Food prices
ISBN:

The 2011 Global Hunger Index (GHI) report--the sixth in an annual series--presents a multidimensional measure of global, regional, and national hunger. It shows that although the world has made some progress in reducing hunger, the proportion of hungry people remains high. The 2011 GHI has improved by slightly more than one-quarter over the 1990 GHI, but globally, hunger remains at a level categorized as "serious." In addition to presenting the 2011 GHI scores, the report examines the issue of price spikes and excessive food price volatility, which have significant effects on poor and hungry people.

The World of Agricultural Economics

The World of Agricultural Economics
Author: Carin Martiin
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 401
Release: 2013-04-12
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1135069018

This textbook takes a truly international approach towards agricultural economics, uniting many different perspectives on the subject and providing insight into agriculture in general, and into how practical farming works in particular. The book is laced throughout with real world examples and other pedagogical features. Topics covered are wide-ranging and include: world food production and population the food chain and food safety non-foods derived from farming land and soil issues arable and animal production and management at farm level. The World of Agricultural Economics: an introduction is primarily an introductory textbook for students in agricultural economics, agronomy and adjacent fields. However, its accessible approach means that it is also suitable for readers without any previous knowledge in the field, who are seeking an introduction to agriculture.

Successful Agricultural Innovation in Emerging Economies

Successful Agricultural Innovation in Emerging Economies
Author: David J. Bennett
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 457
Release: 2013-03-07
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1107026709

An authoritative review of the implementation of new crop breeding technologies and their role in feeding an increasing global population.

India's Human Security

India's Human Security
Author: Jason Miklian
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 262
Release: 2013-09-11
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1136022406

India's explosive economic growth and emerging power status make it a key country of interest for policymakers, researchers and scholars within South Asia and around the world. But while many of India's threats and conflicts are strategized and discussed extensively within the confines of security studies, strategic studies and conventional international relations perspectives, many less visible challenges are set to impact significantly on India's potential for economic growth as well as the human security and livelihoods of hundreds of millions of Indian citizens. Drawing on extensive research within India, this book looks at some of the ‘hidden risks’ that India faces, exploring how a broadened scope of what constitutes ‘risk’ itself holds value for Indian security studies practitioners and policymakers. It highlights several human security risks facing India, including the inability of the world’s largest democracy to deal effectively with widespread poverty and health issues, resource depletion and environmental mismanagement, pervasive corruption and institutionalized crime, communal violence, a protracted Maoist insurgency, and deadlocked peace processes in the Northeast among others. The book extracts common themes from these seemingly disparate problems, discussing what underlying failures allow them to persist and why policymakers heavily securitize some political issues while ignoring others. Providing an understanding of how several lesser-studied risks can pose potential or actual threats to Indian society and its ‘emerging power’ growth narrative, this book is a useful contribution to South Asian Studies, International Security Studies and Global Politics.

Food Security and Sociopolitical Stability

Food Security and Sociopolitical Stability
Author: Christopher B. Barrett
Publisher: OUP Oxford
Total Pages: 510
Release: 2013-09-26
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 0191668702

Global food price spikes in 2008 and again in 2011 coincided with a surge of political unrest in low- and middle-income countries. Angry consumers took to the streets in scores of nations. In some places, food riots turned violent, pressuring governments and in a few cases contributed to their overthrow. Foreign investors sparked a new global land rush, adding a different set of pressures. With scientists cautioning that the world has entered a new era of steadily rising food prices, perhaps aggravated by climate change, the specter of widespread food insecurity and sociopolitical instability weighs on policymakers worldwide. In the past few years, governments and philanthropic foundations began redoubling efforts to resuscitate agricultural research and technology transfer, as well as to accelerate the modernization of food value chains to deliver high quality food inexpensively, faster, and in greater volumes to urban consumers. But will these efforts suffice? This volume explores the complex relationship between food security and sociopolitical stability up to roughly 2025. Organized around a series of original essays by leading global technical experts, a key message of this volume is that actions taken in an effort to address food security stressors may have consequences for food security, stability, or both that ultimately matter far more than the direct impacts of biophysical drivers such as climate or land or water scarcity. The means by which governments, firms, and private philanthropies tackle the food security challenge of the coming decade will fundamentally shape the relationship between food security and sociopolitical stability.

