By Onche Odeh
With over 1.2 billion extremely poor people in the world and 76 per cent of them living in rural areas, president of the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), Dr Kanayo Nwanze, has said investing in smallholders and transforming rural areas has become a real urgency.
Making this assertion during the 37th session of IFAD Governing Council, Nwanze made it clear that poverty could only be eliminated if governments and agriculture support initiatives are able to create avenue for small farmers to invest and grow their businesses.
He said: “If we are ever going to eliminate the scourge of poverty and hunger, we must make it possible for smallholders to invest in and grow their businesses, and help transform rural areas, so that they are places where women and men can earn dignified and decent livings.”
At the meeting, IFAD welcomed farmers’ representatives and delegates from 173 member states, including its newest member, the Russian Federation, which announced its commitment to support the replenishment of IFAD’s resources.
There, Nwanze stated that agriculture, today, has an unprecedented potential to drive economic development and inclusive growth.
“Never have the opportunities been greater for the three billion people who live in rural areas, particularly those who depend on the world’s 500 million small family farms,” Nwanze added.
His remarks concentrated on IFAD’s unique focus on rural dwellers in the most remote and neglected corners of the world.
He said: “We are here because the lives of 842 million children, women and men are blighted by chronic hunger.”
Also, Nwanze called attention to the irony that, in many parts of the developing world, the people who grow food are the ones struggling the most to feed themselves, saying: “Urban populations need rural populations to grow their food. And more than that, they need rural areas to provide clean water and the healthy ecosystems that contribute to clean air.”
Meanwhile, he challenged all present at the meeting to work to reduce the ever-widening gap between urban and rural, well-nourished and hungry, rich and poor.
The farmers’ leaders attending the opening session had gathered at IFAD headquarters for the fifth Global Meeting of the Farmers’ Forum, being held in conjunction with the Fund’s annual meeting. Representatives of millions of smallholder farmers recognised the United Nations International Year of Family Farming (IYFF) and shed light on the critical role that family farmers play in global food production.
The Minister for Economy and Finance of the Italian Republic, Fabrizio Saccomanni, asserted that ensuring smallholder family farmers have adequate access to credit and investments is of paramount importance for poverty reduction.
Speaking to international policy makers, farmer leaders and private sector representatives, Saccomanni said while some progress had been made, much remains to be done to eliminate hunger and poverty.
He said: “Supporting smallholder agriculture is the way-out, as evidence and research show; it breaks the vicious cycle of poverty while preserving scarce natural resources.”