Fao statistical yearbook 2012 download

The poor often lack access, or are excluded from income generating opportunities, such as gainful employment and productive resources, including land, forests, the seas, water, seeds, technology and credit, while poor governance often entrenches poverty. Hidden hunger can cause illness, disability, and premature death as well as impairing the cognitive development of those who survive.

Productivity losses arising from the effects of nutritional deficiency among adults are equivalent to 2 to 4 percent of Gross Domestic Product GDP every year in South Asia.

Insufficient nutritional attainment by the age of two condemns a child to being shorter, enrolling later in school, being less academically capable and receiving lower incomes as an adult. In addition, there is ample evidence to show that literacy in women is associated with sustainable fertility rates, increased birth spacing, better nutritional and child feeding practices, and lower maternal death.

The publication is targeted at a wide audience, including policy-makers, international organizations, academic institutions and the general public with a general interest in linkages between food security, and human and economic development. SOFI focuses on the costs of food price volatility, as well as the dangers and opportunities presented by high food prices. Drawing from theory, empiricism and heuristic evidence, the book contributes to the debate on the causes, consequences, and challenges of food price volatility.

Food security and vulnerability are placed at centre stage, especially in their demands on shaping innovative policy design. Under these circumstances, a perceived transitory shock or short-lived crisis can turn into a self-perpetuating vicious cycle, from which countries cannot easily return to a path of longer-term development. Severe events can have an irreversible impact on human capital and societal systems.

Armed conflict and natural disasters therefore represent ongoing and fundamental threats to both lives and livelihoods, from which recovery is progressively more difficult over time. The governance of these environments is usually very weak, with the state having a limited capacity to respond to, and mitigate, the threats to the population, or to provide adequate levels of protection.

Food insecurity is the most common manifestation of protracted crises. Seventeen of the 22 countries are located in sub-Saharan Africa. All 22 have suffered some kind of human-induced emergency such as conflict or political crisis. Sixteen have also experienced some kind of natural disaster at some point— either as a stand-alone crisis or combined with a human-induced emergency — while 15 have experienced at least one occurrence of combined natural and human-induced emergency.

Some protracted crisis situations are limited to a particular geographic area of a country and may not affect the entire population. In the 22 countries, a total of around million people are undernourished, representing nearly 40 percent of their combined population and nearly 20 percent of all undernourished people in the world.

Around Pakistan bears the largest burden in terms of economic impact, hosting refugees for each US dollar of its per capita GDP Gross Domestic Product , followed by the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Kenya with and refugees respectively. By comparison, Germany, the industrialized country with the largest refugee population people , has 17 refugees for each dollar of per capita GDP.

Chart Floods and droughts impact by far the largest number of people Number affected by type - As for major events in , the — drought in the north of China was the worst drought to afflict the country in 60 years. The drought enveloped 7. The March earthquake and tsunami in Japan, which had no long-lasting impact on food security, nevertheless left well over 20 people either dead or missing. By the end of , the food crisis in the Horn of Africa, a result of the driest spell in the region since , had affected some 13 million people in Djibouti, Ethiopia, Kenya and Uganda with parts of southern Somalia enduring famine.

The situation has been exacerbated by high local cereal prices, excessive livestock mortality, conflict and restricted humanitarian access. In August , the UN refugee agency UNHCR reported a ten per day rate of malnutrition-related child mortality at a camp in eastern Ethiopia for Somali refugees who had fled drought, famine and fighting within their own borders.

Chart Natural disasters have affected more than 2. According to the Centre for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters CRED , the world endured some natural disasters in , which killed approximately people — the highest level of fatality in the past two decades — and disrupted the lives of nearly million others.

Disaster statistics are often altered by single extreme events that cause excessive human impact. For instance, the 12 January earthquake in Haiti killed over people, and the heat wave that hit the Russian Federation in mid resulted in around 56 fatalities.

