Poverty Orientated Agricultural and Rural Development

Over the last twenty years the proportion of development cooperation resources earmarked for agricultural development has dwindled to between six and seven per cent of total bi- and multilateral Official Development Assistance. This is despite the fact that eighty per cent of the world's poor live in rural agricultural areas and that the poor are disproportionately affected when political, military and natural events lead to regional or global food shortages.Brandt and Otzen's key book fills a gap in current literature, undertaking a wide-ranging conceptual reorientation of development cooperation, criticizing the current orthodoxy and its bias towards urban areas, and arguing that in order to effectively alleviate poverty across the world, agricultural and rural development measures need to be implemented both by central and subnational governments, aid agencies and the private sector. The authors investigate the world food question, the current pressures it is under and its link to rural poverty, and set out the policies that need to be undertaken to reduce global poverty.

Part A: Approaches to Poverty Reduction through Agricultural Development 1. Background to the Problem: World Food Question 2. Motive for the Study: New Urban Bias in Development Cooperation 3. Poverty Reduction in the Conceptual Experience of Agricultural Development 4. Economic Growth, Agricultural Development, Poverty Reduction 5. Fazit Part B: Institutional and Organizational Ways for Rural Communities of Sub-Saharan Africa to Reduce Poverty 1. Global Framework for Sustainable and Poverty-Reducing Agricultural and Rural Development 2. Realistic Problem-Solving Approaches 3. Importance for Development Policy of Preconditions for and Effects of Decentralization 5. Decentralization and Development Cooperation Priorities 5. Institutional and Organizational Implementation Options 6. Summary