Recursos

Improved Learning Initiative for the design of a Participatory Impact Assessment & Learning Approach (PIALA) in Viet Nam.

This Focus Note introduces some recent developments in this rapidly changing space. The featured case studies (i) identify traditional pain points in serving smallholder farmers (such as the cost and risk of making payments to farmers and delivering subsidized credit), (ii) discuss how DFS are being used to overcome these pain points, and (iii) highlight some initial obstacles and successes.

The objective of this Annual Progress Report is to review the activities of the Platform for Agricultural Risk Management (PARM) during its first year of life or, more precisely, thirteen months since its launch in December 2013.

In 2014, Kenya was newly classified as a lower-middle-income country, with financial services and infrastructure expected to drive growth of 5 to 6 percent annually over the next five years. At the same time, the country is still in protracted crisis, with recurrent natural disasters, conflict, severe drought and hunger affecting livelihoods. Overall, about 10 million Kenyans suffer from chronic food insecurity and poor nutrition. Recurring drought means that a larger number of people in a growing population are unable to meet their food needs. Good seasons between droughts are increasingly rare, making it difficult for households to recover from crisis to crisis. Severe land degradation, primarily caused by deforestation, unsuitable agricultural practices and flooding, has had a negative impact on agricultural production.

Among the world’s developing regions, Asia and the Pacific region has witnessed the deepest and fastest structural transformation. The Green Revolution that began in the 1960s spurred the rapid spread of improved varieties of cereal crops, accompanied by public investments in and policy support to the agricultural sector. As a result, productivity of wheat and rice increased dramatically, stimulating economic growth and reducing rural poverty. In the following decades, and especially since 2000, the structural transformation further accelerated, leading to a declined share of the sector in both output and GDP and, to a lesser extent, in the total employment. Facilitated by a conducive institutional and policy environment, the process brought about a more diversified, market-oriented and high-value agricultural production; the expansion of food processing, agribusiness, food retailing and exports; and increased domestic and international competitiveness of agriculture – albeit with country and subregional differences. Nevertheless, poverty, deprivation and hunger remain widespread. Two thirds of the world’s poor and hungry people live in the region, mostly in rural environments. Income inequality has been rising fast in a number of countries, especially between urban and rural areas, with adverse effects on poverty reduction and increased risk of social conflict and political instability. Moreover, the countries and subregions are at different stages of the structural transformation process. In most developing economies, labour productivity in agriculture is still low and the shift of the agricultural workforce to other sectors is yet to take place. Therefore, agriculture remains a critical livelihood option and the largest employer sector for most rural people. 

Conozca los resultados y el impacto del FIDA leyendo el Informe Anual 2013. En él se relatan asimismo las historias de las mujeres y hombres de las zonas rurales en los que el Fondo invierte, y se describen las dificultades con que se enfrentan y sus logros. En el Informe se detalla la labor del FIDA a fin de que las necesidades de las comunidades rurales figuren siempre entre las cuestiones prioritarias de los programas de desarrollo internacionales, ya que el 76 por ciento de las personas más pobres del mundo vive en zonas rurales. En él se ofrecen, además, los datos y cifras que el Fondo comunica periódicamente a sus Estados miembros y asociados.

The International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) has undergone a transformation in recent years, adapting itself to an environment more complex and challenging than at any other point in its history: persistent hunger and food insecurity; rising and more volatile food prices; floods, droughts and the ever-more apparent effects of climate change; increasing competition for land; global financial crisis; and a growing human population that has surpassed 7 billion.

In 2001, the Global Environment Facility (GEF) Council approved the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) as an executing agency under its policy of expanded opportunities for executing agencies. 

MPAT was originally developed in China and India. In China, iterative testing was conducted in 2008 in order to refine and improve the draft Household and Village Surveys. After five rounds of testing in China and India, the project team felt that the surveys and indicators were sufficiently developed to warrant a large-scale pilot in both countries.

In China, the pilot was conducted in the context of an ongoing IFAD-supported project in Gansu Province in China’s arid north. The data from the pilots in China and India (see also Box 2 and Box 3) were then shared with the European Commission’s Joint Research Centre so they could conduct an independent evaluation of MPAT. Results from a pilot village in China are presented, together with a photo of farmers planting seeds below.

This publication illustrates IFAD’s experience in closing the gender gap and mobilizing the ‘gender advantage’ in climate change adaptation through ten case studies from across the world.