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This report – derived from work implemented by Oxfam Intermón and the University Institute for Studies on Migration (IUEM) of Comillas University in the EU SafeHabitus project – is based on a review of academic and non-academic literature from the past five years. It assesses research on working, living, health and transport conditions for migrants working in the agri-food sector in Europe, and cross-cutting gender issues.

Climate change affects food production in many regions, including lost crops and dwindling employment opportunities. These impacts will become more severe by 2030 and beyond, putting at risk global food security and the livelihoods of hundreds of millions of people. Now is the time to scale up efforts to reshape the agriculture sector to support farmers, avoid the extensification of food production, improve the productivity of farms, build resilience and reduce emissions., This paper aims to help countries think through the process of enhancing their nationally determined contributions (NDCs) by including strengthened actions in the agriculture sector. It highlights the need for tailor-made approaches suited to a country’s unique set of circumstances. It identifies a range of possible actions for climate change adaptation and mitigation in the agriculture sector, given the right enabling environment, and offers examples of how these actions can be included in an enhanced NDC., Les changements climatiques ont des incidences sur la production alimentaire dans de nombreuses régions, notamment la perte de récoltes et la raréfaction des offres d’emploi. Ces impacts s’accentueront d’ici 2030 et au-delà, menaçant ainsi la sécurité alimentaire mondiale et les moyens de subsistance de centaines de millions de personnes. Il est temps de redoubler d’efforts pour repenser le secteur de l’agriculture, afin de soutenir les agriculteurs et agricultrices, d’éviter l’extensification de la production alimentaire, d’améliorer la productivité des exploitations agricoles, de renforcer la résilience et de réduire les émissions., Cette publication vise à aider les pays à envisager le processus d’amélioration de leur CDN au travers de l’introduction de mesures renforcées pour le secteur agricole. Ses auteurs insistent sur la nécessité d’adopter des approches adaptées aux circonstances uniques de chaque pays. Ils présentent une série de mesures possibles, pour autant que les bonnes conditions soient en place, s’agissant de l’adaptation aux changements climatiques et de l’atténuation de leurs effets dans le secteur agricole, et proposent des exemples de la manière d’intégrer ces mesures dans une CDN améliorée.

The 2022 Commitment to Reducing Inequality (CRI) Index is the first detailed analysis published looking at governments’ policies and actions to fight inequality during the first two years of the pandemic. This fourth edition of the CRI Index reviews the spending, tax and labour policies and actions of 161 governments during 2020–2022., COVID-19 has increased inequality worldwide, as the poorest people were hit hardest by both the disease and its profound economic impacts. Yet the CRI 2022 Index shows clearly that most of the world’s governments failed to mitigate this dangerous rise in inequality. Despite the biggest global health emergency in a century, half of low-and lower-middle-income countries saw the share of health spending fall during the pandemic, half of the countries tracked by the CRI Index cut the share of social protection spending, 70% cut the share of education spending, while two-thirds of countries failed to increase their minimum wage in line with gross domestic product (GDP). Ninety-five percent of countries failed to increase taxation of the richest people and corporations. At the same time, a small group of governments from across the world bucked this trend, taking clear actions to combat inequality, putting the rest of the world to shame., See also the CRI Index website: www.inequalityindex.orgThe Index has been audited by the European Commission's Joint Research Centre. Read more here., L’indice de l’engagement à la réduction des inégalités (ERI) 2022 est la première analyse détaillée publiée portant sur les politiques et les actions des gouvernements pour lutter contre les inégalités au cours des deux premières années de la pandémie. Cette analyse passe en revue les politiques et actions de 161 gouvernements en matière de dépenses, de fiscalité et de travail sur la période 2020-2022., La COVID-19 a creusé les inégalités dans le monde entier, les plus pauvres étant les plus durement touché·es par la maladie et ses profondes répercussions économiques. Pourtant, l’indice ERI 2022 montre clairement que la plupart des gouvernements du monde n’ont pas réussi à atténuer cette dangereuse augmentation des inégalités. Alors qu’il s’agit de la pire urgence sanitaire que le monde ait connue depuis un siècle, la moitié des pays à revenu faible et intermédiaire de la tranche inférieure ont vu la part des dépenses de santé diminuer pendant la pandémie. La moitié des pays suivis par l’indice ERI ont réduit la part des dépenses de protection sociale, 70 % ont revu à la baisse la part des dépenses d’éducation, tandis que deux tiers des pays n’ont pas augmenté leur salaire minimum en fonction du produit intérieur brut (PIB). 95 % des pays n’ont pas augmenté l’imposition des personnes et des sociétés les plus riches. Dans le même temps, quelques gouvernements dans différentes parties du monde se sont démarqués de cette tendance en prenant des mesures claires pour lutter contre les inégalités, couvrant de honte le reste du monde.

