Knowledge

IFAD recognizes that small island developing states are different than other developing countries. 

They face constraints that are quite particular to their size, remoteness, insularity and ocean resource base. In the light of a changing world and new challenges faced by rural people living in SIDS, IFAD recently took the opportunity of the Global Conference on Small Island Developing States held in Samoa in 2014 to articulate its lessons learned and current approach to financing investment in rural people in its paper presented at the Conference, IFAD’s approach in Small Island Developing States.

Equitable access to land and tenure security for IFAD’s target groups are essential for rural development and poverty eradication. Tenure security influences the extent to which farmers are prepared to invest in improvements in production and land management. 

Interventions to be scaled-up are in this note are: (i) Recognition and recording of multiple and sometimes overlapping rights in community-level land use, watershed management, territorial, rangeland and forest management planning processes; (ii) Registration of land ownership and use rights; (iii) Equitable land access; (iv) Land conflict resolution and access to judiciary and legal aid and; (v) Civic education and public awareness-raising. 

Smallholder livestock production is largely based on family farming and is key to poor rural people’s livelihoods, food security and employment creation. 

To address food security problems and soaring prices for basic commodities, in December 2008 the European Union launched a Food Facility totalling €1 billion spread over three years, from 2009 to 2011. Under this initiative, the regional programme IFAD-EU-ECOWAS Food Facility was established with a budget of €20 million. The regional programme covers a number of countries in West Africa.

To assure food security and protect the population from recurrent crises, countries dependent on foreign aid for much of their food supply, such as Benin, Mali, Senegal, Côte d’Ivoire and Ghana, have designed strategies and programmes to support food security that are intended to increase food production through the intensification of strategic crops such as rice, cassava, yams and ground nuts, and widespread use of selected seeds and mineral fertilizers.

The Belgian Fund for Food Security (BFFS) was created by the Belgian Parliament in 1983 in response to the more than one million drought- and faminerelated deaths in East Africa. BFFS provides grants to pay for rural development projects, with a focus on food security and nutrition, in some of the poorest countries in Africa, helping extremely poor people to become healthier and more productive and lowering the risk that they will face starvation. 

The International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), a specialized United Nations agency, was established as an international financial institution in 1977 as one of the major outcomes of the 1974 World Food Conference. It is dedicated to eradicating poverty and hunger in rural areas of developing countries. Through low-interest loans and grants, it develops and finances programmes and projects that enable poor rural people to overcome poverty themselves.

What is the International Year of Family Farming? Small family farms are the key to reducing poverty and improving global food security. The United Nations declared 2014 the International Year of Family Farming (IYFF) to recognize the importance of family farming in reducing poverty and improving global food security. The IYFF aims to promote new development policies, particularly at the national but also regional levels, that will help smallholder and family farmers eradicate hunger, reduce rural poverty and continue to play a major role in global food security through small-scale, sustainable agricultural production. 

The IYFF provides a unique opportunity to pave the way towards more inclusive and sustainable approaches to agricultural and rural development that: Recognize the importance of smallholder and family farmers for sustainable development; Place small-scale farming at the centre of national, regional and global agricultural, environmental and social policies; Elevate the role of smallholder farmers as agents for alleviating rural poverty and ensuring food security for all; as stewards who manage and protect natural resources; and as drivers of sustainable development.

The Twa “Pygmy” of the Republic of Burundi are a small minority of around 80,000 people that self-identify as indigenous and are considered as such by the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights and the UN system.