- News
The people feeding the world should get their due
- News
Date Published
March 14, 2023
Unlocking a world of possibilities
An uncomfortable truth: small-scale rural farmers, the people who produce most of the food we eat, are those most likely to be hungry and poor. In fact, two thirds of the world’s hungry and four out of five people below the poverty line live in rural areas.
Despite their gruelling work, rural people all over the world aren’t getting a fair return. They work long and physically demanding hours, in difficult conditions, with limited access to social or labour protections, like unemployment benefits, training, fair wages or employment practices. They’re often the poorest of the poor, struggling to stay afloat in a multi-crisis context.
IFAD is empowering small-scale farmers, fishers and herders, helping them earn and produce more, while improving their working conditions.
Greater than the sum of their parts
In isolation, small-scale farmers often lack political and economic clout. But when they come together as members of farmers’ organizations, they can work with large buyers to secure more reliable orders and get better prices for their produce.
In Bosnia and Herzegovina, small-scale farmers pooled their resources for a promotional campaign that put local blueberries on the gastronomical map.
In Türkiye, young strawberry growers are forming collectives to market strawberries from the district of Sarıveliler and sell them in nearby towns. While in southern Guatemala, 60 schools are taking part in a programme that encourages schools to buy the food they provide to their students directly from 300 local farmers, which in turn supports the producers.
Having the right tools matters
Farmers can reduce their daily workload by simply changing their practices or introducing basic machinery. This not only frees up time and energy to focus on other things that matter—like taking care of themselves and their family—it makes it possible to earn and produce more food and to do so at a faster rate.
It once took hours of backbreaking work for the women of Brejo Dois Irmãos in the Brazilian Amazon to process burití – a nutritious fruit with great marketing potential, but which was labour-intensive to prepare for sale. With simple processing machines provided through IFAD funding, what once took days can now be completed in hours. The machines peel the fruit, squeeze the juice and seeds, and turn the flesh into a dense paste to sell or use in jams and sweets.
Now, the women of Brejo have time for other tasks, like running a producers’ association and marketing their products. While their days are less busy, their incomes have risen by up to 40 per cent.
Read the full piece on ifad.org