This report, published in November 2007, says that the agricultural and rural sectors have suffered from neglect and under-investment over the past 20 years. While 75 percent of the world’s poor live in rural areas, a mere 4 percent of official development assistance goes to agriculture in developing countries. In Sub-Saharan Africa, a region heavily reliant on agriculture for overall growth, public spending for farming is also only 4 percent of total government spending and the sector is still taxed at relatively high levels.

In issue 11 of the journal Energy Policy, there's a very helpful (and not too technical) overview of international biofuels policy and the possible implications both for the environment and for developing nations. The details and abstract are as follows