Since the last Rural Poverty Report was published by IFAD in 2001, more than 350 million rural people have lifted themselves out of extreme poverty. Nonetheless as the new report notes that global poverty remains a massive and predominantly rural phenomenon – with 70 percent of the developing world’s 1.4 billion extremely poor people living in rural areas. Key areas of concern are Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia.
Increasingly volatile food prices, the uncertainties and effects of climate change, and a range of natural resource constraints will complicate further efforts to reduce rural poverty, the report says. However the report also emphasizes that profound changes in agricultural markets are giving rise to new and promising opportunities for the developing world’s smallholder farmers to significantly boost their productivity, which will be necessary to ensure enough food for an increasingly urbanized global population estimated to reach at least 9 billion by 2050. Additionally the report states that an increase in investment to in agriculture in rural areas, especially that of sustainable ‘smallholder agriculture’.
The full report can be downloaded here.
The overview is available here.