What you communicate is closely linked with what you do. Underlying everyone’s work are the main issues that are at the core of IFAD’s mandate.
Global poverty remains a massive and predominantly rural phenomenon.
Rural areas are rapidly changing – presenting new challenges for people who live there.
Global poverty remains a massive and predominantly rural phenomenon.
- Rural areas are home to 48 per cent of the world’s population – approximately 3.4 billion people.
- According to the most recent estimates, in 2015, 10 per cent of the world’s population or 734 million people lived on less than $1.90 a day. That’s down from nearly 36 per cent or 1.9 billion people in 1990. Most depend on agriculture.
- Current estimates are that nearly 690 million people are hungry, or 8.9 percent of the world
population – up by 10 million people in one year and by nearly 60 million in five years. The number of people affected by severe food insecurity, which is another measure that approximates hunger, shows a similar upward trend. In 2019, close to 750 million
– or nearly one in ten people in the world – were exposed to severe levels of food insecurity - In 2019, 21.3 per cent, or more than one in five children under age 5 worldwide had stunted growth. That said, overall trends are positive. Between 2000 and 2019, stunting prevalence globally declined from 32.4 per cent to 21.3 per cent, and the number of children affected fell from 199.5 million to 144.0 million.
Rural areas are rapidly changing – presenting new challenges for people who live there.
- In many areas, the natural resource base upon which agriculture and other rural livelihoods depend is coming under increasing stress.
- Climate change is reducing water availability, raising temperatures, reducing growing seasons, diminishing arable land, changing pest and disease patterns, and making agriculture more unpredictable.
- While increasing and more volatile global food prices can bring profitable opportunities for small-scale farmers, they can also put pressure on those poor rural people who are net food buyers, with negative impact on nutrition and on social welfare.
- Profound changes in agricultural markets are also bringing opportunity for smallholder farmers and rural agripreneurs.
- Agriculture is and will continue to be the main economic driver in rural economies. Success in agriculture remains a route out of poverty for many rural people, as well as an important first step out of poverty for many others.
- IFAD invests in empowering rural people to reduce poverty, increase food and nutrition security, and strengthen their resilience.
- Since 1978, IFAD has invested more than US$20 billion in grants and low-interest loans to developing countries, reaching about 480 million people to break out of poverty. [Download Boilerplate for latest numbers]
Food loss and waste
Unless we reduce food losses and waste, and shift globally to more sustainable diets, food production will have to increase dramatically to meet demand.
- Around one-third of food produced every year is lost after harvest or wasted.
- In developing countries food waste and losses happen early in the value chain and are generally linked to technical, financial and infrastructure constraints.
- An additional 4 billion people could be fed from existing farmland just by shifting production away from animal feed and biofuels and towards food for direct human consumption.
- $4 billion worth of food is lost every year in sub-Saharan Africa alone.
- Not only is the world population growing, but so is demand for meat and dairy, as India and China adopt more westernized diets.
Smallholder farms
Smallholder farms in developing countries currently feed almost a third of the world’s population, and they produce 80 per cent of the food consumed in the developing world.
- There are more than 570 million family farms in the world, most of them relatively small. They are home to around 380 million farming households.[6]
- Smallholders produce more than 70 per cent of food calories in Latin America, sub-Saharan Africa and South and East Asia on about 30 per cent of the agricultural land; and half of all food calories globally.
- The world’s small farms need long-term investment in infrastructure, such as roads, transport and information technology; access to land and microfinance; and training and education.
- Smallholder farmers manage up to 80 per cent of the farmland in Africa and Asia.
Gender
In most developing countries, rural women play a central role in local food consumption in rural areas.
- Women make up 43 percent of the agricultural labour force in developing countries (ranging from 20 percent in Latin America to 50 per cent in Eastern Asia and sub-Saharan Africa).
- If women had the same access to productive resources as men, they could increase yields on their farms by 20–30 per cent. This could raise total agricultural output in developing countries by 2.5–4 per cent, which could in turn reduce the number of hungry people in the world by 12–17 per cent.
- In many areas, women have grossly inadequate access to secure land tenure, inputs, finance, equipment and market opportunities.
Youth
- Youth populations are projected to continue to increase beyond 2050 in sub-Saharan Africa and to 2030 in South-Central Asia and Middle East and North Africa.
- Youth are more likely to be unemployed than older adults[15] and, other factors being equal, more likely to migrate.
- In Africa, over 60 per cent of the population is currently below the age of 25. Many of these young people live and work in rural towns. Even under the most optimistic scenarios, there are doubts about the potential of urban economies to absorb these young people into waged employment.
Projects and programmes
At the programme and project level, IFAD is:
- Mainstreaming climate change, gender, nutrition, and youth.
- Promoting public private producer partnerships to connect poor rural people at every step of the food value chain.
- Supporting the development of technologies for sustainable intensification of small-scale agriculture.
- Increasing the capacity of financial institutions to provide a range of inclusive services to poor rural people.
- Investing in the capabilities of rural women and men, including young people.
- Capitalizing on opportunities to use renewable energy at the farm and community levels.
Indigenous peoples
- The territories of indigenous peoples are home to 80 per cent of the world's biodiversity.
- Environmental outcomes are found to be far better in territories controlled by indigenous peoples: for example, in the Brazilian Amazon the deforestation rate in indigenous peoples’ territories is less than 10 per cent of those in the rest of the Brazilian Amazon.
- Today, the global indigenous population is estimated at more than 370 million, with recent census data indicating an increase in their numbers.
- In most countries, the poverty rate for indigenous peoples is significantly higher than for the population at large.
Overarching messages
- IFAD is a specialized United Nations agency and international financial institution with more than 40 years of experience in rural transformation.
- Investing in IFAD brings results. The success of our projects and approaches has been validated time and again by external evaluations.
- IFAD-supported projects work to make a long-term difference and help lift people out of poverty. We work in difficult situations, including conflict-affected areas, and with marginalized and disenfranchised populations.
- IFAD seeks to influence policy at the national and the international level for the benefit of smallholders and the landless. We also work to build the capacity of the farmers themselves to engage in policy processes, for example through the Farmers’ Forum.
- Partnership is the heart of our work. The governments of Member States own and implement the projects that we support. We work hand-in-hand with poor rural people and their organizations, United Nations agencies, international financial institutions, NGOs and the private sector.
- New solutions to the challenges facing smallholders are knowledge-intensive. IFAD is committed to developing innovations and sharing knowledge on rural poverty.
- IFAD is committed to transparency and accountability in all our programmes, as well as in our internal and external communications.