Release number IFAD/12/08

February 13, 2008 - The President of IFAD, Lennart Båge, has called on the international community to increase investment in sustainable, smallholder agriculture to end poverty and fight climate change.

Despite urbanization, the majority of the world’s poorest people live in rural areas and are dependent on agriculture.

Hundreds of millions of smallholder farmers and herders in Africa, Asia and Latin America live in marginal areas and are at serious risk from degradation and desertification.

“I call upon the international community to invest in smallholder farmers to help them to address the triple scourge of poverty, climate change and rising food prices.  Their lives – and our common future – depend on it.” Båge told delegates from 164 member nations at the UN agency’s 31st Governing Council

“Poor rural people are often powerless but they are not irrelevant,” said Båge. “How they manage their land matters to us all. Whether or not they store or release carbon will depend on the opportunities they have and the incentives they are offered. We can help them to become part of the solution.”

Government spending on agriculture in most poor countries has fallen dramatically over the past 30 years. Development aid for the sector fell from 18% of all aid in 1979 to 2.9% in 2006. Concerns about climate change make it even more urgent that governments put funds into sustainable development in rural areas.

“Those least responsible for the problem will be those first and hardest hit,” said Båge. “Put simply, the price of development just went up. Substantial and additional money will be needed to help poor countries adapt to climate change and make our investments “climate-proof”, he said.

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IFAD was created 30 years ago to tackle rural poverty, a key consequence of the droughts and famines of the early 1970s. Since 1978, IFAD has invested more than US$10 billion in low-interest loans and grants that have helped more than 300 million very poor rural women and men increase their incomes and provide for their families.
IFAD is an international financial institution and a specialized United Nations agency. It is a global partnership of OECD, OPEC and other developing countries. Today, IFAD supports more than 200  programmes and projects in 84 developing countries.