IFAD report urges agric investment in rural areas

Areport released yesterday by the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) said governments need to tailor policies and agricultural investments to transform rural areas in developing countries if they want to eliminate poverty.

IFAD’s Rural Development Report 2016 calls on governments to win the global war against poverty.

Nigerian born Dr. Kanayo F. Nwanze, the President of IFAD, said the report placed the rural sector into the bigger picture of development.

“It demonstrates the need for a far more comprehensive and holistic approach to the economy to ensure prosperity for millions of rural people who are farmers,” Nwanze said, reiterating that the “Rural Development Report” marked a change in perspective as it reinforces IFAD’s view, based on 40 years of experience, that investing in agriculture and rural development means investing in the whole economy.

The focus on rural and agricultural development is critical, says the report, because the incomes of 2.5 billion people worldwide still depend directly on rural small farms which produce 80 per cent of food consumed in Asia and sub-Saharan Africa.

Some of the report’s findings indicate that majority of countries that have sustained a rapid transition out of poverty diversified their economies and advanced their agricultural sectors.

The report also noted that agriculture remained vital for economic development regardless of the stage of structural transformation. Leaders need to expand and deepen agriculture-based rural economies with investments in developing modern agro-industries, it said.

It stressed that availability of finance and financial services is critical to the long-lasting transformation of rural livelihoods, yet two billion people globally lack access to regulated financial services and 73 per cent of poor people do not have bank accounts.

Findings for countries showed that most African countries continue to wrestle with a growing youth population, small and declining manufacturing sectors, and deeply entrenched development barriers. Recent increases in agricultural productivity came not from advancing technology, but from bringing more land under cultivation.

In China, India, the Philippines and Viet Nam, land reform, basic investments in rural areas and other sectoral policies have been decisive factors in rural transformation, it added.

The IFAD report brings together leading researchers to analyse the experiences of rural development in over 60 developing countries.