Report says industrialized countries urgently need to do more to help poor farmers adapt to climate change
If the world is committed to reducing poverty and achieving sustainable economic growth, the powers of using agriculture for development must be unleashed, the World Bank said Friday.
Promoting agriculture, the bank said in its World Development Report, is essential for meeting the Millennium Development Goal of reducing poverty and hunger by half by 2015 and continuing to do so for several decades thereafter.
"A dynamic `agriculture for development agenda can benefit the estimated 900 million rural people in the developing world who live on less than $1 a day, most of whom are engaged in agriculture," said Robert Zoellick, the banks new president.
"We need to give agriculture more prominence across the board," he said.
Last week in a speech outlining his strategy for the bank after 100 days in office, Zoellick said economic growth from agriculture benefits the poorest countries four times more than growth in other sectors of an economy.
"We need a 21st Century Green Revolution designed for the special and diverse needs of Africa," he said, "sparked by greater investment in technological research and dissemination, sustainable land management, agricultural supply chains and policies that strengthen market opportunities."
The report, titled "Agriculture for Development," said the rich countries need to reform policies that harm the poor.
For example, it is vital that the United States reduce cotton subsidies, which depress prices for African farmers.
In the emerging area of biofuels, the report said, the problem is both restrictive tariffs and heavy subsidies in rich countries, which drive up food prices and limit export opportunities for efficient developing countries.
The report also asserts that industrialized countries that were the
major contributors to global warming urgently need to do more to help
poor farmers adapt their production systems to climate change.
The bank identifies agricultures contribution to rural people in three
types of societies: agriculture-based countries, transforming countries
and urbanized countries.
In agricultural-based countries, the agricultural sector is
essential to overall growth, poverty reduction and food security. Most
of these countries are in Sub-Saharan Africa, where agriculture employs
62 percent of the population and generates 32 percent of gross domestic
product growth.
In transforming countries such as China, India and Morocco, agriculture
contributes on average only 7 percent of GDP growth, but lagging rural
incomes spur social and political tensions.
In urbanized countries, mainly in Latin America and the Caribbean and
Eastern Europe and Central Asia, agriculture contributed just 5 percent
of GDP growth. However, rural areas still are home to 45 percent of the
poor and agribusiness and food service account for as much as one-third
of GDP.
The bank said that while 75 percent of the worlds poor live in rural
areas, only 4 percent of government foreign aid goes to agriculture in
developing countries.
For its part, the World Bank intends to continue increasing its support
for agriculture after a decline in lending in the 1980s and 1990s.
Commitments in the fiscal year that ended July 1 reached $3.1 billion,
marking an increase for the fourth straight year.
Pathways out of poverty open to the rural poor by agriculture include
small farming, animal husbandry, employment in the "new agriculture" of
high-value products and entrepreneurship and jobs in the rural, nonfarm
economy, the report said.
Write a comment