Agriculture can offer pathways out of poverty if efforts are made to increase productivity in the staple foods sector; connect smallholders to rapidly expanding high-value horticulture, poultry, aquaculture, as well as dairy markets; and generate jobs in the rural non-farm economy.

The latest World Development Report by the World Bank calls for greater investment in agriculture in developing countries and warns that the sector must be placed at the center of the development agenda if the goals of halving extreme poverty and hunger by 2015 are to be realized.Ê
Titled ’Agriculture for Development’, the report says the agricultural and rural sectors have suffered from neglect and underinvestment over the past 20 years. While 75 percent of the world’s poor live in rural areas, a mere 4 percent of official development assistance go to agriculture in developing countries.
In Sub-Saharan Africa, a region heavily reliant on agriculture for overall growth, public spending for farming is also only 4 percent of total government spending and the sector is still taxed at relatively high levels.
The World Bank Group is advocating a new ’agriculture for development’ agenda. According to the WDR, for the poorest people, GDP growth originating in agriculture is about four times more effective in reducing poverty than GDP growth originating outside the sector. Ê
“A dynamic ’agriculture for development’ agenda can benefit the estimated 900 million rural people in the developing world who live on less than $1 a day, most of whom are engaged in agriculture,“ said Robert B. Zoellick, World Bank Group president.
“We need to give agriculture more prominence across the board. At the global level, countries must deliver on vital reforms such as cutting distorting subsidies and opening markets, while civil society groups, especially farmer organizations, need more say in setting the agricultural agenda,“ he added.
According to the report, agriculture can offer pathways out of poverty if efforts are made to increase productivity in the staple foods sector; connect smallholders to rapidly expanding high-value horticulture, poultry, aquaculture, as well as dairy markets; and generate jobs in the rural non-farm economy.
“Agricultural growth has been highly successful in reducing rural poverty in East Asia over the past 15 years,“ said Francois Bourguignon, World Bank chief economist and senior vice president, Development Economics. “The challenge is to sustain and expand agriculture’s unique poverty-reducing power, especially in Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia where the number of rural poor people is still rising and will continue to exceed the number of urban poor for at least another 30 years.“
For its part, the bank intends to continue increasing its support for agriculture and rural development, following a decline in lending in the 1980s and 1990s.Ê Commitments in the current fiscal year reached $3.1 billion, marking an increase for the fourth straight year.
The report also warns global food supplies are under pressure from expanding demand for food, feed, and biofuels; the rising price of energy; and increasing land and water scarcity; as well as the effects of climate change. This in turn is contributing to uncertainty about future food prices.
Agriculture consumes 85 percent of the world’s utilized water and the sector contributes to deforestation, land degradation, and pollution. The report recommends measures to achieve more sustainable production systems and outlines incentives to protect the environment.
The report says in agriculture-based countries--home to 417 million rural people, 170 million of whom live on less than $1 a day--the agricultural sector is essential to overall growth, poverty reduction, and food security. Most of these countries are in Sub-Saharan Africa, where the sector employs 65 percent of the labor force and generates 32 percent of GDP growth.
For Sub-Saharan Africa’s development, the report highlights issues to be urgently confronted: too little public spending on agriculture; donor support for emergency food aid with insufficient attention to income-raising investments; rich-country trade barriers and subsidies for key commodities such as cotton and oilseeds; and the under-recognized potential of millions of women who play a dominant role in farming.
In transforming countries such as China, India, and Morocco, agriculture contributes on average only 7 percent to GDP growth, but lagging rural incomes are a major source of political tensions.ÊDynamism in the rural and agricultural sectors is needed to narrow the rural-urban income gap and reduce rural poverty for 600 million poor while avoiding falling into subsidy and protection traps that will stymie growth and tax poor consumers.Ê
In urbanized countries, mainly in Latin America and the Caribbean and Eastern Europe and Central Asia, agriculture contributes just 5 percent of GDP growth on average. However, rural areas are still home to 45 percent of the poor, and agribusiness and food services account for as much as one-third of GDP. The broad goal is to link smallholders to modern food markets and provide remunerative jobs in rural areas.

