المعرفة

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. 

The objective of IFAD Decision Tools for Rural Finance is to provide decision-making support for the IFAD country programme managers (CPMs), consultants, project staff and technical advisers who develop and implement rural finance projects. Built on the IFAD Rural Finance Policy (RFP) (IFAD 2009), as well as other good practice guides, this knowledge management tool is designed to help identify and answer the questions that arise in each rural finance project, provide background on key issues, define common terms, highlight risks and opportunities, and provide references for further investigation. 

Risk is inherent in agriculture. Farmers face a variety of market and production risks that make their incomes unstable and unpredictable from year to year.

There are 1.4 billion extremely poor people in the world, living on
less than US$1.25 a day. About 1 billion of these men, women and
children live in the rural areas of developing countries.
Nearly 2 billion rural people live on less than US$2 a day. Most are
smallholder farmers and their families, who depend on agriculture for
their livelihoods.
Today, they must cope with rapid and unprecedented changes. Climate
change, a growing world population, and volatile food and energy
prices are pushing more people into extreme poverty and hunger.
For the first time in human history, the number of hungry people has
passed 1 billion. On top of this, tens of millions more people are
expected to go hungry by 2020 as a result of climate change.