Round table 1:
Monitoring and analysis of progress with the implementation of short-, medium- and long-term measures

Excellencies,
Ladies and Gentlemen,

Today’s meeting is an important opportunity – for which I deeply thank our host, the Spanish Government, which has shown such leadership in the development arena.  It is an important opportunity to follow up on discussions in Rome last year, when soaring food prices dominated international headlines.  What is the situation now?  What have we achieved?

Previous speakers, as well as the material provided for this high-level meeting, give a clear and stark picture. Close to a billion people go hungry. The numbers are rising.    Let me not repeat what you all know.  Let me just underline how the extreme volatility and unpredictability in food, commodities and energy markets profoundly hurts people and nations.  And let us not forget that almost one person in six was living in a permanent state of food crisis long before national and global food security became the focus of the world’s attention last year.

IFAD’s mandate is to mobilize financial resources for investment in food production.  IFAD’s focus is on increasing smallholder productivity, output and incomes.  In Africa and Asia, 98-99% of farms are less than 10 ha and 80-88% of farms are less than 2 ha.  The 4-500 million smallholder farmers, with families over 2 billion people, a third of humanity, is not only the bulk of the poverty problem, living on less than 1 or 2 dollars a day, but also an important part of the production potential.  They farm 80% of the farmland in Asia and Africa.  With the right support, they can double or triple their production as has been shown in India’s green revolution, and more recently in China, Vietnam, Malawi and Ghana.  The African farmers’ 1-1.5 tons per ha of cereal, maize for instance, cannot overnight reach the 10 tons of the US corn farmer, but with the right support, can be doubled or tripled.  That is, put simply, our challenge.

The HLTF’s Comprehensive Framework for Action has been the organizing framework for reprogramming to meet the acute needs of input support, seed and fertilizer over the last year, as outlined by Jacques Diouf.

In 2008, IFAD provided over US$600 million in new funding for agriculture. Together with co-financing, this funding supported projects and programmes with an investment cost of over US$1 billion.  These programmes, all support smallholder families to make farm-level investments, use improved seeds, fertilizers, small-scale irrigation and sustainable technologies and help them gain access to financial services and markets.  Millions of farmers were reached, many more were not reached.  The needs outstrip available resources.  Over the last few years, IFAD has profoundly reformed as an institution and expanded its country level presence and programme of work. In recognition of our growing development effectiveness, IFAD’s member states agreed last December, only a month ago, on a new Replenishment of IFAD’s resources.  It represents an unprecedented 67 per cent increase and is the largest ever in our history.

As a result, over the next four years IFAD will provide financing of about US$3.7 billion to support agricultural projects and programmes with a total investment cost, including co-financing, of about US$9 billion.  We expect these programmes to provide material support to about 70 million poor men and women on smallholder farms, to increase their productivity, production and incomes.  In many developing countries, IFAD is one of the largest sources of financing for agriculture and rural development. Still, this is far from enough.  We must individually, and as a system, be able to do more - much more.

Little of what we achieve could be done without the close collaboration with our partners, including many of you here today.  I am particularly delighted to stand here alongside my key allies and partners in Rome, FAO and WFP, the World Bank, other IFIs and the wider membership of the High-Level Task Force. 

Our key partners are, of course, the developing countries themselves - our member governments, the rural poor people and their organisations, particularly the increasingly important farmer organizations.   We look forward at this meeting to explore the idea of a Global Partnership on Agriculture and Food Security, which could help promote a more comprehensive and coherent approach to addressing hunger and poverty.  And that could deliver long-term, sustainable food security – globally.

The High Level Task Force on the Global Food Security Crisis, which the Secretary General established last year, and the Comprehensive Framework for Action it elaborated, provides a good starting point for building an effective and genuinely inclusive global partnership.

Current estimates suggest that total food demand is likely to double by 2050.  Can the world meet this demand?  I believe it can – but only if world leaders take action to ensure the necessary investments.  It won’t happen on auto-pilot. 

Meeting the challenges will not be easy and will require collective action across the range of activities, from basic research to farm investments, to infrastructure, trade and efficient markets.  A key consideration in our response is empowering women farmers.  It’s a fact that women produce over half of the developing world’s food supplies.  In sub–Saharan Africa, this figure is 90 per cent.   Long-term food security can be achieved only if agriculture receives a stronger political and financial support than over the last 25 years.

That is why agriculture must move up the global development agenda. That is why world leaders need to re-engage in the agricultural sector.  The urgency is compounded by the challenges we all know from climate change. That is why the Secretary General has exhorted donors to triple their currently low levels of ODA for agriculture, and so reverse a 25-year downward trend. The recent increase in funding for IFAD is a step in the right direction, but it is only a beginning.

As a Fund, set up exclusively to fund smallholder agriculture, IFAD has a mandate and the resources that allows us to make a growing contribution within, what must be, a much stronger and coordinated global effort.

Thank you.

Madrid
26-27 January 2009