A small but successful solar energy company involved in rural electrification in India is complaining that the Kyoto Protocol’s clean development mechanism (CDM) has been of no practical use to it.
Selco (Solar Electric Light Company), winner of the 2005-2007 London-based Ashden Awards for outstanding achievement in sustainable energy, has found it impossible to harness any benefits from CDM, forcing it to turn to the voluntary emissions market instead.
“Since we deal with selling lighting to poor households, that really do not emit much greenhouse gases (GhGs), we found the process for selling savings on carbon emissions through the Kyoto Protocol’s CDM too expensive and time-consuming for us,“ Thomas Pullenkav, vice-president of Selco, told Ipsnews.net.
CDMs allow industrialized countries with GhG reduction commitments (called Annex 1 countries) to invest in projects that reduce emissions in developing countries as an alternative to more expensive emission reductions in their own countries. Such projects must establish that the additional incentives, provided by emission reductions credits, are needed for the projects.
Since 2002, Selco has sold 4,500 tons of carbon dioxide (CO2) to Britain-based Carbon Neutral, though it has also saved roughly 28,000 tons of CO2 equivalent per year by helping poor families scrap the use of smoke-emitting kerosene for lighting.
Selco is now helping low-income rural individuals, especially women, earn a livelihood through the company’s sale of carbon emissions in the voluntary market.
Emission savings are calculated on Selco’s sale of 85,000 solar lighting units, together with the average consumption of 120 liters of kerosene per family per year.
Selco began in 1994 as the brainchild of an idealistic young Indian, Harish Hande, who found, on his barefoot travels into the hinterland, that though connected to the national grid, households had very little, and sometimes practically no, lighting.
An energy engineering graduate from one of India’s premier Indian Institutes of Technology with a doctorate from the University of Massachusetts, Hande says he got challenged to make solar photovoltaic (PV) energy commercially viable in rural electrification.
With help from the then Washington-based Selco International in 1994, he set up the Indian company with a demonstration package offer of three light points and one black-and-white TV plug point for Rs 16,000 ($405).
Today, while Selco International has collapsed due to poor management, Selco India is an independent company which has sold 85,000 solar photovoltaic systems (40 watts) in the rural areas of southern Karnataka, Kerala, Andhra Pradesh and western Gujarat states
Each 40-watt solar PV unit costs approximately 420 dollars and consists of four fluorescent 7-watt lamps, lighting for four hours between charges and is also suitable for TVs, radios and fans.
The system is rechargeable with a 5-year-life battery for prolonging the 4-hour usage time and is customized to cater to individual needs. Selco monitors its units through a decentralized network of employees.
The company’s clients are street vendors, self-help groups, daily wage labourers and institutions like schools and seminaries.

Though Jaguar is a rival of upmarket saloon-makers such as Audi, BMW and Mercedes, it was never destined for high-volume production.

Ford Motors, though not yet ready to tell the world, appears to have made up its mind about who should buy its luxury subsidiaries Jaguar and Land Rover.
According to BBC, the long-tipped front-runner Tata, which is also the bidder favored by the unions, remains the favorite to be granted preferred bidder status.
This would mean it gets to take a closer look at Jaguar’s and Land Rover’s financial figures--though nobody at Ford is prepared to confirm this. A formal announcement is expected early next year.
A Ford spokesman said no decision had been made and the firm was continuing in discussions with the interested parties.
The price tag is believed to be somewhere in the region of $1.5 billion, perhaps even $2 billion, which begs the question: Will the buyer end up paying too much, or is Ford selling too cheaply?
Several factors are pushing the price up. Both marques are truly prestigious, well beyond Britain’s borders.
In the US, Jaguar came third in JD Power’s latest sales satisfaction survey of existing customers, with Land Rover 11th--ahead of rival BMW and well above Jeep.
Moreover, in recent weeks, both car makers have presented new models that have been warmly received. Jaguar’s latest XF model is seen as a very worthy replacement for the S-class.
The hope is that the XF will do much to revive sales.
Land Rover’s LRX concept, meanwhile, which is small and more car-like than the company’s Freelander model, will first go on show at the Detroit motor show in January. Like the XF, this model has also attracted much praise in the motoring press.
Formally, it will be up to the new owner to decide whether or not this model will ever go into production, though there is every chance that it will. Land Rover is really not in a position where it can squander money on fancy concepts without eyeing quick and decent returns.
But there are also strong reasons why Ford initially struggled to find a buyer for Jaguar and Land Rover. Indeed, when the marques were first put up for sale in spring, several rivals made interested noises, but in the end none of them threw their hat into the ring.
This may appear strange, given that Ford is believed to have invested about $10 billion in Jaguar since it paid $2.5 billion for the marque in 1989.
But Ford never made any money from its stint as a Jaguar-owner, hence its rivals were spooked by the prospect of being next in line to pour cash into the Big Cat’s hungry jaws.
Besides, none of them seemed too keen to load up on yet more gas-guzzlers at a time when the regulators are tightening emission rules.
Yet the main problem faced by Jaguar is that though it is a rival of sorts to upmarket saloon-makers such as Audi, BMW and Mercedes it was never destined for high volume production.
So when the pushy Detroit parent crowed about a surge in sales on the back of the Mondeo-based X-type budget-Jag, the Big Cat loyalists responded with groans before deserting in droves.
Since 2002, when Jaguar delivered 130,000 cars, sales have halved. And crucially, in the US sales fell even faster, from 60,000 in 2002 to 20,000 last year.