Your views are wanted on advance copies of soon-to-be-released World Bank studies.
A fresh look at 'Providing Financial Services in Rural Areas'; a report on 'Food Safety and Agricultural Health Management in CIS Countries' and the study 'From Agriculture to Nutrition'.
1. Providing Financial Services in Rural Areas – A Fresh Look at Financial Cooperatives, World Bank 2007
Financial cooperatives have a mixed history, which has made them unpopular with development practitioners. However, this report demonstrates that they can be a sustainable provider of financial services in rural areas and development assistance needs to consider supporting them as a means to enhance access to rural finance.
For financial cooperatives to function as sustainable institutions, governments need to provide an enabling environment, not exercise excessive control that restricts growth and consolidation, and not use them as channels to provide subsidised credit.
Integration into networks has wide-ranging benefits for financial cooperatives, ranging from improved governance to the ability to provide a wide range of services.
The authors of this report welcome your views and ideas on this challenging topic. Please contact Renate Kloeppinger-Todd (
This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it
)
Read the full report...
2. Food Safety and Agricultural Health Management in CIS Countries: Completing the Transition, World Bank 2007
The report analyses the progress of CIS Countries shifting from GOST-based safety standards to WTO compliant standards, which will create agricultural trading opportunities.
It finds that unresolved institutional problems, limited human and financial resources, and the dominance of intra-CIS trade relations have complicated the transition from GOST-based to WTO standards. It also finds that senior policy makers and public sector managers are not accurately assessing the required scope, timeframe, and extent of the process required to change from GOST to international standards.
The report provides important analysis for clients in Eastern European and Central Asia economies that need to begin planning now for future change.
The authors of this report welcome your views and ideas on this challenging topic. Please contact Kees van der Meer (
This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it
).
Read the full report...
3. From Agriculture to Nutrition – Pathways, Synergies, and Outcomes, World Bank 2007
It would appear that the operating assumption behind the Green Revolution was that increasing food production would automatically improve human nutrition.
Experience has shown otherwise. Using GR technology food production did increase in the 1960s and 1970s at a pace that was more than sufficient to satisfy the food requirements of a growing global population. However, malnutrition, and particularly childhood malnutrition, have persisted despite this increased food supply, lower food prices, and higher incomes. Agricultural production can contribute to better human nutrition, but it must go beyond volume and the nutritional outcomes need to be incorporated explicitly into agricultural planning and production decisions.
From Agriculture to Nutrition examines what determines human nutritional status and how food production affects nutrition. It also analyses the factors that are changing how agriculture can impact nutrition --- including technology, policies, marketing, and new patterns of food consumption. The report ends with a discussion of the potential and limitations of government agricultural institutions working with other sector agencies whose responsibilities bear upon nutritional status.
Read the full report...
|
Platform News No 2