Études et dossiers

When we look at the world today, we see impressive gains as well as daunting challenges. The Millennium Development Goal target of halving extreme poverty rates was met at the global level five years ahead of the 2015 deadline. There are now more than 100 middle-income countries, as diverse as Brazil, Lesotho and Vanuatu. It is estimated that developing countries’ share of the global middle-class population will rise from 55 per cent today to 78 per cent by 2025. 

However, amid rising affluence in some countries and regions, there is also growing inequality. In 2015, there will still be 970 million people living in poverty – the vast majority of them in South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa. And there remain 842 million chronically undernourished people in the world. Volatile commodity prices bring hunger to the poorest, and instability to markets and societies. Climate change and environmental degradation throw long shadows over all of humanity’s gains. Against this background, we must confront the question of how humankind is going to continue to feed and sustain itself in the future.

This coming year could determine not only whether the world rises to the considerable challenges now facing it—climate change, persistent hunger, increasing inequality, stubborn poverty—but also affecting the fate of generations to come. With a growing population that will exceed 9 billion by 2050, the increasing effects of climate change, a widening gap between rich and poor, and growing competition for resources, the major issues facing humanity cannot wait. Deliberation must give way to deliberate action.

But the global political will to eradicate extreme poverty, hunger and malnutrition within a generation, and the conviction that this is achievable, are growing. An ambitious agenda is emerging in the process of identifying post-2015 development goals. It aims to end poverty everywhere in all its forms, and to end hunger and achieve food security. And it plans to do so sustainably. This would perhaps be one of the greatest steps ever taken to secure the future of humanity and the life of the planet.

This policy reinforces IFAD’s position as a leader in promoting gender equality and women’s empowerment in agricultural and rural development. It builds on IFAD’s experience and achievements in field operations and in the broader policy arena in promoting gender equality and women’s empowerment. The policy will provide IFAD with strategic guidance in systematizing, intensifying and scaling up its efforts to close gender gaps and improve the economic and social status of rural women in rapidly changing rural environments. 

Land is fundamental to the lives of poor rural people. It is a source of food, shelter, income and social identity.

Secure access to land reduces vulnerability to hunger and poverty. But for many of the world’s poor rural people in developing countries, access is becoming more tenuous than ever. 

The Indigenous Peoples Assistance Facility (IPAF)1 finances small projects designed and implemented directly by indigenous peoples’ communities and their organizations. The projects are selected through global calls for proposals, based on a competitive process. In managing the IPAF when it was established in 2007, IFAD realized that the Facility was not only a grant-making mechanism, but it also contained a wealth of knowledge derived from the project proposals themselves. With its limited funding, the IPAF can support only a small number of these proposals. Thus, a knowledge-harvesting mechanism was set up with funding from the Initiative for Mainstreaming Innovation (IMI). 

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.

This report proceeds from the Global Forum on Remittances held in Bangkok, Thailand in 2013.

IFAD sees smallholder farmers as more than just victims of climate change: they are a vital part of the solution to the ‘wicked’ climate change problem.