Excellencies, Ladies and Gentlemen,

Firstly, I should like to express my sincere thanks to Prime Minister Berlusconi for inviting me to this G8 Summit. It is indeed an honour.

I also wish to extend my heartfelt gratitude to the Heads of State and Government for your dedication and joint work towards the L’Aquila Food Security Initiative. We are heartened by your determination to take action to substantially increase aid to agriculture.

As noted in the statement, I should stress that any initiative that aims to successfully tackle the food security crisis must make long-term support to smallholder agriculture a keystone.

We need only remember that there are about 500 million smallholder farms worldwide that support over 2 billion people – one third of humanity. And in many developing countries, particularly in Africa and Asia, smallholder farmers produce 80 per cent of the food consumed.

Over the past 30 years, the International Fund for Agricultural Development – IFAD – has invested $11 billion of its own resources in low-interest loans and grants in developing countries, and it has leveraged a further $17 billion in co-financing.

Our investments have enabled poor rural people to grow and sell more food and to break out of poverty. The projects we support have helped them build their livelihoods and increase their wealth so that their families can eat better, their children can go to school and even aspire to be the leaders of tomorrow.

There can be little doubt that for sustained food security, long-term investment in smallholder agriculture is an imperative. It is also key to economic growth and poverty reduction, and it provides a broad social safety net.  

Despite this enormous potential, we know that the current economic and financial crisis may prevent us and our developing country partners from increasing our support to smallholder farmers. We are keenly aware that the scale of our activities is not equal to the challenges we face.

We and other international institutions urgently need to increase and strengthen our support to the world’s smallholder farmers. It is our hope that the L’Aquila Food Security Initiative will indeed enable us to do so.

While such support is critical, developing countries, particularly in Africa, also need to put the right policies in place to support agriculture and smallholder farmers. They need to renew their commitment to put their political and economic houses in order, as this is an essential foundation for long-term poverty reduction and development.   

Let me close by assuring you that we, at IFAD, are ready to give our full support and make available our considerable expertise to make the L’Aquila Food Security Initiative a success.

I thank you for your kind attention.

L’Aquila, Italy - 10 July 2009