In the last four decades, the mortality figures of were only surpassed by the rates, when a tropical cyclone killed people in Bangladesh, and in , when famines affected the African continent and caused deaths. Chart A slight decline in does not mask an upward trend in the global number of displaced. Food security exists when all people, at all times, have physical, social and economic access to sufficient, safe and nutritious food that meets their dietary needs and preferences for an active and healthy life.

Undernourishment or hunger exists when caloric intake is below the minimum dietary energy requirement MDER. The MDER is the amount of energy needed to perform light activity and to maintain a minimum acceptable weight for attained height. The fight against hunger is one of the central objectives for development. Indeed, the first Millennium Development Goal MDG1 seeks to halve the proportion of people who suffer from hunger between and There has been significant progress in raising food intake per person at the global level.

The gains in the world average predominantly reflect those of the developing countries, given that developed countries previously had fairly high levels of per capita food consumption. Changes in food consumption levels closely correlate to changes in rates of undernourishment.

Based on the latest available data, the total number of undernourished people in the world is estimated to have reached million in , and according to preliminary forecasts, this figure could reach around million people in Two-thirds of the hungry live in just seven countries Bangladesh, China, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ethiopia, India, Indonesia and Pakistan and over 40 percent live in China and India alone.

But for the most vulnerable, the total number of undernourished in the least developed countries rose to million in , around 25 percent higher than the level at the beginning of the decade and considerably above the 1 percent increase observed in the developing country group. Chart Progress in reducing the global prevalence of undernourishment has slowed in recent years Global share of undernourished - 26 24 22 Recent events and their implications on food security highlight the need to broaden and deepen the set of indicators used to monitor it.

FAO has engaged in a series of initiatives aimed at improving the quality and timeliness of information on food security. One important area of activity includes efforts to improve the underlying methodology of the FAO indicator that gauges the prevalence of undernourishment and to add to it related indicators such as depth of hunger i.

Another area of improvement aims at identifying a suite of indicators that would capture the multidimensionality of food insecurity. Periods of high food prices during the past five years have affected countries and regions in different ways. While Africa saw a further deterioration of its hunger situation, Asia remained fairly resilient to shocks. Countries in this continent managed to restrict exports, or had sufficient means to aggressively purchase food on international markets, and thus managed to keep their domestic supply and price situation relatively stable.

Others had sufficient domestic reserves to buffer against reduced imports; they took shelter from international markets by drawing on these supplies. This left those without safety nets, reserves, exports to restrict or the means to procure food at high prices fully exposed to international price swings. Chart Despite falling prevalence of undernourishment, it nevertheless remains unacceptably high.

Chart The global number of undernourished has increased in the past decade, reversing the considerable gains of the s Global number of undernourished - The proportion of undernourished people remains highest in sub-Saharan Africa, at 30 percent according to the most recent estimates, but there is wide variation at the country level. In the Democratic Republic of the Congo, however, the proportion of undernourishment had risen to 69 percent from 26 percent in — Worldwide, any progress in raising food consumption per person has invariably been accompanied by significant structural change in dietary patterns.

Food consumption is now more centred on caloric-yielding foodstuffs and less on starchy staples such as roots and tubers, at least in the countries that recorded such growth. The combination of urbanization, rising incomes and opportunities for trade has fuelled trends in dietary convergence and dietary adaptation. Dietary convergence refers to the increasing similarity in global diets, characterized by a greater reliance on a narrow base of staple grains wheat and rice , increased consumption of meat, dairy, edible oils, salt and sugar, and lower intake of fibre — much in the form of highly processed foodstuffs.

On the other hand, dietary adaptation — or the consumption of more convenience foods — reflects the rapid pace and time pressure of urban lifestyles. Cereals continue to be by far the most important source of dietary energy, providing 50 percent of all global calories. However, global per capita food use of cereals has been in gradual decline since the early s.

This is largely a reflection of changing diets in Asia, where the major countries particularly those in the East Asia region are moving away from predominantly rice-based diets. In contrast, for agro-ecological reasons, wheat constitutes the fastest of all growing cereals in countries that are non-producers or minor producers. Coarse grain consumption is also on a downward path but continues to be important mainly in sub-Saharan Africa, where it accounts for as much as 70 percent of all cereal consumption.

