Building the evidence base for policies that promote sustainable development, food and nutrition security and poverty reduction

FAO is developing a programme of work that will provide evidence on the diversity and the determinants of the pathways of rural transformation and patterns of agricultural and food system transitions in a context of accelerated urbanization and increased pressure on natural resources.

The assessments give importance to the role of policies, governance and institutions in steering such change processes. When studying agricultural and rural development pathways, the specificity of regional and local contexts has to be considered, including geographic conditions and the quality of governance. Evidence from this programme of work will feed into FAO’s normative work and policy support to countries, promoting sustainable development, food security and nutrition, and poverty reduction.

Within this programme of work, FAO invites the submission of papers to be presented during the conference. Relevant areas of work refer to micro and macro research on rural and structural transformation and agricultural and food system transition including:

1. Past experiences rural and agrarian transformation and transition patterns across regions and countries;
2. The role of land tenure patterns, farm size, and land distribution;
3. The role of natural resource endowment and water availability and governance systems for their management;
4. Agricultural productivity growth and the role of technology innovation, adaptation and diffusion;
5. Sustainability in use of inputs and natural resources;
6. Patterns of farm and non-farm income and employment diversification;
7. The role of infrastructure, market access, rural-urban linkages, and territorial development;
8. The role of shock and risk-coping mechanisms (or absence thereof), including social protection;
9. The role of demographic dynamics, migratory patterns and processes of urbanization;
10. Impact of dietary transitions on land use, food and farm systems; and
11. The quality of governance and institutions.