Agriculture as an Instrument for Poverty Reduction

Agriculture is still a major of life for humanity. Half of the world's population lives in rural areas, 2.5 billion are related to agriculture for their survival, and 1.3 billion are smallholders. Some 70 percent of the world's poor and three fourth of the world's malnourished are located in rural areas among households who mainly depend on agriculture for their livelihoods. There is no way the Millennium Development Goal of halving extreme poverty between 1990 and 2015 will be met in Africa and South Asia (where the large majority of the world's poor are located) without an explicit focus on rural poverty.

Fortunately, agricultural productivity growth has proved to be exceptionally effective for poverty reduction. This is because farming is an activity dispersed in millions of small farms, many of the poorest of the poor are agricultural landless workers who depend on agriculture for employment, and food is the main expenditure for poor consumers so that cheaper food is a major boon for their welfare. In middle income countries like India, China, Morocco, and Indonesia, income gaps between rural and urban areas are rising rapidly, creating major frustrations among rural populations and eventual political instability and violence. Reducing income gaps thus becomes a political priority, calling on the powers of agricultural growth as one of the instruments to achieve this objective.

Reference

Byerlee, D., (2007), Agriculture for Development: the World Bank's 2008 World Development Report