Shock Waves

Shock Waves
Author: Stephane Hallegatte
Publisher: World Bank Publications
Total Pages: 227
Release: 2015-11-23
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1464806748

Ending poverty and stabilizing climate change will be two unprecedented global achievements and two major steps toward sustainable development. But the two objectives cannot be considered in isolation: they need to be jointly tackled through an integrated strategy. This report brings together those two objectives and explores how they can more easily be achieved if considered together. It examines the potential impact of climate change and climate policies on poverty reduction. It also provides guidance on how to create a “win-win†? situation so that climate change policies contribute to poverty reduction and poverty-reduction policies contribute to climate change mitigation and resilience building. The key finding of the report is that climate change represents a significant obstacle to the sustained eradication of poverty, but future impacts on poverty are determined by policy choices: rapid, inclusive, and climate-informed development can prevent most short-term impacts whereas immediate pro-poor, emissions-reduction policies can drastically limit long-term ones.

Hamburgers in Paradise

Hamburgers in Paradise
Author: Louise O. Fresco
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Total Pages: 577
Release: 2015-10-27
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1400873312

A fascinating exploration of our past, present, and future relationship with food For the first time in human history, there is food in abundance throughout the world. More people than ever before are now freed of the struggle for daily survival, yet few of us are aware of how food lands on our plates. Behind every meal you eat, there is a story. Hamburgers in Paradise explains how. In this wise and passionate book, Louise Fresco takes readers on an enticing cultural journey to show how science has enabled us to overcome past scarcities—and why we have every reason to be optimistic about the future. Using hamburgers in the Garden of Eden as a metaphor for the confusion surrounding food today, she looks at everything from the dominance of supermarkets and the decrease of biodiversity to organic foods and GMOs. She casts doubt on many popular claims about sustainability, and takes issue with naïve rejections of globalization and the idealization of "true and honest" food. Fresco explores topics such as agriculture in human history, poverty and development, and surplus and obesity. She provides insightful discussions of basic foods such as bread, fish, and meat, and intertwines them with social topics like slow food and other gastronomy movements, the fear of technology and risk, food and climate change, the agricultural landscape, urban food systems, and food in art. The culmination of decades of research, Hamburgers in Paradise provides valuable insights into how our food is produced, how it is consumed, and how we can use the lessons of the past to design food systems to feed all humankind in the future.

2015 Global Hunger Index

2015 Global Hunger Index
Author: von Grebmer, Klaus
Publisher: Intl Food Policy Res Inst
Total Pages: 46
Release: 2015-10-12
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0896299643

The developing world has made progress in reducing hunger since 2000. The 2015 Global Hunger Index (GHI) shows that the level of hunger in developing countries as a group has fallen by 27 percent. Yet the state of hunger in the world remains serious. This marks the tenth year that IFPRI has assessed global hunger using this multidimensional measure. This report’s GHI scores are based on a new, improved formula that replaces the child underweight indicator of previous years with child stunting and child wasting. This change reflects the latest thinking on the most suitable indicators for child undernutrition, one of three dimensions of hunger reflected in the GHI formula. Across regions and countries, GHI scores vary considerably. Regionally, the highest GHI scores, and therefore the highest hunger levels, are still found in Africa south of the Sahara and South Asia. Despite achieving the largest absolute improvements since 2000, these two regions still suffer from serious levels of hunger. Levels of hunger are alarming or serious in 52 countries. Most of the eight countries with alarming GHI scores are in Africa south of the Sahara. While no countries are classified in the extremely alarming category this year, this high level of hunger could still exist. Due to insufficient data, 2015 GHI scores could not be calculated for places that recently suffered from high levels of hunger, including Burundi, Comoros, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Eritrea, Somalia, South Sudan, and Sudan. 2015 Global Hunger Index Interactive App: http://ghi.ifpri.org

New Directions in Agrarian Political Economy

New Directions in Agrarian Political Economy
Author: Ryan Isakson
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 475
Release: 2017-10-02
Genre: Science
ISBN: 1317424816

How relevant are the classic theories of agrarian change in the contemporary context? This volume explores this question by focusing upon the defining features of agrarian transformation in the 21st century: the financialization of food and agriculture, the blurring of rural and urban livelihoods through migration and other economic activities, forest transition, climate change, rural indebtedness, the co-evolution of social policy and moral economies, and changing property relations. Combined, the eleven contributions to this collection provide a broad overview of agrarian studies over the past four decades and identify the contemporary frontiers of agrarian political economy. In this path-breaking collection, the authors show how new iterations of long evident processes continue to catch peasants and smallholders in the crosshairs of crises and how many manage to face these challenges, developing new sources and sites of livelihood production. This volume was published as part one of the special double issue celebrating the 40th anniversary of the Journal of Peasant Studies.