$100 million of climate smart smallholder #agriculture for Vietnam #CBA6

by Jeffrey A. Brez

This afternoon at the 6th Global Community-Based Adaptation conference in Hanoi, Vietnam’s Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development (MARD) and IFAD shared their experience in making IFAD’s 2012-2017 strategic planning document for Vietnam climate smart. (these documents at IFAD are known as “Results Based Country Strategic Opportunities Programmes” or COSOPs). IFAD’s portfolio in Vietnam focuses on the poorest rural communities, including ethnic minorities and women headed households, and is now worth about US$257 million, with another USD100 million of investments anticipated over the 2012-2017 period.

Mard ifad cba6 presentation - dr hung +roshan cooke - 19 apr2012

View more PowerPoint from IFAD International Fund for Agricultural Development

MARD was represented by Prof. Dr. Trieu Van Hung, Director General of their Department of Science, Technology and the Environment. IFAD was represented by Roshan Cooke, Regional Climate and Environment Specialist for the Asia and Pacific Region.



Dr. Trieu (click above to view his 1-minute video statement) made the point that Vietnam is expected to be among the countries hardest hit by climate change, and that the agriculture sector is one of the most vulnerable. According to the National Climate Change Strategy, from 2001-2010 “damages caused by disasters like floods, storms, flash floods, landslides, inundations, droughts and saltwater intrusion have been significant: 9500 dead and missing people; and an asset loss of about 1.5% of GDP each year.” Given that the majority of Vietnam’s poor women and men live in rural areas and depend on agriculture for their livelihoods – and that agriculture is particularly vulnerable to natural disasters - supporting community-based adaptation is crucial to help buffer their livelihoods.

My colleague Roshan Cooke (in the photo above) explained IFAD’s ambitious approach. The “Climate Smart COSOP,” he said, will ensure that all of the investments that IFAD supports in Vietnam are climate-smart. This will be done through, among others, the following interventions: support to the policy making process to ensure that the climate vulnerability of poor rural communities is effectively addressed through MARD’s policy frameworks; integration of climate change adaptation responses into the provincial level Socio-Economic Development Plan (SEDP) for determining budget allocations; identification of adaptation pathways for diversification of livelihoods; and scaling up of autonomous adaptation actions that rural poor people are innovating.

Several presentations were made and the following discussion was lively. Issues raised included how to address the “surplus of rural population in farming,” how to balance focus between smallholder farming and opportunities in the rural non-farm economy (and beyond), and how to fill the knowledge gap on local level impacts of climate change in rural areas.

I have learned a tremendous amount here, through a field trip to Hoa Binh province to visit a COHED project (biogas, alternative off-farm livelihoods for women and community-based eco-tourism, disaster preparedness drills) THANK YOU TO THE COHED TEAM, and great conference sessions that included an amazing Red Cross-designed game to raise awareness about disaster risk reduction and planning THANK YOU PABLO SUAREZ and JULIE ARRIGHI, and a session to practice pitching climate change stories to journalists, led by IIED – THANK YOU MIKE SHANAHAN and DRAGONS including Pakistan's AFIA SALAM of www.speakforchange.org.

CBA6 has two more days left! Follow the LIVE WEB STREAM or enjoy the blogs and vlogs and other interactive materials - and learn and share along with the rest of us.

Find out more here about how IFAD is supporting smallholders and poor rural people in Vietnam.

Want to read the IFAD COSOP for Vietnam? You won't regret the time spent. Click here and scroll down to Vietnam 2012. Available in Arabic, English, French and Spanish.

From pastoralists to terminal market: journey along the livestock value chain. Kenya Learning Route case 2.

by Silvia Sperandini and Elaine Reinke

“If you want to understand the livestock value chain, just follow the cow!”, is the first thing that the “Ruteros” learned once we arrived in Kenya. By now, following the cow, we have reached the terminal market of Kiseria, south-eastern Kenya, where the Keekenyokie slaughterhouse is located and where the livestock value chain ends and the meat value chain starts.

During this journey we met various actors of the livestock chain from pastoralists and agro-pastoralists at village level (producers) to different types of traders which include: primary itinerant traders who move cattle from producers to primary markets, middle level traders who sell cattle into secondary and terminal markets, middlemen who operate as brokers, mainly at the market, taking animals from producers, itinerant traders and middle level traders, and negotiating with buyers and transporters.

Interacting with them we learned the tips and tricks of grading systems and pricing mechanisms but also understood that all these actors along the chain face a variety of challenges. Frequent drought periods cause market fluctuation and massive depreciation of stock. High incidences of livestock diseases and pests affect production as well as trading due to frequent quarantine. Poor market infrastructure and absence of organized facilities (feeding, water, vet services, troughs etc.) put animals and humans at risk. Limited capital and scarce access to credit affecting the production as well as trading. Limited livestock transportation mechanisms and continued moving on the hoof to markets affects quality of stock.

