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The purpose of this chapter is to analyze the impact of public agricultural Research and Development (R&D) investments on agricultural productivity and long-term food security to derive policy recommendations. The methodological approach is based on the application of the state-of-the art Computable General Equilibrium (CGE) model to R&D. By endogenizing R&D in global CGE models, it is possible to assess the impact of different public R&D policies on the food availability and food access of food security. This study found that R&D investments bring positive effects on the food access dimension of food security, particularly in places such as Sub-Saharan Africa where prices are expected to grow significantly by 2050, as agricultural land becomes scarcer and more expensive. Doubling the R&D intensity would soften the land constraints and substantially decelerate food prices, thus preventing the deterioration of living standards of rural households and leading to a gain in daily caloric consumption. The impact of alternative agricultural R&D policies on the various dimensions of food security has not been analyzed using a CGE framework, which enables capturing both the benefits and costs from R&D investments. Modeling the dynamic accumulation of R&D stocks makes it possible to analyze the effects of R&D on food security over time.

The purpose of this paper is to analyse factors that determine farmers’ intention to commercialise vegetable-based agribusiness ventures in rural areas and assess the effect of commercialisation on farmers’ income.

The study used a regression approach. Market participation and farmers’ income were hypothesised to be dependent on other external factors. This study employed data compiled from a quantitative survey of 357 farm households located in four major vegetable producing regions of rural East Java and Bali, Indonesia.

Results indicate that household attributes, business environment, supporting facilities and farm characteristics determined farmers to commercialise vegetable farming. Access to credit, seed technology and farm site played high contribution to the market participation. Ultimately, commercial vegetable farming provides an economic advantage regarding increased income. Land fragmentation and status of landholding were identified to influence the net revenue of vegetable farming.

This study has a limitation concerning the number of samples and the availability of data and information. The number of samples is 357 which is about 4 per cent of the total population.

Establishment of vegetable agribusiness terminals with all market infrastructures, adequate access to market information, credit and human capital investment through training and extension services are also required, will boost market participation. Re-structuring land ownership might be the best step to augment farmers’ income, through consolidation of fragmented fertile lands devoted to intensive vegetable farming.

This study was purposely conducted in rural areas where there were subsistence farmers, as this is to improve farmers’ income by commercialising vegetable crops. A novel feature of this finding is the role of access to credit in the commercialisation of vegetable farming and the impact of landholding status on the profitability of intensive farming of high-valued vegetables.

Recently the World Bank, aid donors, and others have shown greater interest in improving the income prospects of small farmers in LDC's. This interest springs in part from the fact that small farmers are at the bottom of the income ladder in many poor countries (though landless rural workers may be even worse off). Proposals to raise small farmer incomes have run the gamut from “wide‐spread” land reform to urban migration. Credit reallocation towards small and away from large farms has also been consistently advocated and has received renewed impetus due to the perceived failure of other alternative measures. Effective land reform has been found difficult to achieve short of full scale political revolution while enthusiasm for nonagricultural solutions has been tempered, at least until recently, by disappointing growth of high income employment opportunities in urban sectors.