G20 Agriculture Ministers Meeting, First Plenary Session

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Your Excellencies,

Colleagues,
More than 80 percent of all farms globally are small than two hectares. Family farms produce more than 80 percent of the world’s food in value terms. Yet most smallholders receive only 6.5 cents for every dollar’s worth of food they produce.

This lack of return reduces the productivity of rural entrepreneurs and small-scale producers and contributes to inequalities and waste. Tonight, one in 11 will go to bed hungry. Yet 13% of all food produced will go to waste. This level of inefficiency cannot be tolerated: it is a sign of a broken system. And it is deeply unsustainable.

At IFAD, we invest in smallholder food producers, so they can build viable businesses whether they farm the land or fish the water.

It is market access that allows smallholder farmers to become small business owners – and builds the resilience of whole communities.

The vast majority of poor and vulnerable people in the world are smallholder food producers. They live in the rural communities most at risk of hunger, poverty, and forced migration – but with the right investments they are the best positioned to build the prosperous, cohesive rural economies that will encourage young people to stay home on the land or water.

IFAD is focused on developing partnership and innovative financial solutions to improve business conditions for smallholder food producers. We assemble finance from various sources - public and private - and over the next three years, will invest up to ten billion dollars to foster rural development, including through initiatives to improve market access.

G20 support, including through the Global Alliance Against Hunger and Poverty, is critical in contributing to coordinated, consistent, and targeted investments and policies.

Distinguished friends,

As the world’s only International Financial Institution and UN agency dedicated solely to investing in rural people, IFAD understands the power of innovative solutions to drive sustainability.

IFAD champions market-based solutions like those that fairly compensate small-scale farmers for ecosystem services. We invest in better weather information systems, easier access to insurance, and climate-smart farming.

And we will continue to build strong public-private-producer partnerships to build the infrastructure needed, reduce market risks, and address unequal market power. And we count on your support to do so.

Friends,

Food security is the baseline for peace and security, gender equality and prosperity. Healthy, sustainable food systems are the first entry point for delivering on these global aspirations – and the entirety of the SDGs.

It is time to break the vicious cycle of crisis and hunger. There will be no peace, no equality, no shared prosperity until we do.

Thank you.