The people operating small farms in developing countries have to cope with the risks of these small businesses and have long faced heavy challenges.

"The topic of family farms has been gaining prominence in the academic, policy, and donor communities in recent years.

Sub-Saharan Africa is the only developing region in the world where food insecurity has worsened instead of improved in recent decades. In this discussion paper, Mark W. Rosegrant, Sarah A. Cline, Weibo Li, Timothy B. Sulser, and Rowena A.

"Given the number of undernourished people in the developing world and the increasingly complex risks to food security, policymakers are faced with an enormous agenda.

"Momentum is building in and around Africa today for policy action to decisively confront hunger and malnutrition. If we are to succeed, it is vital that food and nutrition security strategies be both sound and able to be implemented.

Whose responsibility is it to assure food security in an age of globalization? Is improved governance at the international level our greatest need, or are governance deficits most severe at the national level?

During the last half century, a number of individuals and institutions, including the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) and IFPRI, have engaged in projections of future food demand, supply, and related variables.

International agricultural research has contributed enormously to increasing world food supplies to their current state of plenty.

A team of researchers from the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), the Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations (FAO), and the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) collaborated to produce this compreh

About 167 million children under five years of age —almost one-third of the developing world’s children —are malnourished. If they survive childhood, many of these children will suffer from poorer cognitive development and lower productivity.

The assessment of past trends, future prospects, and policy options reported here stems from the tradition of joint studies of roots and tubers in developing countries by the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR).

Will developing countries adopt policies that promote the planting of genetically modified (GM) crops, or will they select policies that slow the spread of the GM crop revolution? The evidence so far is mixed.

The challenge for agriculture over the coming decades will be to meet the world’s increasing demand for food in a sustainable way. Declining soil fertility and mismanagement of plant nutrients have made this task more difficult.

Global population in the year 2020 will be a third higher than in 1995, but demand for food and fiber will rise by an even higher proportion, as incomes grow, diets diversify, and urbanization accelerates.

The possibility of an emerging cereal gap of serious proportions by the year 2020, is a useful illustration of the kind of constructive dialogue IFPRI hopes to encourage.