The Applications of Appropriate Agricultural Technology and Practices and their Impact on Food Security and the Eradication of Poverty: Lessons Learned from Selected Community Based Experiences

The Committee on World Food Security at its 26th Session decided that an in-depth analysis be carried out, for its consideration at this session, on the theme " The Application of Appropriate Agricultural Technology and Practices and their Impact on Food Security and the Eradication of Poverty: Lessons Learned from Selected Community-based Experiences."

The Committee decided that the study should investigate impacts of the selected cases on both food security and poverty. Following the Committee's decision the Chairperson of the CFS sent a letter to the CFS member countries' Permanent Representatives to FAO, inviting them to provide to the CFS Secretariat information on relevant case studies from their respective countries. In response to the Chairperson's request case studies were received from India, Thailand, Sweden, and New Zealand. From Mexico a compendium of interesting projects was received. In addition, the CFS Secretariat had also collected a number of case studies from the various Technical Divisions of the Organization.

The six case studies presented in this paper were selected on the basis of the quality of the information each case study contained in terms of showing the impact of the application of agricultural technologies in improving food security and eradicating poverty, as well as the extent to which each case study offered lessons to be learned in terms of "best practices " in approach and in implementation processes.