William Mosely explores why so many approaches to food and farming policy fail in Sub-Saharan Africa. He argues that it’s down to Western, colonial agricultural science that is infused with power and politics. This version is open-access. 

This paper explores the impact of recent spikes in food prices on poverty in lower-middle income countries (LMICs). It is often claimed that food price increases negatively affect the poor because they already spend a higher proportion of their total income on food. However, this paper takes into account the stimulation of great food production from higher prices and the effect this has on poverty.

This paper argues that “agriculture for nutrition” interventions in low and middle income countries are overly narrow in scope and neglect the wider political, economic, social and cultural factors that affect food and (mal)nutrition.

This book discusses the influences that drive food insecurity in the UK, including social inequality, transport, employment, rural isolation, local politics, the COVID-19 pandemic and increases in the cost of living.

This paper assesses four recent influential publications on food - the EAT Lancet Commission, the World Resources Report, Growing Better from the Food and Land Use Coalition and the IPCC Special Report on Climate Change and Land. It argues that they do not give enough attention to the livelihoods of food producers, particularly poorer rural people. The authors note that only a limited subset of smallholder producers are likely to be able to escape poverty through growth in their agricultural productivity.

This book explores the 2018 United Nations' Declaration on the Rights of Peasants and Other People Working in Rural Areas (UNDROP). It features sections on specific groups of rights holders (including peasants, indigenous peoples, women and small-scale fishers), access to and control of natural resources (such as land, water, seeds and food), governance of food and agriculture, and examples of the potential impact of the UNDROP in Kenya, Greece, the European Union more broadly, Brazil and India.

This book uncovers the conflicts and politics of food provisioning in Colombia: who produces what and where, and with what socio-economic effects. The book explains the re-emergence of national agrarian movements, their contestation of the dominant development narratives and their engagement in discussions about food sovereignty with the state.

This report from US public policy think tank Brighter Green discusses industrial-style livestock production in Africa, which, although growing, has not yet reached the scale seen in the United States. Starting from the assumption that industrial livestock production is undesirable, the report sets out how Brighter Green engaged with academics and researchers in sub-Saharan Africa to challenge this agricultural development model.

This open access book explores the emergence and development of the legal concept of fair and equitable benefit-sharing, and its application in agriculture, covering agricultural research and development, land governance and grassroots initiatives.