In the name of God, the Compassionate, the Merciful
Mr. Chairman,
Excellencies,
Distinguished Governors,
Ladies and Gentlemen,

It is an honour for me to participate on behalf of the Government of the Islamic Republic of Iran, at the 36th Session of the Governing Council of IFAD.
At this very outset, let me congratulate you Mr Chair for assuming the responsibility of Chairmanship of the 36th IFAD Governing Council.
I would also like to take this opportunity to express my sincere congratulations to Mr. Kanayo Nwanze for his election to a second term as President of IFAD.  I wish him all the success in guiding IFAD as an institution with the specific mandate of reducing rural poverty and hunger in the challenging world ahead of us.

Mr. Chairman, Excellencies, Ladies and Gentlemen, as the 36th Session of the Governing Council of IFAD is being held, extreme poverty remains a daily reality for more than 850 million people worldwide. As the basis of the ‘one-dollar-a-day threshold’, there are 1.2 billion poor people in developing and low income countries.

Challenges like climate change, water scarcity, and land degradation are exacerbating this trend particularly for developing and low income countries.
Indeed, available projections point to a probable failure to meet the commitments made by the international community to halve hunger and poverty by 2015 as set out by the MDGs. We believe that there is an urgent need more than ever, for a rapid reduction in rural poverty. Integrated continuous effort, with mobilization of resources, energies and technical measures are needed to defeat the hunger and poverty worldwide.

It’s evident that the agricultural sector plays a crucial role in the economy of developing countries and provides the main source of food, income and employment to their rural populations. Improvements in agriculture in all aspects are fundamental to achieving food security, poverty alleviation and overall sustainable development. Every effort should be made in such a context, to enable poor people to overcome poverty with a particular focus on the most vulnerable such as poor rural women and indigenous populations.

IFAD’s achievement in the past decades however appreciated; need to be sustained in assisting rural people to overcome poverty and hunger. IFAD should rely more on what it has learned about small-scale agriculture and rural poverty reduction in over 30 years. Downsizing the administrative body, making efficient operations by exploiting applicable tools, very close cooperation with the Rome-based agencies and other relevant agencies, especially in the field, are essential in our task. South-South cooperation needs to be further encouraged.

As it has been stressed, small scale farming is one of the ways to tackle poverty and assist in the improvement of the livelihoods in both rural and urban areas.
Mr. Chairman, in the past three decades, the Islamic Republic of Iran has taken great strides to reform the structure of agriculture and rural sectors, and promote sustainable food production. The results of these efforts are reflected in different indicators of sector growth, food security and self-sufficiency.

Agriculture production increased to more than 100 million tons in 2007, from just 25.6 million tons in 1977, in spite of several successive droughts that hit agriculture and rural life in Iran. The production of livestock products also increased annually by 4.2 percent to more than 10.7 million tons in 2007.
The Islamic Republic of Iran also introduced its new forest policy and economic tools, aiming to strengthen public participation in the fields of planning, implementation, monitoring and evaluation of forestry programmes by emphasizing the role of the private sector, NGOs and local communities.

Mr. Chairman, I stress on the eagerness and readiness of my country to support, cooperate and collaborate with IFAD with the aim of assisting IFAD to play its role in mitigating poverty and hunger in the world. We are also pleased to share with all the member countries of IFAD our successful experiences in the agriculture and rural development sector.

Thank you very much.