Agriculture, Environment, Natural Resources, Food & Nutrition Links

Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR) Agriculture research plays a key role in reducing world hunger. The world’s population has grown enormously, yet the world’s land area is constant, and agricultural land area is continually reduced as urban areas expand. Thus agricultural research, which has a principal task to increase the productive capacity of agriculture resources, is vital. CGIAR is a worldwide network of agricultural research centers that play a key role in world agricultural research, together with the donors that support them. There are 16 research centers, including those for tropical agriculture, forestry, corn and wheat, dry lands agriculture, rice, potatoes, livestock and (saving) genetic resources. Two of them especially, those for corn and wheat, and rice, played a key role in the green revolution. Reach the centers’ individual web sites.

Food and Agriculture Organization The United Nations agency for food and agriculture. This is an excellent site as it provides much worthwhile information on world agriculture and world hunger. Of particular importance is the Global Information and Early Warning System on Food and Agriculture (GIEWS), which lives up to its title.

International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), a specialized agency of the United Nations, was established in 1977 as an international financial institution, as one of the major outcomes of the World Food Conference. One of the most important insights emerging from the Conference was that the causes of food insecurity and famine were not so much failures in food production, but structural problems relating to poverty and to the fact that the majority of the developing world’s poor populations were concentrated in rural areas. IFAD was created to mobilize resources for programs that alleviate rural poverty and improve nutrition. Unlike other international financial institutions, which have a broad range of objectives, IFAD has a specific mandate: "to combat rural hunger and poverty in developing countries."

The National Agricultural Library is an outstanding source for agriculture, food and nutrition information. The Agricola database is a leading database for agriculture and food topics  documents.

Environment and Natural Resources  Key websites include World Resources Institute, and Resources for the Future.

International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) This organization produces a large number of somewhat technical publications on food and agriculture. 

The Michigan State Food Security Project (for USAID) provides some good food security studies.

Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy offers critical evaluations of current U.S. and world policies in the areas of agriculture, trade, and the environment.

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