Kiseria is the most vibrant pastoralist-managed livestock market in Kenya and the Keekonyokie slaughterhouse is more than an abattoir. It is the gateway to the urban market and offers business opportunities to the pastoral Maasai communities located in southern Kenya and Tanzania. It is an innovative business enterprise that was established by Maasai pastoralist groups controlling the slaughterhouse management to the benefit of their communities.

The most innovative aspect of the business was found to be the IFAD-supported biogas plant to convert slaughterhouse waste into energy and bio fertilizer, reducing the environmental impact linked to its business activity. The company uses the biogas produced to generate electrical power for the meat cold room, processing equipment and heating water for cleaning the abattoir.

The Keekenyokie community has strong ambitions for the future of their slaughterhouse. Apart from expanding the facilities for slaughter, meat processing and biogas generation and storage, the business seeks to improve its hygiene and sanitation in order to meet quality standards for the export market. Packaging meat products with the Keekenyokie branding and selling them directly to supermarkets will further require additional capital to purchase machinery and training on using technical facilities. But the main innovation they would like to introduce is packaging and selling biogas to rural and peri-urban consumers.

The “Ruteros” were particularly impressed with the initiative and business-orientation of the Keekenyokie community, the effective integration of the value chain, as well as the biogas innovation, and gave a wealth of constructive recommendations to their hosts.

#IFADGC - Lao Vice-Minister of Agriculture and Forestry calls for better cooperation among Governments and Development Partners to support Smallholder

In occasion of the 35th IFAD Governing Council in Rome on 23 February 2012, Dr Phouang Parisak Pravongviengkham, Vice-Minister of Agriculture and Forestry of the Lao PDR, has emphasized clearly that there is a true need for Governments and development partners to cooperate and collaborate in a more coordinated manner and to learn the lessons of past failures and challenges to support the development of more viable production systems for smallholder farmers.
Investing in farmers means to provide them with the needed policy and legal environment, assist them with the means to build a viable and resilient economy, helping connecting them to markets, making sure they have secure land tenure and access to fair contracts and information, and improving the reach of services for health, education and extension. It also means making sure they have access to credit and that local businesses are supported which can buy their products or provide them back with inputs and services.

The Government of Lao PDR has actively engaged itself in promoting strong smallholders’ groups with the creation of different forms and levels of farmers’ organizations which we believe would serve as key institutions to realize national policies to engage in a more viable and environmentally friendly agricultural systems’ practice.

The Vice-Minister has expressed his special thanks to IFAD for the continued active role in the Lao PDR in helping his country to eradicating poverty. He has also added that Lao PDR will continue with its pledge to the 9th Replenishment as in the past. He considers IFAD as a good model in assisting his country to forge stronger intra- and inter-sectoral and also cross-border type of technical and economic cooperation. This has immediate positive impact to reducing poverty along the border areas, home of most poor in the region.

Equity investment in rural Armenia: A business model with a development impact

When is an equity investment fund more than just a money machine? When it focuses on development rather than quick riches.

That’s exactly what a unique IFAD project has been doing in Armenia since 2009, with investments in the country’s food-processing sector designed to expand markets and improve the economic prospects of smallholder farmers. Known as the Fund for Rural Economic Development in Armenia (FREDA), the initiative combines elements of both development assistance and banking.

In effect, FREDA uses the financial instrument of equity funding not to trigger short-term profits but, instead, to build sustainable agricultural livelihoods.

At IFAD headquarters in Rome yesterday, Dr. Tigran Khanikyan, CEO of FREDA, and Dr. Jorma Ruotsi, IFAD Senior Finance Specialist, presented a report on the fund’s performance and impact during its first two years of operation. Their findings suggested that equity investments can be a viable tool for reducing rural poverty.

‘Engines of rural development’

“If you want to do a serious job of rural poverty reduction, you have to use new, innovative methods of finance and development,” said Dr. Ruotsi. To that end, he explained, FREDA invests in “engines of rural development” – including dairy, canning, wine-making, and fish and poultry processing companies.

IFAD and the Government of Armenia established FREDA in January 2009, with additional funding from the Government of Denmark. At the same time, a twinning arrangement was set up with the Danish equity firm IFU to build the fund’s capacity. Operations commenced the following September.

Dr. Ruotsi said the FREDA concept arose out of a lack of agricultural lending after the financial crisis of 2008. Banks were demanding extremely high collateral for loans, and small- and medium-sized rural enterprises urgently needed an alternative source of financing and leverage. In Armenia’s transitional economy, where agriculture is mostly smallholder-based, IFAD and its partners stepped in to test the equity investment model.

Today, FREDA has a portfolio comprising nearly $3 million invested in seven agro-producers, with another eight in the pipeline.

