Press release No.: IFAD/07/09

In tough economic times, IFAD “a crucial ally of smallholder farmers”, says Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon

Rome, 18 February 2009 – The 32nd session of IFAD’s Governing Council opened today in Rome with appeals for greater investment in agriculture as a response to the steep economic downturn and as a driver for economic growth in the world’s poorest nations.

In a message to the Council, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, said more effort is needed to help the most vulnerable people in developing nations.

“We must also contribute to longer-term global food and nutrition security by building resilience to challenges and crises, including climate change, that endanger the hard-fought development gains we have achieved,” the Secretary-General said.

“During these difficult times, IFAD’s membership has responded to the effective reforms the Fund has undertaken and recognized the Fund’s crucial role by agreeing to the largest replenishment of resources in IFAD’s history,” he said.

The Secretary-General noted that in this time of economic crisis IFAD remains “a crucial ally of the world’s smallholder farmers’’.

The Governing Council, IFAD’s highest decision-making authority, brings together representatives of the agency’s 165 Member States.

Addressing the opening session, Paulo Bernardo Silva, Minister of Planning, Budget and Management for Brazil, said now more than ever fighting poverty must be put at the top of the international agenda.

“Despite the unprecedented dimension of the actions taken by governments in response to the economic crisis, it is clear that the instruments to tackle this must be structural and the changes much deeper,” he said. 

“It is vital that human beings, as well as production and economic growth, become once again the central focus for policy-makers.”

Nicola Cosentino, Under Secretary of State at the Italian Ministry of Economy and Finance, said last year’s food crisis revealed that the issue of food security is one that touches public opinion.

“In difficult moments, solidarity towards the poorest must increase and we are here today to confirm our commitments and our responsibilities,” he said.

“Food security must be guaranteed through measures that can eliminate malnutrition and to achieve this goal agricultural productivity must be increased,” Cosentino noted.

Addressing his final Governing Council, IFAD President Lennart Båge underlined the need to re-engage with agriculture, where investment has declined steadily over the past two decades.

He said the food and fuel price volatility today presents an ongoing challenge for the world’s most vulnerable peoples.  

“The stark fact is that long-term supply is not keeping pace with demand,” he said, underlining that “bad weather in any major producing area, or other temporary factors, will easily lead to a spike in food prices”.

While the worldwide demand for food is expected to jump 50 per cent by 2030, agricultural productivity – which grew at 4-5 per cent in the 1970s and the early 1980s – has dipped to between 1-2 per cent today.

Boosting production “requires increased political attention and much greater investment in the whole agricultural value chain”  Båge added.

In a statement read on his behalf, Jacques Diouf, Director-General of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, called for a ‘new world food order’.

“A consolidated and sustained global partnership is required to bring together governments, multilateral and regional institutions, private sector, civil society and non-governmental organization actors to act coherently and collaboratively,” Diouf said.

World Food Programme Executive Director, Josette Sheeran, warned that last year’s food crisis is far from over “as long-term drivers of high prices, such as climate change, lack of investment in agriculture and fuel production, as well as rising rates of food consumption will continue”.

Paying tribute to the outgoing President of IFAD, Sheeran said Båge had been “a leading voice for coherent action on food, based on country-led strategies’’.

With Båge completing the final of his two four-year terms,the Governing Council will also elect a new President.

International experts are bringing their knowledge to the Governing Council in three Round Table debates on food security and price volatility, access to land, and research and innovation as tools to help smallholder farmers counter climate change.

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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$10.6 billion in low-interest loans and grants that have helped over approximately 350 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 close to 250 programmes and projects in 87 developing countries and one territory.