The agri­cul­ture arm of the United Nations says that funds for farm­ing sup­port has increased despite the global reces­sion. The U. N. Inter­na­tional Fund for Agri­cul­tural Devel­op­ment says they now have a 1.2 bil­lion dol­lar bud­get to sup­port small farmers.

From Reuters Alert Net, reporter Muchena Zigomo inter­views the head of the IFAD, Kanayo Nwanze.

“On the con­trary, the food cri­sis of 2007/08 brought back agri­cul­ture on the agenda, and there seems to be a feel­ing that agri­cul­ture is one of the ways out of this eco­nomic cri­sis,” Nwanze told Reuters in an interview.

“We’ve just com­pleted, in Decem­ber, our replen­ish­ment for the 2010–2012 cycle and our mem­bers increased their pledges by 67 per­cent, so we’re going to be able to move our port­fo­lio to about $1 bil­lion to $1.2 bil­lion per year from about $700-$750 mil­lion per year,” he said.

He said due to IFAD’s abil­ity to co-finance projects with the World Bank and other mul­ti­lat­eral lenders, a total of about $7.5 bil­lion would be avail­able for small-scale farm­ers over the next three years.

Small sub­sis­tence farm­ers around the world have been hard hit by bal­loon­ing prices of seed and fer­tiliser, threat­en­ing bil­lions of peo­ple with hunger. IFAD says small farms feed up to 2 bil­lion peo­ple, about a third of the global population.

Nwanze said small­holder farms in Africa — which account for 95 per­cent of the continent’s agri­cul­tural out­put — are among the worst affected by the price spikes.

“If we are able to increase sup­port for small-scale farm­ers on this con­ti­nent, then I think many coun­tries (in Africa) will achieve (eco­nomic) growth and get on the road to end­ing poverty,” he said.

“We have sta­tis­tics from the World Bank to show that invest­ment in agri­cul­ture is 2–4 times more effec­tive in reduc­ing poverty than any other sector.”

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