المعرفة

A severe food crisis currently threatens southern Sudan. In East Africa, where millions of people already are dependent on food aid, a sharp rise in the cost of staple crops looms. These are just the latest sources of concern in a turbulent period that began two years ago when food shortages hit many countries in Africa and Asia due to a worldwide spike in prices. Higher food prices meant that poor people, already struggling to meet basic human needs, were pushed deeper into poverty. On its heels came the global financial crisis, which also hit the poorest the hardest. Agriculture is the main employer, job creator and export in most developing countries. Historically, agriculture has driven economic performance in many countries, generating growth that has been shown to be at least twice as effective in reducing poverty as growth in other sectors. Investment in agricultural and rural development is therefore vital to food security and sustainable economic development.

IFAD’s goal is that rural women and men in developing countries are empowered to achieve higher incomes and improved food security at the household level. In this way it will contribute to the achievement of Millennium Development Goal #1: “The eradication of extreme poverty”. (IFAD, Strategic Framework 2007-2010)

Since IFAD began operations in 1978, it has supported, as part of its mandate to reduce poverty, many rural development programmes in which indigenous peoples have played an important role as stakeholders. 

Recent years have witnessed a renewed interest in public and private-sector investment in agriculture. Concerns about longer-term food and energy security and expectations of increasing returns from agriculture underpin much recent agricultural investment. Some have welcomed this trend as a bearer of new livelihood opportunities in lower- and middle-income countries. Others have raised concerns about the possible social impacts, including loss of local rights to land, water and other natural resources; threats to local food security; and, more generally, the risk that large-scale investments may marginalise family farmers. The recent debates about “land grabbing” – the media characterisation of large-scale farmland acquisitions in lower- and middle-income countries – illustrate these trends and positions.