This strategy is evaluated using field studies and modeling from the major agroecological zones of crop production. The authors address the higher-input, yield-increasing strategy from the perspective of risk, sustainability and the impact on women. They also consider alternative approaches to increasing output through area expansion and livestock-crop integrated systems.

The OECD-FAO Agricultural Outlook 2016-2025 provides an assessment of prospects for the coming decade of the agricultural commodity markets across 41 countries and 12 regions, including OECD countries and key agricultural producers, such as India, China, Brazil, the Russian Federation and Argentina.

Examines projections of global supply of and demand for food through the year 2020. Looks closely at how alternative population, investment, and trade scenarios will affect food security and nutrition status, especially in the developing world. The authors argue that the world is at risk of maintaining its two-tiered system of food security, with rich and rapidly growing countries enjoying abundant, affordable food supplies and poor countries suffering from malnutrition and food scarcity. National governments and international agencies can alter this situation through their investment decisions. Charts and tables.

World Bank Technical Paper No. 408. This report is a critical review of the technical, economic, and institutional constraints on improving soil fertility in Sub-Saharan Africa, and the actions recommended to address them. Action plans prepared for Ghana, Kenya, Malawi, and Mali examine the demand for and supply of mineral fertilizers, the exploitation of local mineral resources, the prevention of soil erosion and increasing soil-water retention, and soil fertility management using organic technologies and management practices.

The manual work carried out by farmers and their families is often both arduous and time consuming and in many countries this is a major constraint to increasing agricultural production. Such day-to-day drudgery is a major contributoring factor in the migration of people, particularly the young, from the rural countryside to seek the prospect of a better life in the towns and cities. Farm production can be substantially increased through the use of mechanical technologies which both are labor-saving and directly increase yields and production. This document provides guidelines on the development and formulation of an agricultural mechanization strategy and forms part of FAO's approach on sustainable production intensification.