Ladies and Gentlemen,

Good afternoon. I would like to thank the Norwegian University of Life Sciences for giving me this opportunity to speak with you about pro-poor development and the work of my organization, the International Fund for Agricultural Development. It is a unique organization, exclusively focused on agricultural and rural development, and the smallholder farmer in particular. I will tell you more about IFAD a bit later.

First of all, I would like to say that my colleagues and I were shocked and saddened by the attacks that occurred in Norway last month and the tragic loss of life. An attack on peace and freedom anywhere is an attack to all of us. We admire Norway’s multilateral efforts to further cooperation, peace and development, throughout the world and you have our unwavering support.

Current context     

I would like to point to some recent events that dramatically illustrate the need for increased aid to agriculture. I am sure that as students of development, and as individuals, you are closely following the tragedy that has unfolded in the Horn of Africa. The worst drought in 60 years has led to a famine that places millions of lives in danger. It is a terrifying reminder of why we need not only relief efforts, but sustained long-term assistance to developing country agriculture.

The projects IFAD supports are designed to increase the resilience of poor rural farmers to drought, floods and other shocks, and to help them improve their livelihoods and household food security so that they can lift themselves out of poverty. We firmly believe that if you empower people with the right tools, they can feed themselves.

I am also sure that you are concerned about the implications for development of rising and more volatile food prices. Between 2006 and 2008, international food prices doubled. A further price spike that started in June 2010 pushed another 44 million people into poverty.

When people can’t afford to eat because they can’t make a decent living, they become desperate. Rising food prices have sparked food riots in many places and have fueled political instability. In the Horn of Africa, the famine has led to massive flows of refugees. Given such events, it is hard to see how we can have any kind of security without food security first of all.

Indeed, agriculture is today recognized as a very pressing issue. But I can tell you, it was not always that way.

Investing in agriculture

The current crises follow nearly three decades of declining support for agriculture. In 1979, official development assistance aid to agriculture was 18 per cent of total ODA. By 2009, it was just 6 per cent.

In developing countries, government investment in agriculture also fell--by one third in Africa and by as much as two thirds in Asia and Latin America.

This trend must be reversed. But it must also be done in the right way, and that entails pro-poor strategies.

Development means many things. It’s not just high rates of economic growth, and high-profile projects. We have to ask what kind of growth we are promoting, and whether our efforts are really attacking the problems of poverty and hunger. Pro-poor development has to look at the whole social dimension and ensure that no one is left behind.

Establishing development agencies does not, in itself, guarantee that resources will flow to poor people or the target group. The question of access is all-important. Development initiatives will fail if the poor face barriers to accessing services and programmes, whether those barriers are institutional, cultural or practical.

Unfortunately, the rural smallholder has too often been left out of the development picture. But there are 500 million small farms worldwide, and they may well hold the key to our future food security as well as poverty reduction.

Empowering poor people is the essence of the pro-poor strategy. This means helping them build their own organizations, and gain a voice in all institutions. It means facilitating the development and transformation of rules, norms and policies so that poor people, especially women, are able to secure equal access to productive resources, markets, technology, and financial and other services.  

GDP growth generated by agriculture is more than twice as effective in reducing poverty as growth in other sectors. This is because there is greater participation of poor people in agriculture than in other sectors.  Studies have also shown that every dollar spent on agricultural research produces nine dollars of added food in developing countries.

Investing in people

We all know what indicators are; we use them to measure progress against the Millennium Development Goals—for example, Goal #1, to halve the proportion of poor people living on less than $1 a day. But we have to remember what development means on the personal level.

To the rural poor people who are the focus of our work, an indicator is whether there is food on the table. Whether extra income generated by a small business means that a child can continue to stay in school, rather than dropping out to help work the farm. Whether an illness is a challenge to overcome, or a catastrophe from which the family may never recover.

These things happen. I have seen them happen. But I would challenge you all to think about those we are trying to help not as victims or as aid recipients, but as agents of change. At IFAD, we know that our most powerful partners are poor rural people themselves.

Did you know that rural smallholders are by far the largest investors in agriculture in the developing world? Or that these smallholder farms provide 80 per cent of the food consumed in many parts of Asia and sub-Saharan Africa? We ought to admire them for what they are already doing—feeding a large portion of humanity.

However, there are still one billion people living in rural areas who are extremely poor. And every year, hunger kills more people than AIDS, malaria and TB combined.  While we are looking at hard facts, let’s not forget that the world’s population is expected to rise to more than 9 billion by 2050. Over the same period, the world’s food production will need to increase by 70 per cent. It’s no mystery why development aid to agriculture is so important. Without it, we are looking at a hungry future.

