Strengthening local capacities and institutions remains a major challenge for the effective design and implementation of agricultural and rural development programs and policies in developing countries. Sustainable capacity development is also central to making aid work on the ground. Three factors have motivated InWEnt Capacity Building International and the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) to collaborate and organize a workshop on capacity development in agriculture and rural development.

Three quarters of the world’s poor are farmers in developing countries. Their earnings from farming have been depressed by a pro-urban bias in own-country policies as well as by governments of richer countries favoring their farmers with import barriers and subsidies. Both sets of policies worsened from the 1960s to the mid-1980s, reducing national and global economic welfare and increasing inequality and poverty. The situation has improved over the past 20 years, but many trade-reducing distortions remain. Some developing countries have become agricultural protectionists.

Commentator: Ruth Meinzen-Dick

Chair: John Hoddinott

Abstract

Property rights, whether individual, collective or customary, have the potential to significantly increase productivity and thus can have impact on food security and prices. However the linkages are complex and the potential does not automatically translate into reality.

The purpose of this workshop is to present the findings and discuss the policy implications of a longitudinal study which IFPRI, CPRC and DATA conducted during the past thirty months. The study resurveyed 1,800 households first interviewed in 1994, 1996 and 2000 as part of three IFPRI evaluations on the impact of microfinance, agricultural technologies and food/cash for education on the poor in Bangladesh. Combining quantitative and qualitative methods, the study includes interviews with 93 percent of original study households, 300 life history interviews, and 116 focus group discussions.