In Zambia, raising cattle is a risky business. A whole range of diseases attacks the country’s herds with depressing regularity, killing hundreds, if not thousands of cows with each outbreak. The cost of disease weighs most heavily on the rural poor — a large percentage of rural households depend on cattle to a certain extent, to ensure their livelihoods. Here, as in many parts of Africa, cattle are a traditional store of value, a kind of bank account on hooves.

In Romania, the agricultural community represents the poorest of the poor. Many poor farmers are leaving the fields and choosing instead to live in the subway stations in the cities, adding to urban problems. But one of the by products of their grain farming -- straw -- now offers a new opportunity for bringing addition to income to poor farmers, and it may also helping Romania meet EU environmental norms.

In the Luangwa Valley in Zambia, an area rich in wildlife diversity, it is estimated that 42% of the food insecure families resort to poaching wild animals so they can barter the meat for produce, according to David Lewis of Wildlife Conservation Society (WSC). To stop this phenomenon, WSC established a program whereby individuals who relinquished their wire snares and illegal guns and would receive supplementalmaize for one-year