The fear that global demand for food will outstrip supply has led to significant debate. Oxfam hosted an online discussion in December 2012 to get beyond the question of securing steady supplies of raw materials for food and beverage companies and to rise above polarized discourses on large-scale industrialized vs. smallholder farms. The two-week debate on the future of agriculture formed part of Oxfam’s efforts to develop a creative and positive vision of global food production that can ensure that everyone has enough to eat always., This paper offers a synthesis of the online debate, the 23 essays by food and development experts from 16 countries that formed the basis of the discussion, and Oxfam’s brief concluding remarks., La crainte de voir la demande alimentaire mondiale dépasser l’offre a suscité des débats passionnés. Oxfam a organisé en décembre 2012 une discussion en ligne afin d’aller au-delà de la question qui vise à assurer un approvisionnement régulier en matières premières des entreprises du secteur alimentaire et des boissons et pour dépasser les débats polarisés entre les grandes exploitations industrielles et les petites exploitations agricoles. Ce débat, tenu sur deux semaines et ayant pour thème l'avenir de l'agriculture, entre dans le cadre des efforts déployés par Oxfam pour développer une vision positive et innovante de la production alimentaire pour un monde où chacun mange toujours à sa faim., Ce document propose une synthèse de ce débat en ligne, une annexe avec les 23 essais d’experts des secteurs de l’alimentaire et du développement de 16 pays qui ont étayé la discussion, et de brèves remarques d’Oxfam en guise de conclusion.

What role can companies play in strengthening the capacity of small-scale producers in developing countries to adapt to climate change, and in doing so, make their global value chains more resilient? While some leading companies have made progress in taking greater responsibility for what happens throughout their supply chains, there has been little discussion about the threat that climate change poses to the livelihoods of small-scale producers. Through interviews with three companies: Starbucks, Marks & Spencer, and The Body Shop, the paper examines how smallholders involved in coffee production in Colombia, sesame in Nicaragua, and cotton in Pakistan have been affected by climate change and what it means for the companies' businesses. From this research, Oxfam identifies key actions for companies to begin to address the challenges to small-scale producers, and raises questions for further discussion.

This paper aims to contribute to a constructive and deep debate on how to increase equality and justice in Paraguay's taxation system. To this end, it submits a proposal for debate: to increase tax revenues through a temporary tax on the export of soybeans together with other revenue measures (e.g. improving tax revenues on land, implementing a robust Personal Income Tax, more effectively combating tax evasion, rationalizing tax exemptions, eradicating unfair subsidies, revising in depth the social security system, etc.). It also proposes the adoption of actions to increase the effectiveness of public expenditure; and finally, it proposes to take into consideration further measures intended to deal with the non-technical limitations that are obstacles on the road to a more egalitarian society in Paraguay.

