How important is agricultural growth to poverty reduction? This article first sets out the theoretical reasons for expecting agricultural growth to reduce poverty. Several plausible and strong arguments apply -including the creation of jobs on the land, linkages from farming to the rest of the rural economy, and a decline in the real cost of food for the whole economy -but the degree of impact is in all cases qualified by particular circumstances. Hence, the article deploys a cross-country estimation of the links between agricultural yield per unit area and measures of poverty. This produces strong confirmation of the hypothesised linkages. It is unlikely that there are many other development interventions capable of reducing the numbers in poverty so effectively.How important is agricultural growth to alleviating poverty in a world in which farming's share of total output is in decline?We can assess the impact of agricultural growth on poverty in general and rural poverty in particular, in two ways. One draws on theory, building plausible arguments about how changes in agricultural production may affect the numbers of poor and the depth of their poverty. The other takes an empirical approach, by observing directly changes in agricultural productivity and poverty, and then estimating the degree to which they are related. This article deploys both approaches.

We seek to address formally the question raised by Gardner (2003) in his Elmhirst lecture as to the direction of causality between agricultural value added per worker and Gross Domestic Product (GDP) per capita. Using the Granger causality test in the panel data analyzed by Gardner for 85 countries, we find overwhelming evidence that supports the conclusion that agricultural value added is the causal variable in developing countries, while the direction of causality in developed countries is unclear. We also examine further the use of the Granger causality test in integrated data and provide evidence that the performance of the test can be increased in small samples through the use of the bootstrap. Copyright 2006 International Association of Agricultural Economists.

To improve the welfare of the rural poor and keep them in the countryside, the government of Botswana has been spending 40% of the value of agricultural GDP on agricultural support services. But can investment make smallholder agriculture prosperous in such adverse conditions? This paper derives an answer by applying a two‐output six‐input stochastic translog distance function, with inefficiency effects and biased technical change to panel data for the 18 districts and the commercial agricultural sector, from 1979 to 1996. This model demonstrates that herds are the most important input, followed by draft power, land and seeds. Multilateral indices for technical change, technical efficiency and total factor productivity (TFP) show that the technology level of the commercial agricultural sector is more than six times that of traditional agriculture and that the gap has been increasing, due to technological regression in traditional agriculture and modest progress in commercial agriculture. Since the levels of efficiency are similar, the same pattern is repeated by the TFP indices. This result highlights the policy dilemma of the trade‐off between efficiency and equity objectives.

Objective: To investigate the sociodemographic determinants of diet quality of the elderly in four EU countries. Design: Cross-sectional study. For each country, a regression was performed of a multidimensional index of dietary quality v. sociodemographic variables. Setting: In Finland, Finnish Household Budget Survey (1998 and; in Sweden, SNAC-K (2001SNAC-K ( -2004; in the UK, Expenditure & Food Survey (2006-07); in Italy, Multi-purpose Survey of Daily Life (2009). Subjects: One-and two-person households of over-50s (Finland, n 2994; UK, n 4749); over-50 s living alone or in two-person households (Italy, n 7564); over-60 s (Sweden, n 2023).Results: Diet quality among the EU elderly is both low on average and heterogeneous across individuals. The regression models explained a small but significant part of the observed heterogeneity in diet quality. Resource availability was associated with diet quality either negatively (Finland and UK) or in a non-linear or nonstatistically significant manner (Italy and Sweden), as was the preference for food parameter. Education, not living alone and female gender were characteristics positively associated with diet quality with consistency across the four countries, unlike socio-professional status, age and seasonality. Regional differences within countries persisted even after controlling for the other sociodemographic variables. Conclusions: Poor dietary choices among the EU elderly were not caused by insufficient resources and informational measures could be successful in promoting healthy eating for healthy ageing. On the other hand, food habits appeared largely set in the latter part of life, with age and retirement having little influence on the healthiness of dietary choices. KeywordsElderly Ageing Diet quality Socio-economic Sociodemographic Healthy eating Nutritional healthIt is now well established that the EU population is ageing, which creates important challenges for the functioning of public services and raises fundamental questions about the evolution of human welfare. A few figures help appreciate the magnitude and speed of the changes ahead. Eurostat forecasts that the proportion of the EU population over the age of 65 years (80 years) will increase steadily from 16?0 % (4?1 %) in 2010 to 27?8 % (10?1 %) in 2050 (1) . Meanwhile, the demographic projections of the ANCIEN project of the EU Seventh Framework Programme suggest that life expectancy at age 65 years will increase by about 3 years from 2008 to 2040 (2)

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