ABSTRACT
Agricultural development is acknowledged to fuel economic growth and is crucial to poverty alleviation and food security. However, in the past 25 years or so, the agricultural sector has experienced a relatively sluggish development in a number of developing and transition economies, often failing to reduce rural poverty, even in cases of overall economic growth in some countries. In the last couple of years, rapidly rising food prices have pushed many people, both rural and urban, back into poverty and have again raised concerns over food security-an issue that many believed had been since died.