Today, the world’s natural resources are under increasing pressure and are often the object of important power struggles between corporations, states and communities. National governments and international institutions are responsible for shaping the environment in which these different interests operate. As foreign investments in land, water and other natural resources grow in number and magnitude, international investment treaties have become more and more relevant. The international investment legal framework prioritizes the protection of investors’rights over almost any other consideration. Will this system weaken developing countries’ capacity to regulate their food, land and water sectors and introduce policies that promote food security and poverty reduction? What lessons can be learnt from the past? This paper sets forth the principal elements of this debate through the analysis of eleven international cases of state-investor disputes.

What can we learn about resilience by examining completed resilience, disaster risk reduction, and climate change adaptation projects? Oxfam conducted three such case studies in Bolivia, Colombia, and Fiji, looking at the conditions required for successful resilient development as well as issues around timing and duration. This synthesis report presents a summary of the three projects and distills the findings that were common to our analysis of them as well as a related climate change adaptation project in Vanuatu., This report is part of a series that seeks to draw lessons from resilience projects in Latin America and the Pacific. Follow the links below to the other papers in the series: Addressing Water Shortages: A catalyst for more resilient development in Fiji Building Resilience Through Iterative Processes: Mainstreaming ancestral knowledge, social movements and the making of sustainable programming in Bolivia “Disaster is Nature Telling Us How to Live Resiliently”: Indigenous disaster risk reduction, organizing, and spirituality in Tierradentro, Colombia, This research was conducted with the support of the Margaret A. Cargill Philanthropies.

The global food system works only for the few – for most of us it is broken. It leaves billions of us lacking sufficient power and knowledge about what we buy and eat and the majority of small food producers disempowered and unable to fulfil their productive potential. The failure of the system flows from failures of government – failures to regulate, to correct, to protect, to resist, to invest – which mean that companies, interest groups, and elites are able to plunder resources and to redirect flows of finance, knowledge, and food. This report describes a new age of growing crisis: food price spikes and oil price hikes, devastating weather events, financial meltdowns, and global contagion. Behind these, slow-burn crises smoulder: creeping and insidious climate change, growing inequality, chronic hunger and vulnerability, the erosion of our natural resources. Based on the experience and research of Oxfam staff and partners around the world, Growing a Better Future shows how the food system is both a driver of this fragility and highly vulnerable to it, and why in the twenty-first century it leaves 925 million people hungry. The report presents new research forecasting price rises for staple grains in the range of 120–180 per cent within the next two decades, as resource pressures mount and climate change takes hold. For more on interpreting the food price scenarios outlined in Growing a Better Future, see the Note on Food Price Scenarios added in November 2011. The report is now also available as an eBook, presenting expanded versions of case studies from Bolivia to Malawi, alongside new papers and research which develop and update the main themes of the report. The iBook edition is optimised for use on the iPad, iPhone and iPod Touch, and includes a video endorsement from Brazil’s former President Lula da Silva and a short documentary on India’s failing food system. It is available to download free from the iBookstore. The standard EPUB edition is suitable for iOS, Android and Windows Phone 7 devices, and can also be accessed in full using a desktop eBook reader or Calibre. Its smaller file size means it is more suitable for a low-bandwidth connection. A Kindle edition is available from the Amazon Kindle Store.

The coffee price crash of 2001 had devastating effects on tens of millions of smallholder farmers and farmworkers around the developing world. Though recent improvements in the international price of coffee are providing some relief, the dynamics of the coffee market have not shifted in ways that guarantee long-term stability for those at the bottom of the supply chain. The 2001 crash took place in the context of a long-term trend in which coffee farmers, workers, and net coffee-exporting countries have seen the value of their coffee diminish. Coffee plays a crucial role in the livelihoods of millions of rural households in the developing world. Small-scale family farmers produce over 75% of the world’s coffee. Market volatility and declining terms of trade, along with inadequate access to infrastructure, financial resources, and market information, put sustainable livelihoods out of reach for millions of rural families. The coffee market continues to be a showcase of the need to address the commodity crisis on a global scale, a crisis that is hampering the development of many countries. This is directly linked to the global interest in wider peace and stability. The current discussions on the future of the International Coffee Agreement present an historic opportunity to address the ongoing crisis facing smallholder coffee farmers and farmworkers by contributing to sustainable coffee supply chains. At the 2nd World Coffee Conference in September 2005 several organisations presented the International Coffee Organisation and its delegates with the Carta de Salvador – the Salvador Declaration1, which stressed the ongoing effects of the coffee crisis facing small-scale family farmers and farmworkers. This paper calls on International Coffee Organisation members to support small-scale farmers and farmworker organisations by ensuring space for their direct participation in international debate, creating mechanisms that enhance the availability of market information to small-scale farmers, and maximizing opportunities to develop cohesive international strategies to provide technical support, access to credit, and direct access to markets.

