What is rural poverty?

• One billion of the world's 1.2 billion poor people live in rural areas

• Rural poverty is lack of food, clean and safe water, sanitation, housing, healthcare, education, social security, dignity, autonomy, productive assets and work opportunities, aggravated by gender and ethnic inequalities

• Compared with the non-poor, mortality rates are twice as high for poor men, three times as high for poor women, and three-to-five times as high for poor children

• The children of the poor are most likely to constitute the poor of the next generation

IFAD's approach to poverty eradication

• The Fund targets its resources to increasing food production in the poor food-deficit countries and finances agricultural development projects, primarily for food production.

• IFAD's beneficiaries are the poorest of the world's poor people: small farmers, the rural landless, nomadic pastoralists, artisanal fisherfolk, indigenous people and - across all groups - poor rural women

• The Fund is committed to promoting the economic advancement of the rural poor, mainly by improving the productivity of farm activities through a participatory, grass-roots approach

• IFAD identifies the needs of the rural poor, builds on their own knowledge and skills, and promotes successful rural livelihoods and better resource management.

Eradicating Poverty in a Changing World

Syria:

Helping people to move back to their land from the cities- A major concern for the Syrian Government's agricultural policy is the presence of rocks derived from volcanic lava flows that limit cultivation, particularly in the south of the country. An IFAD project set out to address the problem, and followed up with assisting the farmers to adopt improved and sustainable farming methods.

Radwan Al Sawal, from the Kuneitra province, and a father of ten, was living in Damascus and working in a plastic factory. ''I left my land here for twenty years. It was rocky and barren, but when I heard about the de-rocking process, I applied to have my land reclaimed. I came back to cultivation and now the land is very good. I can breed livestock and grow crops, so I have several sources of income; even the weather is better than in the city. More than a hundred farmers have come back from working in Damascus to this village. I want my children to settle on the land in the future.''

India:

Women are too often victims of poverty. They have less access to and control over land, credit, technology, education and health services in rural areas.

An IFAD project mobilized women into self-help groups and gave them access to microfinance. This has led to important changes in social patterns and norms: women have become more independent economically and their decision-making role in their family has increased.

KUPPAMA comes from a small village in Tamil Nadu, India; she was a destitute agricultural labourer with minimal wages and has suffered from dowry payment, female infanticide and domestic violence. ''When I was 20 years' old my husband left me with three children to take care of. I joined a group of women who were pooling their earnings together in a common fund to provide loans for emergencies.'' Saving regularly to build up her credit worthiness, she eventually became eligible for a loan that enabled her to buy land and livestock and also to send her children to the local village school. ''Now my husband wants to come back to me!''

Mexico:

Until their productive potential is recognized and supported, no genuine development of women is possible. La Negrita is one of the many initiatives that arose from an IFAD project in the semi-desert Ixtlera Region. The project benefits 42,000 families who depended on the production and processing of ixtle for the manufacture of industrial brushes and sacks. The project has helped them raise their income through the establishment of new irrigation systems and the creation of micro-enterprises.

OFELIA LOPEZ lives in San Luis de Potosi, in northern Mexico where she has opened a restaurant with 16 other local women. ''I have never had a paid job before this one. Now we serve a hundred meals a day, and earn good money.'' The clientele is made up largely of truck drivers, who are well known for being choosy and have a wide choice of restaurants. At La Negrita Restaurant, they get a tasty meal for half of what other local establishments charge.

Tanzania:

A clean, safe water supply is essential to live free from fear of water borne diseases. In the rural zone of Dodoma only a quarter of the people had access to potable water. A Belgian Survival Fund (BSF) grant was provided through IFAD for a project to bring water and health services to the villages.

Beatrice is from the village of Bahi in the Dodoma region of Tanzania. She is 39 years old and has seven children. Last year her husband died from an intestinal infection (a likely cause is contaminated water). ''This borewell in the village has changed our lives. Before we had this, I used to set off at dawn to walk about four km to the nearest place to get water. '' Beatrice would then walk back under the hot sun carrying 20 kilos of water on her head. The borewells have not only brought potable water to the village, but time is available for other activities: the morning in the fields, the afternoon selling the local beer, choya to other members of the community.

The Rural Poverty Report 2001

Will be an essential reference work for raising issues and promote awareness on rural poverty for:

• Development practitioners
• Academicians
• Civil Society Organisations
• Decision makers
• Community leaders and
• All those concerned with issues of world inequalities of wealth and rural poverty

What can be done about rural poverty?

IFAD Rural Poverty Report 2001 emphasizes:

• That empowerment of the rural poor through access to productive resources - such as land, water, knowledge, technology and credit - in addition to influence within decision-making institutions remains fundamental to rural poverty reduction.
• That effective solutions to rural poverty must focus on the agricultural sector.
• That economic growth alone will not halve dollar poverty by 2015. · That in some countries the inequalities are so great, redistributive measures such as market based land reform will be required to empower the poor.
• That women and men experience poverty differently. Therefore effectively targeting women in development projects requires a gender approach.