South Africa experienced two waves of rapid food inflation in 2001–02 and 2007–08. During both periods the surge in the cost of food undermined the food-security status of low-income families. Belated state reactions to the food-price crises pay scant attention to the fact that poor net food buyers rely on agro-food markets for their food supplies. Moreover, the touted non-interference of the state in agro-food marketing policy gives the impression that this policy is disconnected from food security. This article challenges that notion. It analyses the content and evolution of agro-food marketing policies and argues the case for food security to be at the core of such policies.

International development work has both reinforced and challenged inequalities related to sexuality and gender. The concept of heteronormativity is a promising frame for understanding these dynamics. This article starts with a description of the history of the concept and an exploration of its possible applications. It goes on to consider heteronormativity in development work, in relation to three areas in which struggles based on sex and gender orders have been most visible: in household models and family forms; HIV/AIDS; and efforts to combat violence against women.

The recent commodity-price boom was one of the longest and broadest of the post-World War II period, and, not unexpectedly, it reignited discussions about resource scarcity as well as proposals to ‘manage’ reminiscent of the 1970s. This contribution looks at the factors that are likely to shape commodity markets in the longer term and concludes that a stronger link between energy and non-energy commodity prices is likely to be the dominant force, especially in terms of food prices. Demand by emerging economies is unlikely to put additional pressure on the prices of food commodities, although it may create such pressure indirectly through energy prices. The effect of biofuels on food prices has not been as great as originally thought, but the use of commodities by investment funds may have been partly responsible for the 2007–08 spike.

The Village Development Fund (VDF) is used in Thailand to empower the rural poor, especially women living with disabilities. This article investigates the problems of gaining access to credit faced by physically disabled women in rural Thailand. In-depth interviews with 20 women with physical disabilities in north-eastern Thailand indicate that these women still do not benefit from small loans from the VDF because they face significant attitude barriers from the VDF chairpersons and from their own families. The author argues that non-disabled communities and their own families believe that disabilities make these women less creditworthy.

Food prices in Cambodia increased by 36.8 per cent between July 2007 and July 2008. High food prices negatively affected people from all walks of life, but the extent of the impact varied. The poorest 40 per cent of the population spend 70 per cent of their incomes on food. The poor and net food buyers, who generally live in rural areas, were hit worst by these rising prices. Most of the food-insecure households are in the Tonle Sap and plains regions. For the very poor, both urban and rural, obtaining sufficient food is a daily struggle. About 50 per cent of surveyed households reported cutting back on food. Many went into debt. Food aid or ‘food for work’ should be the best solutions to meet short-term needs. Social safety nets based on food assistance should be introduced in order to avoid increased malnutrition and negative coping strategies used by food-insecure households.

Hunger has been on the rise since the mid-1990s, due to a variety of factors, including a lack of policy attention and a sense of complacency generated by long-term real declines in food prices. Food prices rose sharply after 2006, and there is considerable controversy over the reasons why. Analysts have pointed to a number of factors as possible causes, including rising fuel prices, diversion of food crops into biofuels, speculation, increased meat consumption in Asia, climate change, and environmental degradation, among others. There is disagreement about both the role played by some of these factors in driving up prices, and also the weight to assign to each specific factor. Discussion of the consequences of higher food prices has been based primarily on modelling; this special issue of Development in Practice presents some new modelling results, as well as results from field research on the actual consequences for poor farmers and consumers in developing, transition, and developed countries. The price increases led to sometimes violent protests in scores of countries in 2007–08, thereby putting hunger back on the front policy burner. Food prices spiked in mid-2008 and remained well above the levels of the early 2000s, globally, throughout 2009–10. By December 2010, prices had risen again, surpassing the peaks of 2008. There is consensus concerning policy prescriptions on what to do about higher food prices; this is embodied, for example, in the UN's Comprehensive Framework for Action of 2008. However, the authors of a number of the articles in this special issue find limitations to that consensus and offer additional policy prescriptions.

This article examines the case of the Mexican ‘tortilla crisis’ of 2007. Drawing on reviews of literature and the media, key-informant interviews, and secondary databases, the authors explore the response of the Mexican maize–tortilla chain to a price shock. Price increases should theoretically be passed on to the consumer as a progressively less significant percentage of the overall price of value-added food products. However, in Mexico, price increases were magnified along the maize–tortilla production chain. This was due largely to asymmetries among segments of the chain, which conditioned the responses of industrial-scale corporations and small-scale family businesses. This case study suggests that, in order to understand the impacts of price-shocks on poor consumers, more detailed, country-level analyses of market chains and price-transmission structures are needed.

In many rural households, women are much more involved than men in poultry production. This article examines the introduction of exotic chickens into communities along the shorelines of Kainji Lake in Nigeria and the consequent impact on women's participation and decision making within the household. Women's household decision-making power, particularly in terms of spending money from the sale of chickens and their own extra income, is stronger when the household keeps improved chicken species. The rearing of improved chicken species was positively correlated with social-status enhancement, especially for women.

NGOs have traditionally had little scope to bring about political reform in developing countries. This was certainly true of French development NGOs (NGDOs) operating in Cameroon during the early post-colonial decades. This situation changed in 2002 when French NGDOs, with support from the French state and Cameroonian civil society, initiated a multi-actor consultative programme (the PCPA), aiming to build democracy in Cameroon. This article traces the origins of the PCPA, assesses its achievements, and explains why the programme failed. It then identifies key lessons and asks whether the PCPA represents a useful model for French NGOs and donor states.

Taking the case of Burkina Faso, the paper analyses effects of local purchase on marginal producers. It argues that because of imports of food together with ‘distress sales’ on the part of the producers, perfect market conditions do not exist. Therefore market price does not equal the optimal price. In the absence of an optimal price, price interventions are justifiable and this makes payment to local farmers of a ‘fairer’ price both possible and desirable. The additional income thus generated will not only give the producers greater access to food, but also the ability to invest in order to increase production.