Roughly a billion people around the world continue to live in state of chronic hunger and food insecurity. Unfortunately, efforts to improve their livelihoods must now unfold in the context of a rapidly changing climate, in which warming temperatures and changing rainfall regimes could threaten the basic productivity of the agricultural systems on which most of the world's poor directly depend. But whether climate change represents a minor impediment or an existential threat to development is an area of substantial controversy, with different conclusions wrought from different methodologies and based on different data.

This book aims to resolve some of the controversy by exploring and comparing the different methodologies and data that scientists use to understand climate's effects on food security. It explains the nature of the climate threat, the ways in which crops and farmers might respond, and the potential role for public and private investment to help agriculture adapt to a warmer world. This broader understanding should prove useful to both scientists charged with quantifying climate threats, and policy-makers responsible for crucial decisions about how to respond. The book is especially suitable as a companion to an interdisciplinary undergraduate or graduate level class.

The recent upheavals in staple food prices, financial markets, and the global economy raise questions about the state of food insecurity, the nature of price variability, and the appropriate strategies for international agricultural development. For decades preceding this turmoil, agriculture had received waning attention from the global development community as real food prices declined on trend. Analysts who worried about food insecurity focused on the fate of poor producers. The dramatic upswing in prices in 2007-08 turned attention toward poor consumers as many countries struggled with food riots, mounting malnutrition, and the adoption of grain self-sufficiency policies. New debates have been spurred over whether real agricultural prices will resume their long downward decline or whether there has been a more general reversal in the real price of food.

Brazil has developed a large-scale commercial agricultural system, recognized worldwide for its role in domestic economic growth and expanding exports. However, the success of this sector has been associated with widespread destruction of Brazilian ecosystems, especially the Cerrado and the Brazilian Amazon rainforest, as well as environmental degradation. Brazil's agricultural development has also led to land consolidation, aggravating a historical land distribution inequality. This pattern of agricultural growth has reinforced Brazil's status as one of the world's most inequitable countries in terms of income distribution, making it difficult to assert that the nation is pursuing a sustainable development path. In order to achieve sustainable development Brazil must reconcile its increasingly productive, modern tropical agricultural system with environmental preservation, social equity, and poverty alleviation in rural and urban areas. Although a daunting task, Brazil has the opportunity to lead tropical countries in combining modernized agriculture with highly diverse and functional ecosystems. Continued improvement in socioeconomic conditions is equally important and will require stronger efforts to decrease inequalities in income and land distribution in the rural sector.