Sustainable smallholder agriculture: Feeding the world, protecting the planet

As the world belatedly turns its attention to the pressing issues of environmental degradation, resource scarcity and climate change, the concept of sustainability takes its rightful place at centre stage in discussions about agricultural and rural development.
The Thirty-fifth Session of IFAD’s Governing Council provides a forum for Member States, partners and the public to discuss and debate what needs to be done to enable smallholder farmers to contribute to raising food availability by70 per cent by 2050, which is what will be required to feed a growing, more urbanized population. 
Over the course of the two-day event, world leaders, prominent movers and shakers, policymakers, academics and, most importantly, farmer representatives will reflect on and answer fundamental questions such as:

  • Given current knowledge about sustainable agriculture and the evidence of how these approaches have succeeded throughout the world, why has there not been a concerted effort from governments to create the policy environment for scaling up these approaches globally?
  • Do subsidies of fertilizer and other non-green inputs necessarily harm the sustainability of smallholder agriculture?
  • Can green approaches – such as conservation agriculture, sustainable forest management and integrated pest management – be applied universally? What are the barriers to their implementation?
  • Do land acquisitions by private entities affect the adoption of sustainable agriculture?
  • What are the key gaps in our knowledge of green technologies, and how can we facilitate more research and development to fill them?
  • What sources of finance are available to leverage the adoption of sustainable agricultural intensification approaches, and how can we ensure that it reaches smallholders in an efficient and timely manner?
  • How can public-private partnerships be promoted and used to drive green growth for smallholders? How can value chains be harnessed as pathways to scale up sustainable agriculture?

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Strategic Framework, 2011-2015

Strategic frameworkIFAD's unique mandate is improving rural food security and nutrition, and enabling rural women and men to overcome poverty. In today's changing global context, with new opportunities and challenges facing poor rural people, pursuing this mandate calls for honing IFAD's strategies and instruments to achieve greater and more sustainable impact. This does not entail radical changes in what IFAD does. Rather, it requires building on what IFAD has learned about small-scale agriculture and rural poverty reduction in over 30 years, by better leveraging its comparative advantages together with a range of partners.
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Beyond the Arab Awakening

As popular discontent swept across much of the Arab world over the past year, some observers were puzzled. “How is it,” asked the World Bank’s World Development Report 2011, “that countries in the Middle East and North Africa could face explosions of popular grievances despite, in some cases, sustained high growth and improvement in social indicators?”
Last week, experts from IFAD and the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) took a stab at answering that question in a panel discussion at IFAD headquarters. Their observations were based on early results from a three-year research project, co-funded by IFAD and IFPRI, examining the nexus of rural development, food security and conflict.
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Farmers go back to school in Zanzibar

IFAD-supported farmer field schools use experiential learning and participatory group approaches to help farmers make decisions, solve problems and acquire new skills and techniques. Those who apply what they learn are reaping the benefits of higher yields. As farmers share their knowledge with neighbours, productivity and profits are growing.
Just a few years ago, Zeyana Ali Said struggled to earn a living from her small poultry farm. Profits from her birds were small. As a widow with seven children, she relied on her extended family to survive.
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