The seminar will feature the following five topics. We invite papers that address any of the five topics in relation to poverty reduction. For further illustration, a number of exemplary subthemes are listed for each of the topics.

1) Agricultural trade and economic development

• Role of liberalization of agricultural markets in developed countries
• Impacts of trade liberalization on agricultural markets, farm income level and repartition in the South
• Impacts of economy-wide policies on the competitiveness of agriculture
• Impacts of agricultural trade and economic development on the rural non farm economy in the South, and implications for livelihood diversification away from agriculture.

2) Natural resources: Access, management, and conservation

• Property rights in natural resources (Land, water)
• Decentralized governance
• Renewable energy: Role of agriculture and forestry

3) Restructuring supply chains: The potential exclusion of smallholders

• Governance regime, technological choice, standards and risk management
• Role of public and private sector in building inclusive food chains
• Food safety, social responsibility, and environmental sustainability

4) Rural non-farm diversification and migration

• Role of rural infrastructure
• Capital markets and microfinance for sustainable agriculture and rural development
• New forms of labour markets (domestic and international migration, contract farming)
• Decentralization, taxation of agriculture
• Governance of public, private and NGO sector

5) Methodological innovations in research on agricultural and rural development such as :

• Spatial statistics and econometrics and applications to agribusiness, poverty mapping, land use and the environment
• Analysis of business or social networks in the supply chain
• Bio-economic modelling
• Multi-agent modelling
• Geographic Information Systems in Agricultural and Rural Development Economics

While the five themes are intended to provide a broad inclusive scheme for the organisation of the sessions of the seminar, each of the papers is expected to include analysis related to poverty issues and/or poverty impacts of policies, technologies, or institutions so as to be consistent with the unifying common focus of the seminar on pro-poor development in the areas of agriculture, food, trade, and the environment.