Press release No.: IFAD/44/08

Rome, 23 September 2008 - Speaking at the UN yesterday at a high-level event in New York on ¨A Response to the World Food Crisis Smallholder Agriculture, Food security and Rural Development in Africa¨, the IFAD President Lennart Båge said that the current crisis could be transformed into an opportunity, to create ‘a new day’ for agriculture.    

The crisis demands an urgent response he told the gathering, held by the Rome-based UN agencies, in partnership with UNDP, UN-NGLS and the Earth Institute of Columbia University and with the Republic of Malawi.

“The plans and the systems are in place.  What is urgently needed now are the funds to implement the plans” he said.

Opened by the UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, the event brought together high-level officials of member states, heads of UN agencies, civil society organizations and farmers’ groups to discuss how the international community is responding to the current food price crisis, in particular through support for smallholder agriculture and rural development in Africa.

Last year saw an unprecedented rapid rise in food prices and in July, global food prices were more than 80 per cent higher than they had been three years earlier. Over that period prices have almost doubled in nominal terms and real prices have risen dramatically. 

Africa is at the centre of the food price crisis and agriculture must be central to resolving it, the IFAD president noted.

“Farmers are a key part of the solution.  We have seen from projects on the ground that when farmers are involved from the start, the end results are better” Mr Båge said.  

Small-scale farms provide up to 80 per cent of African agricultural production. In sub-Saharan Africa, agriculture provides as much as 70 per cent of jobs, most of which are in smallholder farming. Over 50 per cent of IFAD’s development projects are in Africa.    

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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 over 400 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 85 developing countries and one territory.