Inequality is rampant across the global economy, and the agro-food sector is no exception., At the top, big supermarkets and other corporate food giants dominate global food markets, allowing them to squeeze value from vast supply chains that span the globe, while at the bottom the bargaining power of small-scale farmers and workers has been steadily eroded in many of the countries from which they source. The result is widespread human suffering among the women and men producing food for supermarkets around the world., But it doesn't have to be this way. This report launches Oxfam's new campaign to expose the root causes behind human suffering in food supply chains and to mobilize the power of people around the world to help to end it, starting with a focus on the role of supermarkets., See here for a full list of associated annexes to this report, including national reports, case studies, methodology note and datasets.

Oxfam's Global Agricultural Scale Up Initiative (GASUI) was launched in 2005 with the aims of reducing poverty for millions of smallholder farmers, particularly women; driving economic growth by linking farmers into new and wider market opportunities; and advocating for increased donor, government, and private sector investment to support smallholder farming. For Oxfam, 'scale-up' refers to increasing both the reach and quality of Oxfam's agricultural programming and thereby demonstrating to governments, donors, and development actors how agriculture can contribute to economic development and poverty reduction. The initiative's main strategy is to empower smallholder farmers to organize and engage effectively and equitably in agricultural markets and value chains. This overview is the first of nine Programme Insights papers in the 'Small Farmers, Big Change' series contained in this volume. The papers draw on learning from GASUI and on wider learning from Oxfam GB's agricultural markets-based programming, as well as from programmes implemented by Oxfam India.

With support, Mayan women are improving their agricultural production and their marketing skills to improve income and self-confidence.

This research report considers the perspectives of women’s organizations and their strategies in dealing with vulnerability to shocks and crises, and building resilience in a context of food insecurity. The report identifies what 21 women’s organizations across 10 countries consider to be the key threats to resilience, and draws lessons from their ways of working., Five chapters review the methodology of the research, explore definitions of resilience, consider threats to food security, and survey the learning from specific ways of working - all from the perspective of grassroots women’s organizations themselves. The report then offers focused conclusions and recommendations for action on how to build resilience from a gender and women’s rights perspective. The report includes a comprehensive description of the 21 women’s organizations in 10 countries which contributed to the project.

Help Yourself! provides the second year results of a four-year study on how food price volatility affects everyday life and uncovers grassroots realities related to the right to food., Do people at risk of hunger think they have a right to food? What does a right to food mean, and how can it be claimed and enforced? We asked these questions of around 1500 people in 10 low and middle income countries. Customary rights and responsibilities, patchy and uneven at the best of times, are affected by rapid changes in food prices and responses to them; becoming less effective buffers against the global drivers of food insecurity. People at risk of hunger are keenly receptive to state and civil society action that strengthens their sense of right to food, but formal responsibilities for action are often unclear and monitoring systems rarely capture local realities. Food security programmes are often demeaning, divisive, unreliable, discriminatory and discretionary. This weakness of public accountability for food security would matter less if people felt that markets were doing the job of guaranteeing access to good food. However, complaints about volatile and rising food prices continue to be a feature of everyday life, contrary to the overall impression of falling prices on world markets., Individual country reports will be added below as they become available., The research is funded by the UK Government and Irish Aid.