Livestock products contribute around 13 percent of global calories and 28 percent of protein directly through provision of meat, milk, eggs and offal.

In spite of recent growth in consumption, especially in Asia and Latin America, many people are still deficient in the nutrients that can be provided by animal source foods. Even quite small amounts are important for improving the nutritional status of low-income households. Meat, milk and eggs provide proteins with a wide range of amino acids that match human needs as well as bioavailable micro-nutrients such as iron, zinc, vitamin A, vitamin B12 and calcium in which many malnourished people are deficient.

Energy and protein consumption are closely correlated, and insufficient calorie consumption tends to go in tandem with insufficient protein consumption. But in the absence of cultural grounds, poverty for the most part is major determinant, as the consumption of livestock products is dictated by income, which explains the low observed intake in poorer regions. Chart Dietary energy supplies are on the rise, but not sufficient to make inroads in reducing undernourishment Dietary energy supplies over time - Developed.

Vulnerability to unstable food prices is high when food intake is concentrated on one staple commodity, especially when that staple is traded in large volumes on international markets.

By implication, when dietary concentration on one staple is high, that staple accounts for a high share of expenditure. The countries that tend to concentrate most on one staple are the rice economies in South and Southeast Asia. The dominance of preferences towards rice in that region and the reluctance to shift to other staples restricts the potential for using trade in other staples to moderate variability in rice prices.

In some countries, such as Pakistan, Morocco, Yemen, and Chile, there is also a high dependence on wheat, while Mexico and in much of southern Africa rely on maize. Countries in which cassava is a major staple, such as in West and Central Africa, generally have the most diverse food consumption baskets. Consumption of pulses has stagnated overall and registered drastic declines in Asia and sub-Saharan Africa. These trends reflect not just changing consumer preferences, but cultivation shifts towards self-sufficiency in cereals.

Roots, tubers and plantains are the mainstay of sustenance in many countries with low and middle levels of overall food consumption, predominantly in subSaharan Africa and in Latin America and the Caribbean.

Data show that in many of the countries with high dietary dependence on roots and tubers, production of these crops is an important determinant of changes in national average food consumption. Chart Diets of many vulnerable countries characterized by high consumption of one or two staples Dietary diversity in LIFDCs The rapid growth in consumption of vegetable oils, in combination with their high calorie content, has been instrumental in bringing about the increases in food consumption of those developing countries that characterize progress towards food security.

One out of every four calories added to the consumption of the developing countries originated in this group of products. Sugar shares many of the characteristics of vegetable oils as a fast-rising consumption item. The scope for consumption growth is still considerable and momentum in food use is likely to be sustained. FDS, p. Chart Adequate nutrition is essential for economic growth, good health and physical and cognitive development. It requires a diverse diet including staple foods, vegetables, fruits, animal-source foods and where needed, fortified foods.

Levels of nutrition are affected not only by food availability and access but also by sanitation — such as access to safe drinking water — and disease. In addition, education can play a key role in improving nutritional intake and balance. Chronically food-insecure populations are characterized by high or very high levels of undernutrition and recurrent high levels of acute malnutrition wasting, low weight-for-height.

These factors limit the development of individuals and societies. Undernutrition accounts for approximately 12 percent of deaths worldwide, and in developing countries, 60 percent of deaths in the underfive age group are linked with the low weight i.

South Asia has the highest levels of stunting and wasting in the world, with 46 percent of its children stunted and 15 percent wasted. This represents 17 percent of the total number of births in developing countries. Infants with low birth weight are at high risk of mortality during their early months.

Those who survive are often afflicted with an impaired immune system and are prone to suffer chronic illnesses in later life. Over 96 percent of cases of low birth weight occur in developing countries, where there is a high likelihood of being born in poor socio-economic conditions, and where women often undertake physically demanding work during pregnancy and are prone to infection and poor diets.

