This book, published by the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), reviews the policies, programs and investments that have been crucial in promoting agricultural development and alleviating poverty, hunger and malnutrition across Africa, Asia, and Latin America.

By identifying cases where interventions — to enhance productivity, combat disease, conserve natural resources or expand market opportunities — have been especially successful, this book draws out some valuable lessons that can be applied to other efforts to eradicate poverty and hunger.

Successes highlighted include the Green Revolution in Asia, community forestry in Nepal and land tenure reform in China.

This document from Friends of the Earth is a partisan analysis challenging claims that genetically modified (GM) crops have brought significant benefits for the environment and poverty alleviation.

It nevertheless provides a useful summary of the key areas where the environmental movement takes issue with the GM movement. The authors are particularly critical of the International Service for the Acquisition of Agri-biotech Applications, which they argue paints a misleadingly positive picture of the impacts of GM crops.

Drawing on a wide range of sources, they examine several GM crops in the United States, GM soybeans in South America and the international community's experience with GM cotton. They also review the current status and prospects for rice, wheat, pharmaceutical crops, biofuels, bentgrass, cassava, sweet potato and potato.

This article seeks to quantify the economic and environmental impacts of genetically modified (GM) crops worldwide, since the first such strains were commercialised. The authors, two agricultural economists from the United Kingdom, look at three dimensions in particular: the effects on farm incomes, changes in insecticide and herbicide use, and the associated changes in carbon dioxide (greenhouse gas) emissions into the atmosphere.

The authors claim to show that GM crops have led to substantial benefits in terms of farm incomes and reductions in pesticide spraying and carbon dioxide emissions from agriculture. However, herbicide tolerant GM crops have meant farmers need to till less and have led to an increase in herbicide applications in some countries.

The authors drew on data from various studies on the impacts of different types of GM crops in different countries. The analysis relies on highly aggregated data and simplified assumptions in order to arrive at broad averages that include countries and agricultural systems which are, in reality, very different. Nevertheless, the article represents a useful contribution to the debates about the impacts of GM crops since they were first commercialised. The authors call for further research into the dynamic, less-tangible and indirect economic impacts of GM crops.