Since it was launched in 2003, Brazil's Fome Zero (Zero Hunger) strategy has allowed 28 million people to break free from the cycle of hunger. These impressive figures suggest that public policy can have a significant impact in the fight against hunger. This report looks at some of the conditions contributing to the success of the strategy, including political will combined with a plan that is coherent, consistent, multidimensional and participatory., The United Nations launched the Zero Hunger challenge in 2012, and countries and regions around the world are looking at the lessons from Brazil's experience. In West Africa, the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) has initiated a process for achieving Zero Hunger in West Africa., An editorial by the West Africa GROW campaign and a preface by Olivier De Schutter, UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food (2008-2014) are included in the French report and as separate documents in English. The editorial reflects on the practicalities and challenges in terms of social mobilization and the region's capacities to carry such an ambitious initiative. How can the necessary political will be ensured in a region of diverse states?

Colombian law sets limits on the purchase of land previously awarded by the state to beneficiaries of agrarian reform processes. The aim is to avoid concentration of land ownership and to preserve the social function of this land. Yet between 2010 and 2012, Cargill – the largest agricultural commodity trader in the world – acquired 52,576 hectares of such land in Colombia’s Altillanura region through 36 shell companies created for this purpose. As a result, Cargill may have managed to evade the legal restriction through a method of fragmented purchases, exceeding the maximum size of land permitted by law for a single owner by more than 30 times., This research report shows how the resolution of this and other similar cases that contribute to rural unrest will test the policy coherence of the Colombian government, which has recently faced major national protests over agrarian problems while having committed itself at peace talks to a more democratic distribution of land and to strengthening the small-farm economy.

In 2012 Oxfam and IIED joined forces to create Tipping the Balance a global report exploring the connection between the policy and practice of investment and market governance in small scale agriculture in four countries: Nigeria, Tanzania, Guatemala and the Philippines. This is the study from Guatemala evidence of which fed into the main Tipping the Balance report., Public policies on commercial investment in agriculture and market governance play a fundamental role in ensuring inclusive, sustainable development of small-scale farming, particularly with regard to women in rural areas. This study focuses on establishing the framework of policies and rules applicable in Guatemala and the favourable or unfavourable impact they have on both male and female small-scale rural producers. The results reveal that, although rural-development policies and programmes exist, their benefits are limited due to the disconnect between the design and the implementation of such policies. The public policies and forms of market governance currently in place clearly tip the balance in favour of large-scale commercial investments in both monoculture farmland and the agri-food sector., This report is the result of the research carried out pursuant to the research report summary published by Oxfam and the International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED) in December 2012 entitled 'Tipping the balance: policies to shape agricultural investments and markets in favour of small-scale farmers'.

Soybean production in Paraguay now takes up 80 per cent of cultivated land, displacing agricultural production by family farmers and indigenous populations and deepening inequality in access to land., Among the agribusiness companies involved in soy monoculture in Paraguay, the company Desarrollo Agrícola del Paraguay sought to distinguish its activity in the sector by adopting a policy of social and environmental responsibility and investing in community-based initiatives. The results are analyzed in this report. It finds that the company’s efforts have not compensated for the negative impacts of a model of production that increases the concentration of land and wealth; contaminates the environment; harms people’s health; competes for limited resources and puts at risk the traditional livelihoods of small-scale farmers and indigenous communities.

