this is because in africa and other developing country regions the vast bulk of food is produced and consumed locally a lesson from the recent food crisis is that as food import prices rise and global stocks drop the need to improve local production becomes more acute desertification is estimated to put the food security of one billion poor people at risk particularly in dryland areas of asia and subsaharan africa while the explosive transfer of population from rural to urban settings can weaken the productive capacity of vulnerable agricultural sectors experience suggests such trends can be slowed and even reversed by well designed policy interventions to improve the attractiveness of agriculture and rural livelihoods