Investing in agriculture is not enough to reduce poverty because the rural poor are often engaged in multiple economic activities. While pro-poor growth starts with agriculture, reducing rural poverty requires increasing the productivity of small-scale agriculture, creating jobs, fostering economic diversification and investing in people.
Investing in agriculture is not enough to reduce poverty because the rural poor are often engaged in multiple economic activities. While pro-poor growth starts with agriculture, reducing rural poverty requires increasing the productivity of small-scale agriculture, creating jobs, fostering economic diversification and investing in people.
That was one of the views expressed during Monday’s Side Event on “Policies for Effective Rural Transformation, Agricultural and Food System Transition”, held as part of this week’s session of the Committee on World Food Security in Rome. Mr. Henri-Bernard Solignac-Lecomte, from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), was one of the panelists at the event. He told the audience there that a new rural development paradigm is being rolled out for developing countries, one that will be multi-sectoral, focusing not just on agriculture, but on rural industry and services and rural-urban linkages.
The approach will involve not just national governments, but also local and regional governments, the private sector, international donors, NGOs and rural communities. It includes a menu of 25 policy tools which offer opportunities for rural development in the 21th century.
A consistent and robust strategy is not enough if implementation capacity is weak, however. It is important for an effective development strategy to build governance capacity and integrity at all levels.
Although agriculture remains a fundamental sector in developing countries and should be targeted by rural policy, rural development strategies should also promote off-farm activities and employment generation in the industrial and service sectors.
Improving both soft and hard infrastructure to reduce transaction costs, strengthen rural-urban linkages, and build capability is a key part of rural areas and with secondary cities, as well as in access to education and health services.
Rural livelihoods are highly dependent on the performance of urban centers –or their labour markets - access to goods, services and new technologies and exposure to new ideas. Successful rural development strategies do not treat rural areas as isolated entities, but rather as part of a system made up of both rural and urban areas.
Rural development strategies should not only address poverty and inequality, but also facilitate demographic transitions. High fertility rates and rapidly ageing population are two of the most relevant challenges faced by rural areas in developing countries today. Although the policy implications of these two issues are different, addressing these challenges will require planning.
Addressing environmental sustainability in rural development strategies should not be limited to the high dependence of rural populations on natural resources for livelihoods and growth, but also their vulnerability to climate change and threats from energy, food and water scarcity.
Improving rural livelihoods should take into account the critical role of women in rural development, including their property rights and their ability to control and deploy resources.
For example, according to FAO’s report on the State of Food and Agriculture 2010-11, “if women farmers had the same access to productive resources as men farmers, world hunger would be reduced by 100 to 150 million people.”
Blogpost by Melano Dadalauri, #CFS43 Social Reporter – melano.dadalauri(at)yahoo.com
This post is part of the live coverage during the 43rd Session of the Committee on World Food Security (CFS), a project GFAR is running in collaboration with CFS. Melano Dadalauri is one of five YPARD members who was fully sponsored by GFAR to participate in the GFAR social media bootcamp and to attend CFS as a social reporter from 17-21 October 2016.
Picture: Farmer inspects failed corn crops in Mauritania (Courtesy: Pablo Tosco/Oxfam)