The high prevalence is also symptomatic of intergenerational transmission of poor nutritional status, the consequences of which are passed to children by mothers who are themselves in poor health or undernourished. In adults, a commonly used measure to detect malnutrition is the body mass index BMI , defined as the ratio of bodyweight in kilograms to the square of height in metres.

Low stature and low BMI are associated with lower labour force participation — not only do people with lower stature or BMIs earn less, but they are less likely to be in a position to earn wages at all. At the other end of the malnutrition spectrum is the problem of overnourishment, which leads to overweight and obesity. Already a well-known phenomenon in developed countries, obesity is also increasing in the developing world, especially among urban dwellers.

The issue of obesity has not been given much attention in developing countries because of the more compelling problems at the other end of the scale. Overnutrition is a result of diets that are characterized by energy-dense, nutrient poor foods that are high in fat, sugar and salt. It is a major contributor to heart disease, stroke, diabetes and cancer, and is compounded by low levels of physical activity and by tobacco consumption. Worldwide obesity has more than doubled since Of them, over million men and nearly million women are obese.

Chart Insufficient iron in diets is a primary cause of anaemia, and is common in vegetal-based diets Availability of dietary iron More widely, when a significant proportion of the population is undernourished, potential rates of GDP growth can be curtailed.

For example in South Asia, adult productivity losses arising from the combined effect of stunting, iodine deficiency and iron deficiency are equivalent to a loss of 2 to 4 percent of GDP every year. Chart One in nine children under five are low weightfor-height in developing countries.

Stunting and wasting are caused by long-term insufficient nutrient intake. Early childhood nutrition plays a key role in cognitive achievement, learning capacity and ultimately household welfare. Available studies have shown that low birth weight, protein energy malnutrition in childhood, childhood iron-deficiency anaemia and iodine deficiency e.

Map Undernourished women are more likely to raise children who are undernourished, reinforcing the intergenerational cycle of malnutrition. Map Obesity is an entrenched problem in many developed countries, but under- and over-nutrition co-exist in many countries, leading to a double burden of malnutrition.

Against the backdrop of deepening international markets, convertible domestic currencies, improved international transportation networks and diminishing public stock regimes, trade plays an increasingly important role in stabilizing food availability in almost all countries. When agricultural-based countries experience declining per capita production of staple foods, the role of trade becomes pivotal in their food security.

Equally, trade assists food security in staple food production systems undergoing wide fluctuations caused by variable climates, especially in those systems that are rain-fed. High coefficients in the variation of staple food production — 10 percent and above — are common in much of sub-Saharan Africa. This means that a shortfall of at least 10 percent of average staple production occurs every six years.

Instability in food production can also lead to problems in global markets. While a handful of countries continues to dominate supply in the international arena, there is an increasing number of countries at the margin that participate in exports. Those that have emerged recently as regular international suppliers instil a great degree of uncertainty in the global marketplace owing to the high year-to-year variability of their production.

This is particularly true for several rain-fed grain producing countries in the Black Sea region, which triggered turmoil in markets midway in when weather problems lowered export availabilities.

This feature can also shift the nettrade status of large producing and consuming countries from one year to the next, bringing uncertainty to markets as in the case of rice.

Beyond production instability, trade deficits in many of the most food-insecure countries have become structural over the past two decades. Expensive inputs, high shipment costs and high losses from farms to markets have lowered the competitiveness of the agriculture sector in many developing countries.

At the same time, large global suppliers have benefited from subsidies in export markets and the transformation of the retail sector in importing countries, resulting in a growing prevalence of higher foreign standards. These factors contributed to the growing trade deficit of many developing countries, which shifted their trade status from a position of net exporters to that of net importers.

The most economically vulnerable group, including least developed countries LDCs , has been hardest hit; their net food and agriculture import bills have soared over the past 20 years to a level of nearly USD 27 billion by Chart Much of Latin America more than self-sufficient in food but the converse in Africa Caloric self-sufficiency Developed. Rising import bills could lead to increased stress if there is insufficient income growth or export earnings to accommodate the higher pace of food import costs.

