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Welcome to the home page of the Agriculture and Rural Development Study Group
Conveners:
Dr Joseph Assan – University of Liverpool; Email: [email protected]
Dr Czech Conroy- NRI, University of Greenwich; Email: [email protected]
The majority of poor people in low-income countries live in rural areas, despite rapid urbanisation in recent decades. Rural households have been diversifying their livelihoods, yet in agriculture-based countries - most of which are in Sub-Saharan Africa - the sector employs 65 percent of the labour force and generates 32 percent of GDP growth. Agriculture is a particularly important component of rural women’s livelihoods, and vital to their food security. Agricultural and rural development are essential to both poverty reduction and economic growth in these countries and also important in other low-income countries. Yet the agricultural and rural sectors have suffered from neglect and underinvestment over the past 20 years, by both governments and international donors.
This study group, which was revived at a meeting in December 2008, aims to bring together academics, policy makers and practitioners to encourage sharing of information and debate on pressing issues relating to agricultural and rural development, bearing in mind the overarching themes of gender, social inclusion, climatic variability and environmental sustainability. Such issues include:
• Pro-poor market development, economics and growth • Climate change and agriculture • Rural livelihood diversification, including migration • Health, inequality and well-being • Addressing vulnerability and food insecurity (including livestock
production/management) • Enhancing/ managing agricultural innovation, adaptation and social change.
We are planning a programme of seminars, conference sessions etc for 2010 and beyond to explore these and other emerging issues. Our recent Study Group event was a seminar on ‘Sustainable Livelihoods and Pro-poor Market Development’. This was jointly convened with the ESRC Sustainable Livelihoods Seminar Series which took place on 21 July 2009, at the University of Bath. The second meeting involved four sessions on Climate Change and Agriculture/rural development at the 2009 DSA conference, convened jointly with the Climate Change Study Group. We are equally interested in holding joint events and collaborative projects.
If you are interested in agricultural and rural development (and related themes/ issues) and would like to be part/ informed of upcoming events then please let us know and we will add you to the mailing list. Ideas for study group activities are also welcome.
What does being a study group convenor involve?
It all depends on what activities you organise. We expect you to hold at least one meeting a year, though many groups hold more than that. Some groups work through email discussion lists, and some even collect together papers and publish books. What you do is very much up to you, but we will help wherever we can.
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How do people join a study group?
Usually prospective members will email you. Just add them to your email list (or other records). You don’t need to tell us about any new members. Some convenors set up a standard email reply as a response – this might be handy if you would like to send new members information about the group, or if you email the list quite infrequently.If you would like any advice on filtering emails automatically into a study group email folder or managing email distribution lists, you can always contact the DSA Secretariat for help – we can suggest ways to streamline your admin.
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Do you have to be a DSA member to join a study group? How do I check?
Anybody can join any number of study groups. Please do help us by encouraging people to join the DSA! If somebody contacts you asking to join DSA, please just forward the email to the DSA Secretariat and we will sign them up.Most DSA income comes from membership fees, so the more members we have, the better we can be. As membership fees help fund study groups, we are keen that paid-up members feel the full benefit - rather than subsidising non-members.To keep joining fees affordable, we offer reduced fees for concessions, while postgraduate students can trial membership for a year for free.If you are charging entry to your event or extra for non-members, then you'll need a list of paid-up members to check attendees' names against. Contact the DSA Secretariat for this alphabetical list.
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Can I get any help publicising events?
Yes. Most convenors keep email distribution lists of their own to let current SG members know about their events, but you can reach the entire DSA membership by adding your group’s news to our website and our monthly email newsletter.To do this, just email the information you want sent out to the DSA Secretariat. The email newsletter goes out at the beginning of each month, but updates can be added to the website at any time.If you've just taken over running a study group, you should inherit an email list from the previous convenor. If not, contact the DSA Secretariat. We will try and track it down for you. If you are convening a new group, it is a good idea to set an email list up and keep it somewhere secure.If you are a new convenor, you should read the study group guidelines (opens in Word).
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How do I update our webpage?All study groups have a page on the DSA website. You might like to use your web page to inform members about
recent eventsupcoming eventspapers from meetings - they can download from the websitelinks to topic-specific research.
To update your pages yourself, you can get log in details from the DSA Secretariat.Your web page can help you simplify your email messages - just include a link to your web page rather than sending large attachments to a big list.Download our How To Guide for Study Group convenors.
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Funding for study groups and refunds of expenses
DSA funds study group activities to help you organise events and refund expenses. Study group funding is decided at the start of each financial
year. For 2003/2004 this was £400 per group.Budget protocol form - complete this before your meeting and send it to the study group co-ordinator/DSA Treasurer. If you forget to do this, we may not be able to refund your costs.Study group expense claim form - to reclaim your expenses. Just complete and sign this form and return it to the DSA Secretariat, with the original receipts. First you will need to get us to sign off all your group's planned expenses. We will only refund current DSA members.(also on our study groups page).We refund travel expenses aat the lowest cost available, and we prioritise students or people who can't get their organisation to pay.To check how much funding your group has left, just contact the DSA Secretariat.The easiest way to pay any costs for your group is to fill out a budget form and send it to the DSA Secretariat for sign off. Then you can forward all invoices direct to us and we'll pay them. This saves you from paying upfront and then claiming it back from us later.
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What are policy workshops?
Policy workshops, or dissemination workshops are one-day events to look at a particular topic in detail (eg Fifty years of Development Economics, run by the Economics, finance and development study group in July 2003). They tend to be slightly larger-scale than typical study group meetings, and you can get extra DSA funds for them. Contact your study group co-ordinators for more details.
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