Descubre y comparte nuestro conocimiento público

Responding to a growing demand not only for human consumption and animal feed but also for biofuels, oil crops and vegetable oils rank among the world’s most widely traded commodities, with over 40% of global production sold on international markets. However, ACP countries play only a marginal ro...

The way products can secure premium prices through differentiation strategies has expanded consistently in recent decades. Besides the traditional strategies linked to product branding, product differentiation based on perceived ‘quality’ attributes is emerging as an important means of market rep...

Since the 2006/07 season, ACP coffee producers have been playing an increasing role in global coffee production, with strong growth in Eastern Africa. Although the coffee price has declined in recent years (mainly Arabica coffee), in 2012/13 the world coffee price still remained high in historica...

Sub-Saharan Africa faces enormous socio-economic challenges, one of the greatest being the lack of work in rural areas. Already, tens of millions of rural Africans have no work, or not enough to lift themselves out of poverty. At the Brussels Development Briefing on ‘Major Drivers for Rural Trans...

Farmers will have to produce as much food in the next 40 years as they have in the past 8000 to satisfy the needs of the world’s rapidly expanding population. Meeting this challenge will be made all the more difficult by climate change. Even a 2°C rise in temperature by the end of the 21st centur...

One-third of all food produced for human consumption worldwide is lost or wasted. At a Brussels Development Briefing on ‘Addressing Food Waste in Times of Crisis’, held in June 2012, experts called for greater focus on the issue. This CTA Policy Brief looks at solutions to address food loss in th...

Around 1 billion people in the world suffer from hunger, while another 1 billion eat too much of the wrong types of food. The Brussels Development Briefing on ‘Nutrition Security in ACP Countries’ held in June 2011 discussed the measures needed to ensure that agriculture provides the quality and ...

The rate at which we consume water has grown twice as fast as the world population over the last 100 years, and many countries regularly experience water scarcity. The Brussels Development Briefing on ‘The Water We Eat’ highlighted the measures required if future generations are to make sustainab...

Home to more than 50 million people, small island nations differ significantly in terms of size, social and economic conditions. Nonetheless, most are extremely vulnerable to environmental and economic shocks. At the Regional Policy Briefing on ‘Building resilience in small island economies: from...

Price volatility can lead to rising import costs and local food market disruptions in ACP countries. These tend to hit the poorest households the hardest. Such fluctuations occurred in 2007, exacerbating malnutrition and triggering civil unrest. Yet, when a new period of instability occurred in 2...