Half a decade after the price spike of 2007-2008, food price volatility has become the new norm: people have come to expect food prices to rise and fall rapidly, though nobody knows by how much or when. So what does the accumulation of food price rises mean for well-being and development in developing countries? And what can be done to improve life in a time of food price volatility?, Squeezed provides some preliminary answers to these big development questions, based on the first year results of a four-year project conducted across 10 countries with different levels of exposure to price rises. While high and rising food prices no longer come as a surprise, rapid price changes and the cumulative effects of five years' worth of price rises are still squeezing those on low incomes., In areas of life neglected by policy -Â especially domestic care work and informal social safety nets -Â Squeezed provides reasons to prepare for the next food price spike and provides recommendations for how best to do so, including: widening social assistance for the most vulnerable; being ready with temporary spike-proofing measures; monitoring the real impacts on people's lives and wellbeing; rethinking social protection policy to 'crowd-in' care and informal social assistance; and enabling people to participate in policies to tackle food price volatility., Oxfam will also publish the country reports that contributed to this research as they become available.

Development actors are increasingly prioritising 'investing in women' to ensure food security and sustainability-as well as equity-in agricultural development. In this context, collective action is a critical but poorly understood way for women small-scale farmers to strengthen their engagement in agricultural markets. This report provides rigorous new evidence, from quantitative and qualitative research carried out in Ethiopia, Mali and Tanzania, on the economic and empowerment benefits of women's participation in collective action groups across different agricultural farming systems and markets., The success factors and intervention strategies that have enabled women to benefit most are analysed in order to identify lessons for the future. The research highlights gaps in both current development practice and the wider policy environment which need to be addressed to ensure that collective action in agricultural markets is effective and empowering for rural women., See also the country case studies supporting this research report, Women's Collective Action in the Honey Sector in Ethiopia, Women's Collective Action in the Shea Sector in Mali, Women's Collective Action in the Vegetable Sector in Tanzania, Find out more about Researching women's collective action.

Acute food crises continue to reverse positive development trends in sub-Saharan Africa. As the international community attempts to address the challenges of food security, the focus has largely been on two issues: the devastating effects of food price volatility on the most vulnerable populations, and recurrence of acute food crises. Food reserves have potential to be a first line of defence against food insecurity, but there is a lack of analysis focusing specifically on how food reserves can be used at different levels and in a range of ways. Oxfam's report aims to fill that gap by analysing recent experiences with local food reserves in the Sahel region, reviewing the factors that determine their failure or success, and assessing innovative instruments (such as linking local food reserves to national reserves; index insurance and stabilization funds) that could contribute to their improvement. This report was updated in July 2013.

The world's largest commodity traders have a significant impact on the modern agri-food system. Archer Daniels Midland (ADM), Bunge, Cargill and Louis Dreyfus, are dominant traders of grain globally and central to the food system, but their role is poorly understood. This report considers the traders - collectively known as the ABCDs - in relation to several global issues pressing on agriculture: the 'financialization' of both commodity trade and agricultural production; the emergence of global competitors to the ABCDs; and some implications of large-scale industrial biofuels, a sector in which the ABCDs are closely involved. The report includes a discussion of how smallholders in developing countries are affected by these changes, and highlights some development policy implications. The report highlights the ways in which these four firms are decisive actors in the global restructuring of the overlapping food, feed, and fuel complexes that is now under way, and considers how the firms are evolving as they respond to and shape new pressures and opportunities in the food system.

The food system is a complex web of people, businesses, organizations and governments involved in the production, distribution, sale and consumption of food. Irrespective of who we are or where we are on the planet, the food we eat is made available by this global food system. But at the beginning of the twenty-first century, this system is not working properly - it leaves nearly one billion people hungry every day. It is obvious that the food system needs fixing, but the sheer size and complexity of the system can seem overwhelming; and the power of some of the corporations and governments involved is daunting. Urgent action is needed to change the policies and practices that play a huge part in the broken food system. This report shows the connections between the global food system and our daily lives. It looks at households in towns and cities in six countries: Brazil, India, the Philippines, Spain, the UK and the USA. Oxfam gathered information from 5,000 women about food prices, food choices, and opinions on how their food is produced. The survey results suggest a significant opportunity: households in towns and cities across the world would like to have a better food system. This report begins to explore how, together, they might bring that about.