Higher food import bills can place a severe burden on the balance of payments, depriving disadvantaged countries of limited foreign exchange reserves that could be used for importing other essential goods and services, such as fuel and inputs. Sovereign credit ceilings also constrain the ability to finance imports and to meet unforeseen higher procurement costs.

The on-going instability in international food markets has prompted rising mistrust in many food-importing countries about the reliability of international markets as suppliers of affordable food. Several countries have explored the possibility of becoming less reliant on food imports in the context of safeguarding their own food security. The notion of food security often becomes conflated with ideas about food self-sufficiency.

Food security and food self-sufficiency, however, are different concepts, and are often at odds with one another. Self-sufficiency policies that distort market signals using protectionist strategies, such as import bans, have high social costs given their distributional effects.

They place food self-sufficiency at variance with the goals of food security and poverty reduction. But, by improving agricultural productivity and domestic competitiveness, imports are likely to be deterred, and consequently, higher levels of self-sufficiency will be compatible with food security and poverty reduction. Chart Production variability remains high in many food-insecure regions Index of variability of food production Developed.

With the global cost of purchasing food on the international marketplace surpassing USD 1 trillion in as it did in , food import bills for LDCs have climbed the most.

At 17 percent, their increase far exceeded that of the global level. Seen in a broader perspective, expenditures on imported foodstuffs for vulnerable countries account for roughly 18 percent of all their expenditures on imports, compared to a world average of around 7 percent.

Chart Global cereal stocks on the decline owing to policy shifts and greater dependence on trade World cereal stocks-to-utilization Chart Food import bills have risen markedly in the past few years, driven by a combination of higher international prices and greater trade. High food prices pose a major threat to food security. By reducing real incomes, rising prices can worsen the prevalence of hunger and malnutrition because they reduce the quantity and quality of food consumed.

The impact of high prices falls heaviest on the poor, especially female-headed households and the landless, which may spend as much as 80 percent of their income on food. The lack of dietary diversification aggravates the problem, as price increases in one staple cannot easily be compensated by a switch to other foods. The lack of adequate social and income safety nets, such as savings, compounds price increases. Vulnerable households often deal with soaring prices by selling assets, which are very difficult to rebuild, and by cutting down on health and education expenditures.

These short-term coping mechanisms have long-term negative, sometimes irreversible, effects on livelihoods. Soaring food prices have triggered worldwide concern about threats to global food security, and have shaken the unjustified complacency caused by many years of low commodity prices.

Up until , the cost of the global food basket had fallen by almost a half over the previous thirty years or so when adjusted for inflation. Declining real prices as a result of technological advances put farmers under considerable strain, except mainly in developed countries, where governments were able to provide support to agricultural producers through subsidies and price guarantees.

Elsewhere, public and private sectors saw limited need or incentive to invest in agricultural production and infrastructure.

These factors rendered production in many developing countries unprofitable and entrenched the role of a handful of countries in regularly supplying the world with food.

Changes in the market and policy setting were also instrumental in reducing stock levels and have led to far more planned dependence on imports as an efficient way of achieving food security. Taken together, these developments have imposed a heavy responsibility on major exporting countries to supply international markets when called upon.

It is thus unsurprising that when production shortages occur in such countries, global supplies are stretched and the ensuing market tightness manifests both higher prices and higher volatility. This was precisely the case in the run-up to the high-price episodes that the world has witnessed in recent years. Other contributory factors included dependence on new exporting zones, where rainfed crop outcomes are much more prone to weather vagaries, growing demand for food from other sectors e.

Measuring price transmission is often plagued with difficulties, but as markets are increasingly integrated in the world economy, price changes in the international arena can potentially transpire and spread to domestic markets much more quickly than before.

There is emerging consensus that the global food system is becoming more vulnerable to episodes of high prices and volatility. Price volatility is by no means a new phenomenon in developing countries, where significant seasonal or annual price fluctuations remain features of rural life. With poor infrastructure, local prices may be subject to substantial variation. While price volatility is in part a function of the interplay between global and domestic factors, it is also a structural problem.

