Rome, 17 December 2010 – Progress in reducing extreme poverty in the world’s rural areas must be accelerated in order to ensure global food security over the next several decades, according to development experts who gathered in Rome today to mark the launch of the International Fund for Agricultural Development’s (IFAD) Rural Poverty Report 2011.

The experts participated in a high-level panel discussion convened by IFAD at the Tempio di Adriano to explore the themes covered in the report, which outlines a number of key challenges in reducing rural poverty, including increasingly volatile food prices and the uncertainties of climate change.  At the same time, the report argues that profound changes in agricultural markets are giving rise to new and promising opportunities for the developing world’s farmers to significantly boost their productivity.

Maximizing those opportunities will be critical to the success of efforts to further reduce the rate of extreme poverty in rural areas, which IFAD’s report shows has fallen from 48 per cent to 34 per cent over the past decade.  Some 350 million people, primarily in East Asia, have lifted themselves out of extreme poverty during that time, according to the report.

At the same time, the report points to an alarming increase in the numbers of rural poor in rural areas of Sub-Saharan Arica, and the persistence of rural poverty in South Asia, which is home to half the world’s 1 billion extremely poor rural people.

Opening the event was IFAD President Kanayo F. Nwanze, who presented an overview of the themes and recommendations stated in the Rural Poverty Report. “We know that smallholder agriculture can spur economic growth in developing countries and lift millions out of poverty, but only if it is market-oriented, profitable and environmentally sustainable,” he said.

"While the recent increase in the volatility of food prices has brought with it new challenges, increased demand for food and higher prices also bring new opportunities for farmers to produce more and work their way out of poverty," said one of the panellists, Hafez Ghanem, Assistant Director-General of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. "We need to help them seize these new opportunities by investing in infrastructure and rural services and helping them to acquire new skills and abilities."

Another panellist, Uma Lele, an agricultural economist and former senior advisory to the World Bank, stressed that the speed of globalization and rapid changes in agricultural markets have challenged the rural poor. “In addition, development aid has become increasingly unpredictable in recent decades, and the rural sector has been underrepresented,” she said. “What we need is to promote greater stability and predictability of investment, both public and private, in this area.” 

Also participating in the discussion was John Sender, Emeritus Professor of Economics, School of Oriental and African Studies at the University of London, who emphasized the importance of focusing on wage labor in generating economic development in rural areas, and Kevin Cleaver, Associate Vice-President for Programmes at IFAD, who offered further analysis of the themes raised in the Rural Poverty Report.

The panel discussion was moderated by Marta Dassù, Director General for International Activities at the Aspen Institute Italia.

Closing speaker at the event was Ambassador Giampiero Massolo, Secretary General of the Ministry of Foreign Affaire for the Government of Italy.  “Italy pushes the G20 to make food security the central issue on the global agenda. IFAD's work is fundamental in reaching this goal,” he said.

The event was attended by more than 150 people representing IFAD member states, key agencies in the Government of Italy, Rome-based United Nations organizations, and non-governmental organizations.

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Press release No.: IFAD/80/2010

The International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) works with poor rural people to enable them to grow and sell more food, increase their incomes and determine the direction of their own lives. Since 1978, IFAD has invested over US$12 billion in grants and low-interest loans to developing countries, empowering more than 360 million people to break out of poverty. IFAD is an international financial institution and a specialized UN agency based in Rome – the UN’s food and agricultural hub. It is a unique partnership of 165 members from the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), other developing countries and the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).