This course aims to:

• provide a comparative lens for understanding key issues and responses in agricultural policy.
• the means for understanding the challenges of agricultural reform in the context of agrarian politics.

Spikes in food prices and fears stirred up by a changing climate combining with increasing energy and water needs have heightened concerns regarding food security and the sustainability of agriculture in developing countries.  At the same time the convergence of pressures on agriculture has affected the purchasing power and food availability for the poor.  While spikes in food prices have led to social unrest in some places, commodity booms have led to rapid agrarian changes in other areas.  In this heated climate critical policy debates have emerged regarding how agriculture might develop in a fashion that diminishes environmental and social inequalities and vulnerabilities and, under what conditions, specific policies and projects can support an agriculture-for development agenda that is more friendly to the poor and to the environment. 

International policy approaches have sought to promote agricultural development while working to reduce the risks to vulnerable populations.  For instance, there are initiatives to use legal tools to empower the poor, to develop private sector smallholder development models that contribute to poverty reduction, to develop corporate responsibility processes and agendas that rework value chains to ensure a more equitable distribution of benefits from agricultural development, and now there are new programs to support adaptation to risk from extreme climatic events.

On successful completion of this course students will have:

• Demonstrated competency with the necessary theoretical and analytical tools required to analyze contemporary process of environmental degradation, rural resource use and the key processes facing the agricultural and rural sectors and the livelihoods of rural dwellers today.
• Practiced the professional skills required for analyzing agricultural and environmental issues arising from a combination of economic, political, cultural and natural processes.
• Debated the key perspectives on the political and economic structures that shape local, national and international agrarian and environmental questions.
• Considered the potentialities and limits of selected widely promoted and replicated rural development policies, including the political and technical complexities of policy analysis,
• Discussed the implications of policies for different actors and institutions concerned with or affected by rural policy through the consideration of particular cases.
• Practiced professional skills to present ideas clearly, and facilitate the learning of others.

Assessment tasks will be designed to ensure that the students fulfill the learning objectives of the course, while also taking into consideration its delivery mode.

• Take home examination paper (40%)
• Essay – synthesis report considering a critical policy issue in the context of a particular case study (40%)
• In-Class presentation and written reflection (20%)

Passing the course is conditional on passing all items of assessment.

Approx. 30 contact hours.

At least 30 hours outside of contact hours to complete the course

As the course will be offered as a general course, there will be no specific prerequisites.

Below is an indicative list of some of the material that students will consider:

Paarlberg, Robert (2010) Food Politics. What Everyone Needs to Know, Oxford University Press

 H. Akram-Lohi and C. Kay (2008) (eds.), Peasants and Globalization: Political Economy, Rural Transformation and the Agrarian Question, London: Routledge.

World Bank (2007), Agriculture for Development, World Development Report 2008, Washington DC: World Bank, http://sitesources. worldbank.org/INTWDR2008/Resources/WDR_00_book.pdf

Devereux, S, Vaitla, B & Hauenstein-Swan, S (2008) Seasons of Hunger: Fighting Cycles of Starvation among the World's Rural Poor