It is now widely accepted that AIDS in not just a health issue. Malawi's recently developed Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper identifies HIV/AIDS as a key crosscutting issue, and the National HIV/AIDS Strategic Framework 2000-2004 calls for "an expanded, multi-sectoral national response to the epidemic." However the capacity to respond to these calls lags behind. In many sectors, policy making still proceeds as if HIV/AIDS never happened. Despite growing efforts, organizations involved in agricultural research and development generally have limited understanding of how AIDS affects agricultural systems, and even less of how agricultural development may contribute to the spread of HIV. Weakest of all is often their appreciation of what they can do, feasibly, to contribute to more effective HIV-prevention and mitigation of AIDS impacts.

Provides a resource base on issues of rural development in a broad sense in the times of HIV/AIDS. This book discusses the impact of the epidemic as it has emerged over the last decades at different levels of the agricultural sector, namely the farming system level, the livelihood level, and the household level.

This study, a joint publication by FAO and UNAIDS, describes how the HIV epidemic is undermining the hard-earned gains of development efforts of the last 40 years.