Approximately 40 percent of the world’s food and 60 percent of its grain are produced under irrigation. Between 1900 and 1950, the total area under irrigation worldwide nearly doubled, from 48 million hectares to 94 million hectares.

People often think of property rights in a narrow sense as ownership – the right to completely and exclusively control a resource. However, property rights are better understood as overlapping “bundles” of rights.

Over half of the hungry people in the world are small-scale farmers, herders, and fishers, who produce food but cannot reliably feed themselves and their families. Nevertheless, poor people are themselves working to improve their lives.

Institutions for collective action and systems of property rights shape how people use natural resources. These patterns of use in turn affect the outcomes of people’s agricultural production systems.

Mozambique was the world’s number one producer of cashew nuts in shell in the 1970s. Cashew trees existed largely on smallholder land, in groves and intermixed with cassava, cowpea, maize, and groundnuts.

Every year, crop and animal pests deprive farmers of significant parts of their production. It is estimated that 10–40 percent of the world’s gross agricultural production is destroyed by agricultural pests.

Agroforestry is a system that combines agriculture and trees. In this system, trees play a prominent role.

Approximately 2 billion people depend on livestock for at least part, and in some cases most, of their livelihood.

Experience in the past 30 years of irrigation has shown that technology alone is not sufficient to reduce poverty, enhance food security, and increase rural livelihoods.

Conservation of genetic resources contributes to plant genetic diversity, which includes both the combination of species in agricultural ecosystems, as well as the number of different varieties within a species (genetic diversity).

Collective action can be understood as an action or series of actions taken by a group of individuals to achieve common interests. It can be voluntary for some or obligatory for others, such as compulsory membership in water users’ associations.

The technologies people use play a fundamental role in shaping the efficiency, equity, and environmental sustainability of natural resource management (NRM).

Collective action for water harvesting irrigation (WHI) refers to the joint or collective effort of farmers in getting and using water for crop, animal, household, or other purposes.