Bouts of high price volatility come at a cost, as market participants have difficulty planning ahead and adjusting to fluctuating market signals. For instance, high price volatility can result in large income fluctuations for farmers, who have little or no recourse to savings and insurance. The delay between production decisions and actual production creates additional risks, as farmers base their investment and planning on expected prices.

Movements of prices in global markets may seem less important than price movements within domestic markets, as international trade accounts for a low percentage of global transactions.

The issue is how global price movements affect domestic prices and markets for agricultural products inside countries and, potentially, vice versa and how international prices are transmitted differentially to producers and to consumers. In , international prices rose to levels not seen in decades. The export-weighted FAO food price climbed to a record points in February and remained stubbornly high throughout much of the year.

Escalating world prices for cereals, vegetable oils and sugar 40, 35 and 25 percent, respectively over the past year have fuelled much of the increase. The FAO global food consumption index, which uses global average calorie shares as weights, also rose to a record level, climbing 26 percent from Chart Of all the prices of major food commodities, global sugar quotations have been most volatile.

According to an IFAD survey of farmers in the Middle East and North Africa conducted in the aftermath of the high price episode, it was found that more than 60 percent of farmers would have expected to increase the area under cereals if prices had remained at the high levels of early With global markets yet again experiencing turmoil over , developing countries must enact measures to protect the most vulnerable, not by fighting volatility, but by managing its risks and mitigating its consequences by providing the poor with access to food.

In the long run, vulnerability can be lowered by raising agricultural productivity for a diverse set of both competitive and sustainable crops, as well as by promoting dietary diversification. Reducing market uncertainty may not be among the fastest remedies for lowering the number of hungry. Yet, letting international markets continue in their present state, volatile and unpredictable, will only aggravate an already grim outlook for world food security.

This is the reason why world leaders have been dwelling at length on the issue of price volatility since the start of the year. Such discussions gained momentum in recent months as attention turned towards finding ways to improve the accuracy of supply and demand forecasts for major food crops as an important first step in promoting stable and transparent food markets.

This initiative, proposed by a number of international organizations, has been endorsed by all G Members and, subsequently, by the Committee on World Food Security CFS. Chart Historical volatility of a typical food basket on the rise FAO Global Consumption price volatility 16 14 Among the many determinants of hunger, poverty is one of the most important.

But like hunger, poverty too is multifaceted. Not simply a lack of income or consumption, poverty includes deprivation in health, education, nutrition, security, empowerment and dignity. Vulnerability constitutes a further dimension of poverty. Without effective coping mechanisms, excessive exposure to shocks — such as drought and sudden price swings — creates the risk of future poverty. All of these dimensions interact with and reinforce one another. However, to facilitate international comparison, poverty indicators are usually confined to measuring the proportion of a population whose income is below a particular threshold.

Whereas poverty metrics tend to be absolute, inequality, on the other hand, looks at the distribution of the metric e. For example, a highinequality country might need twice as much economic growth as low-inequality countries to meet a poverty target.

Furthermore, a major reason that people may not have access to food even when enough is produced is that there is no guarantee that a market economy will generate a distribution of income that provides enough for all to purchase the food needed.

Fighting hunger also helps reduce poverty, as undernourishment reduces labour productivity, increases susceptibility to illness, worsens school performance, reduces the willingness to undertake risky but more profitable investments and transmits itself from one generation to the next. Although in the past three decades, tremendous progress has been achieved in reducing income poverty in certain parts of the world — notably in China and other parts of East Asia where poverty incidence dropped from 78 to 17 percent — there remains an estimated 1.

Progress in poverty reduction has been very uneven. Sub-Saharan Africa, for example, has registered only a marginal decline.

The monetary poor are particularly vulnerable to rising prices of food, with some groups spending over 80 percent of their income to meet sustenance needs. From a broader perspective, roughly 1. In many societies there are groups, especially rural women, youth, indigenous peoples and ethnic minorities that face deeply rooted inequalities. The agricultural sector is a case in point. Women in agriculture and rural areas have one thing in common across regions: they have less access than men to productive resources and opportunities.

