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Food security is a simple phrase that encompasses an incredibly complex concept.

Official Development Assistance, or ODA, provides a fundamental source of financing in the poorest and most fragile countries. Current ODA is estimated at $135 billion USD a year, but investment needs in infrastructure alone reach up to $1.5 trillion a year in emerging and developing countries according to the World Bank Group.

This blog was originally posted on the CGIAR Research Program on Agriculture for Nutrition and Health (A4NH) blog .

Conversations about climate change often focus on future effects, but according to the latest Assessment Report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, changes to the global climate have already had a significant impact on food production. Global agricultural productivity has declined over the past 30 years by 1-5 percent per decade, and this deterioration is expected to continue, even if we only experience low levels of warming (+2 ºC).

Since it was first cited in a 1972 paper by the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa, the idea that women perform 60-80 percent of agricultural labor in Africa has been a central theme in the broader debate about gender and development. A new study released by the World Bank’s Living Standards Measurement Study – Integrated Surveys on Agriculture (LSMSISA) initiative is now calling this commonly accepted wisdom into question, however.