I would like to stop here for a moment and let one of the participants in a project we support talk about some of these same issues, but from the perspective of one family, in one village, in one country of the developing world.

Seraphine’s story could have ended very differently, if she had not had access to the means to increase her family’s resilience. Her story also shows that rural farms, no matter how small, are businesses. Rural farmers in the developing world need not only drought-tolerant seeds but access to markets and finance. They need roads, high-tech communication technology, and training and support so that they can grow their businesses and also diversify into non-farm activities, which will help them manage risk. IFAD’s programmes address all these areas and more.

The role of IFAD

IFAD is one of the three United Nations food agencies based in Rome. But it is also an international financial institution. Since 1978 we have invested nearly 13 billion dollars in grants and low-interest loans to developing countries. We support projects and directly supervise and evaluate them, but the countries own them. The participation of the communities themselves is also very important.

So is the empowerment of women, who are increasingly the farmers of the developing world, and who produce 45 to 80 per cent of the household food.

Norway is a founding member of IFAD and one of our strongest supporters.

In addition to regular contributions to IFAD’s replenishment it has provided supplementary funding for a variety of innovative programmes.

These include US$22 million to the Bangladesh Grameen Bank project, funding for indigenous peoples in six African countries, and an artisanal fishing project in Mozambique that addresses a wide range of issues, from marine safety to market access to building community organizations that can influence regulation and policy.

These initiatives show a real understanding of how pro-poor development needs to systematically address the range of challenges faced by poor people. Norway also takes a keen interest in the issues of environment, climate change and gender.   

I mentioned before that there was a long period when aid to agriculture was neglected. There are hopeful signs that this is changing. At IFAD, we are glad to observe that there has been renewed commitment to agriculture by donor countries and international institutions. In addition there has been increased funding from emerging economies, and developing countries themselves have mobilized resources for agriculture.

IFAD has a unique position among these partners—and we work with all of them. Partnership has always been an integral part of our strategy.

To date, the programmes IFAD supports have reached more than 370 million people. But more needs to be done. IFAD is currently undergoing the Ninth replenishment of its resources, and one of our central objectives is to scale up projects that work so they can reach more people. Although many countries around the world now find themselves in the midst of financial crisis and fiscal cutbacks, it is our role to demonstrate that cutting back on agriculture and rural development would be a serious mistake.    

The international response

Recent meetings in Rome between the UN food agencies, donors and governments in response to the crisis in the Horn of Africa have underscored the need to match relief with longer-term assistance to agriculture.

The G20, under the leadership of the French presidency, has been deeply involved in these efforts, and clearly has a special role to play. It can promote the sharing of experiences of countries that have successfully raised agricultural supply and created an enabling environment for investment in agriculture, such as Brazil and China. And obviously in areas such as agricultural research and public-private initiatives and forums on agriculture, it has significant strength.

Norway ranks in the top ten OECD countries in terms of net ODA, among much larger countries. It also was one of the first countries to react to the crisis in the Horn of Africa, pledging some $50 million earlier this year.

I mentioned that the world’s food needs will grow by 70 per cent in the coming decades. But over the same period, the total arable area in developing countries may increase by only 12 per cent. With climate change and rising populations, farmers are faced with the need to raise production at a time when all resources, but particularly land and water, are under threat.

This is why we stress the need for sustainable agricultural intensification.

Farmers need to adopt a variety of techniques including conservation agriculture, integration of crop and livestock systems, watershed and landscape management, and integrated pest management, to name a few. Thus, one of the biggest inputs they will need is knowledge, and training in increasingly sophisticated methods. Norway is a major supporter of such efforts. For example, it is financing the largest conservation agriculture programme in Zambia.

I have travelled around the world visiting projects and interacting with people at all levels – from Presidents and Prime Ministers, to Ministers to Project Coordinators, but most importantly of all - poor rural communities of women, men and children - and seeing what people can do when they have access to resources and opportunities. And one lesson that I have learned in my 35 years of professional life is that you can only be truly happy when you can give happiness to your fellow human beings – by contributing to better lives and livelihoods. In my capacity as President of IFAD I feel very privileged that I can make an important difference in this respect.

Development is not just about numbers; it’s about people, life and death. As you go on with your studies and your careers, I hope you will be able to envision your work as contributing to international partnership in development, improving lives of individuals and communities through household and  global food security, and by doing so also enriching your own lives.

Thank you.  I will now take your questions.