A proposed system uses mirrors to increase the power of a solar panel and pump water to crops.

Leaders in sub-Saharan Africa, a region with the world’s fastest-growing and youngest population, seek to create more agriculture jobs.

Ethical consumers should be aware poor Bolivians can no longer afford their staple grain, due to western demand raising prices.

LAST year, Microsoft billionaire Bill Gates gave $US10 million to British scientists to crack a problem he hoped might help solve the looming world food crisis. Unusually, this time the philanthropy of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation was met with howls of outrage from left-leaning politicians and environmental groups that previously had welcomed its efforts to eradicate malaria and alleviate global poverty and hunger.

IFC, a member of the World Bank Group, and the private sector window of the Global Agriculture and Food Security Program (GAFSP) will invest $5 million each in Root Capital to help expand access to working capital and markets for 300,000 farmers over the next four years.

NARAINGARH, Haryana, India — The first rain in six months, and a stout and cold wind whipped at the black plastic covering stacks of grain Thursday morning at the Shivshakti Rice Mill, one of 13 mills surrounding this roadside village about 70 kilometers west of Chandigarh.

All entrepreneurs are inherently risk-takers, but some are willing to go above and beyond for an idea they believe in. NYU Stern alumnus Samir Ibrahim and serial entrepreneur Charles Nichols, winners of the Audience Choice Award at the 2011-12 Entrepreneur’s Challenge fit this description perfectly. The two recently packed their bags and moved to Kenya, where their start-up SunCulture sells solar-powered irrigation products and agricultural services to local farmers.

Trilateral agricultural development project seeks to eradicate hunger by providing farmers with technological know-how.

Recent weeks have seen simmering property rights conflicts around the world: Burmese citizens marching in protest against the government’s seizure of their lands for a hotel zone; Vietnamese villagers contesting the confiscation of their land for an EcoPark satellite city project; and violent clashes breaking out in Panama City over a controversial law allowing the sale of state-owned land in the port city of Colón—Latin America’s largest duty-free zone.

A $20 million agreement signed during the week by the United Nations and Brazil will seek to transfer the expertise of the South American country to support cotton farmers in developing economies.

Way back in the early 60s, the sisal industry was the best organised commercial agriculture in East Africa with Tanzania leading in terms of production, followed by Brazil.

WASHINGTON DC – Dalberg Global Development Advisors has released a new report today identifying innovative and sustainable ways that investors can help fulfill the largely unmet need for smallholder agricultural financing.

A local microfinance institution, Duterimbere IMF Ltd, has launched new products that target the promotion of agricultural mechanisation among small scale farmers.

t's 43 degrees Celsius, and Prof. Anil Gupta has been hiking the scorched plains of central India for hours. But he smiles widely as he enters a tiny village in search of another unsung genius. "If you have any new ideas or you have any new inventions, I'm here to promote you," he tells farmers squatting beside a dusty roadside shrine to Lord Shiva.

WASHINGTON, DC, June 12, 2012 – Today, the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), Vodafone, and TechnoServe launched a new partnership to increase the productivity, incomes and resilience of smallholder farmers in Kenya, Mozambique, and Tanzania. The Connected Farmer Alliance will leverage mobile phone-enabled solutions to improve supply chain efficiency and increase farmers’ ability to access secure, timely payments and other financial services.

The International Cocoa Coordination Organisation (ICCO), on Wednesday, urged Nigerian manufacturers to explore the potential of cocoa, so as to produce more cocoa-based goods.

Agriculture is a powerful tool for reducing poverty and hunger. Events of recent years – such as food price increases, droughts, growing climate change impacts and other emergencies – have put agriculture high on the international agenda. We should be clear that agriculture is the solution. Economic growth generated by agriculture is more than twice as effective in reducing poverty as growth in other sectors. Agricultural development is also an effective means of assisting developing countries in building capacity and infrastructure as well as introducing innovation and technology.

WASHINGTON — US President Barack Obama on Friday reached out to the private sector in hopes of lifting 50 million people in the developing world from poverty, as wealthy nations grapple with a budget crunch.

When he set out to wedge his coffee onto supermarket shelves in England and America, Andrew Rugasira didn’t start by making phone calls from his home in Kampala, Uganda. He didn’t begin by sending e-mails. The distance seemed too great for that. At one end of his business were farmers who, until he came along, thought their beans were purchased and carried off to make gunpowder. At the other were buyers at the corporate headquarters of chains like Waitrose and Sainsbury’s, Whole Foods and Wal-Mart. If he was going to succeed, he felt he would have to do it physically; it was as if he believed he could stretch himself to span the divide between the two worlds. So he got on a plane to London, without trying any advance contact.

Chennai based Villgro Innovation Marketing Private (VIM), an innovative rural distribution company, has raised a significant seed series investment from US-based investment firm Unitus Seed Fund and a group of angel investors to further expand its operations in South India.

The jury is still out on whether microcredit makes a difference to the lives of the poor, but stories of its success are compelling

Abalimi’s profitable social business, Harvest of Hope, relies on a community-supported agriculture model that provides customers (who pay in advance) a box of fresh, organically grown produce harvested from community gardens each week.

The One Acre Fund provides access to microloans, training, insurance, and other hard-to-get help that boosts farmers' incomes and curbs flight from farms into cities.

BEIJING: Dairy farmer Deligeerma needs 642 to buy fodder for her cows during the harsh winter months in northern China. So far, she has received 149 in pledges from four people around the world.

Organic agricultural practices are improving prospects for India's farmers by providing greater profit and sustainability

Despite recent good news that millions more people now have access to potable water, a new report finds sharply rising demands for water threaten a myriad of development goals.

A social enterprise has opened 16 livestock service centres to help farmers improve production through better extension services.

Bill Gates' support of genetically modified (GM) crops as a solution for world hunger is of concern to those of us involved in promoting sustainable, equitable and effective agricultural policies in Africa. There are two primary shortcomings to Gates' approach.

ROME — Current approaches to global agriculture are outdated, inefficient and don’t give small farmers in poor countries the help they really need, Bill Gates told U.N. food agencies Thursday as he announced nearly $200 million in grants. The Microsoft founder brought his campaign to fight poverty and hunger in Africa and Asia to a forum of the U.N. International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), one of three Rome-based U.N. food agencies. Much of some $2 billion spent over the past five years to fight poverty and hunger in Africa and Asia by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has gone toward improving agricultural productivity.

The iPad’s fairly steep price has kept it firmly entrenched in the developed world. That’s starting to change, however, as evidenced by efforts from Exprima Media and coffee importer Sustainable Harvest to bring the iPad to coffee co-ops and farmers in East Africa, Mexico, and South America.

HYDERABAD: India's booming microfinance segment is under the scanner, with the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) issuing a veiled warning that it could be taken off the priority sector lending list of banks if the industry fails to improve its governance standards. This was spelt out at a meeting in late January between senior RBI officials, representatives of Sa-Dhan-the association of Indian microfinance institutions (MFIs)-and some senior MFI managers from Karnata...