Global leaders are being urged to increase investment in agriculture in developing countries at the high-level aid forum in Busan this week by a UN agency.

According to the International Fund for Agricultural Development, 75 percent of the world’s poorest people ― a total of 1.4 billion― live in rural areas, depending on agriculture for their livelihoods.

“About two billion people live and work on the world’s 500 million smallholder farms. Most survive on less than $2 a day,” IFAD Vice President Yukiko Omuram said ahead of the Fourth High-Level Forum on Aid Effectiveness where global leaders are setting a new agenda to increase effectiveness of global development. 

“While their concerns are being heard, action is unfortunately still very slow,” she added. “We need a sea-change in investment in agriculture, with significant increases from donors and developing countries alike.”

The agency set up to finance food production in developing countries is calling for a global partnership between civil society, governments, donors and the private sector to use aid more efficiently.

Omura said that while “solid progress” had been made since the Paris Declaration on aid management was endorsed in 2005, the pace of change remains slow.

She added: “Now it is time for donors and their partners in developing countries to take responsibility for accelerating action.

“We will raise attention for the need of a strengthened effort to scale up proven rural development solutions to impact the lives of more people and to further improve aid efficiency and sustainability of interventions.”

She said it was vital to address the underlying problems of soaring food prices, including underinvestment in the agricultural sector.

“The world’s population has now reached 7 billion and we know that half are living in poverty,” said Brian Baldwin, IFAD senior operations management advisor who is also attending the Busan conference which runs from Nov. 29 to Dec. 1.

“We also know that agricultural investment is three times more effective at raising people from poverty than other kinds of investment,” he added.

“One billion people are living on one dollar a day. If we don’t scale up on agricultural investment we know that we will not reach the millennium development goal to halve poverty by 2015.”

By Kirsty Taylor
(kirstyt@heraldcorp.com)