The gender gap is found in the case of many assets, inputs and services — land, livestock, labour, education, extension and financial services, and technology — and it imposes costs on the sector, the broader economy and society, as well as on the women themselves. Around the world, rising income inequality is the norm: more countries have a higher Gini coefficient now than in the s. For each country where inequality has fallen in the last 20 to 30 years, it has worsened in more than two others.

The majority of countries in East Asia have rising income inequality. To an extent, this can be explained by widening disparities between rural and urban populations, owing to rapid industrialization and increasing returns to higher levels of schooling.

In subSaharan Africa, inequality has substantially improved, coinciding with the period of economic growth that began more than a decade ago. Latin America and the Caribbean, traditionally a region of high inequality related to unequal land distribution, regressive public spending and uneven access to education, has made rapid progress in recent decades.

This is especially true of Brazil, Ecuador and Paraguay. Greater equality is associated with structural economic changes that have brought women into employment and to affirmative measures designed to equalize access to education.

The challenge is to create conditions that allow the poor to escape poverty and, in doing so, ensure that opportunities are inclusive. Chart Countries in sub-Saharan Africa have the lowest human development index adjusted for inequality Inequality-adjusted HDI score Morocco Bolivia Plur.

Efforts to promote agricultural development and food security in countries where they are most needed are often hindered by a lack of good governance. According the World Bank, the concept of good governance consists of many dimensions including political stability, rule of law, voice and accountability, government effectiveness, regulatory quality and control of corruption.

All of these dimensions matter for agriculture. Political stability, the absence of violence and the rule of law are essential preconditions for agricultural development. Violent conflicts are often linked to unequal access to land and other natural resources. In political systems that lack voice and accountability, the rural poor face acute difficulties when attempting to influence the political agenda, resulting in low political attention in using agriculture for development.

Although governance is difficult to measure, the evidence from cross-country analysis is unambiguous: governance is instrumental for affecting progress towards development. For instance, better governance is positively associated with higher investment and growth rates. Government effectiveness, an efficient bureaucracy and an equitable rule of law are associated with increased economic performance, adult literacy and lower infant mortality.

High levels of corruption, on the other hand, are linked with poor development prospects. In developing countries, where agriculture plays an important role in the economy, there is a tendency toward poor governance. This is of particular concern when the public sector is most needed to provide guidance in realizing rural development.

Moreover, many large donors concerned with aid effectiveness employ good governance indicators when they select countries that qualify for Official Development Assistance ODA. This presents a dilemma for agricultural-based countries, as they are often less eligible for assistance because of poor performance in terms of good governance. With the world increasingly turning its attention to issues of governance, there are grounds for optimism towards change.

However, success cannot be taken for granted given the often complex and sizeable challenge of improving governance. Chart Governance, including the degree of voice and accountability, political stability and absence of violence and terrorism, government effectiveness, regulatory quality, rule of law and control of corruption, is poor in food-insecure regions Average governance The two greatest potential resources in most poor, foodinsecure countries are the people and the productivity of the land and water.

It breaks down a myriad of numbers gathered from around the world into four broad thematic categories: the state of the agricultural resource base; hunger dimensions; feeding the world; and sustainability. Each section of the yearbook is accompanied by background and narrative text, charts, maps and references to additional publications, all of which offer a broader and more in-depth look at a wide range of topics. Examples of issues examined in the publication include the pressure placed on land and water resources by agriculture, such as overuse and pollution; the potential impact of women's lack of access to agricultural tools and land on national economic and social development; the status of investment in agriculture; the spectrum of malnutrition; food wastage and losses; agriculture and environmental sustainability; and food price volatility.

This new product helps researchers, policy-makers, NGOs, journalists — whoever needs statistical information — to more easily narrow the focus to a particular subject and use that as a springboard to get into deeper issues," said Pietro Gennari, FAO Statistics Division Director. Page: table 37 p. Imports of cereals volume.

Exports of coarse grains volume. EXv Page: chart 87, 93, 95 p. Millions discover their favorite reads on issuu every month.

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