Financial and technical support

Unlike most equity funds, which concentrate only on achieving high financial returns, FREDA targets companies that are strategically placed within the food value chain. Because these businesses must procure high-quality crops and other supplies from local smallholders, their success or failure directly affects the well-being of poor rural households. So FREDA bases each investment decision on both the firm’s business plan and its projected contribution to local economic development.

Dr. Khanikyan, the FREDA chief, noted that the fund provides financing for new technology and equipment, as well as working capital, to the companies in which it invests. What’s more, he said, FREDA provides them with non-financial support to strengthen business systems and management practices.

This technical support includes an independent valuation of each company prior to investment, plus help with marketing, accounting and management practices. Crucially, FREDA also ensures the producers’ compliance with international food safety standards, a prerequisite for expanding their export markets.

Armenia and beyond

“We’ve found that these are very efficient investments,” said Dr. Khanikyan – and indeed, he and Dr. Ruotsi presented some impressive results. A FREDA-invested winery has increased its production capacity by 500 per cent since 2009, for example, while a fish factory with equity funding has multiplied its exports by a factor or 10.

“Equity investment is a logical extension of the kind of work that IFAD does in many countries,” said IFAD Country Programme Manager Henning Pedersen, who moderated the presentation and was a key figure in FREDA’s launch. “This is just one instrument that is appropriate in certain circumstances,” he added.

So far, it seems to be an effective instrument in Armenia. If FREDA meets current targets for 2015, it will have investments in 30 food-processing enterprises providing market outlets for thousands of the country’s smallholder farmers.

The next logical question is whether the equity investment model can be replicated in other transitional and developing countries. Armenia’s experience suggests that it may well be worth a try.

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• Missed the presentation? Watch the recording
• Fund for Rural Economic Development in Armenia (FREDA)

Learn, adjust and aim high

We’re about to wrap up the Benin mission. Before leaving, I need to thank Daouda Aliou, the Fisheries and Environment Specialist of IFAD-funded Participatory Artisanal Fisheries Development Support Programme (PADPPA), who was my guide and mentor for the last three days.

I had the pleasure of spending three days with Aliou and have learnt so much from him. He took me to many project sites, and introduced me to some extraordinary people who had benefitted from PADPPA.

This morning I asked Aliou to share his views on PADPPA’s achievements and challenges. Here is what he had to say.



The good, the bad and the ugly aspects of PADPP

I think I am safe to say that there is unanimous agreement that PADPPA was the first ever project in Benin that focused exclusively on artisanal fishers, their livelihoods and their communities. It was also the first ever project that provided them capacity building on how to better manage their fisheries resources and helped to rehabilitate the wetlands and other water bodies.

Given the ever declining fish stock and the competition over fishing resources, it was the first ever project that endeavoured to provide artisanal fishers with alternative income generating activities. And where it managed to do so, it was very successful. A case in point is Paul Allognon, the fisher who became a farmer.

While it is true that changing people’s mindset is perhaps one of the most difficult things in the world, however, there was consensus that in retrospect, to change the fishers’ mindset and encourage them to embrace agriculture-related activities such as horticulture, rabbit or pig farming, PADPPA could have mounted a more aggressive awareness raising campaign.

Reflecting on PADPPA’s achievements, Olivier Vigan, Secretary-General of the Ministry of Agriculture, Livestock and Fisheries observed: “Only if we could have changed the mindset of many more fishers, that would have made this programme a success”. “In retrospect, we should have had many more awareness building programmes and prepared the fishers psychologically to convert from fishing to other activities”.

Echoing Mr Vigan, Aglinglo Crespin, responsible officer for rationalization of the fisheries subsector component, said: “We could have done a better job if we had managed to change more mindsets. At the same time I guess if we had spend a bit more time on the ground and monitored more closely the various activities, we could have really made a dent and converted many more fishers”.

As the first ever project focusing on the welfare of artisanal fishers, PADPPA launched a safety and security programme. “We go proud of the programme’s activities in the area of safety and security”, says Richicatau Sale, responsible officer for the institutional capacity component. “Thanks to PADPPA’s efforts and our partnership with the military marine, we trained fishers on safety and security measures. Today, the fishers know how to avoid colliding with other boats, what to do in case their nets get damaged or their boat capsizes or the engine explodes. As a result causalities have declined by 50%”.

“We’ve also observed that fishers are no longer going out alone, but in pairs if not more and all of them have a mobile phone, this way, when in danger they are just one phone call away to ask for help”, concludes Sale.

Another feather in PADPPA’s hat is the literacy, reproductive health, hygiene and sanitation trainings and awareness building campaigns. A very proud Sale shares how when the women who received reproductive health training, asked that the same training be extended to their husbands.

But as Aliou put it so well this morning, “we could have had better impact if we had first sensitized the men on reproductive health issues.” And he is so right. You always need to start at the source!

The literacy programme offered by PADPPA has definitely helped many poor rural people, fishers and producers to manage their income and resources more efficiently. Those who attended the various sessions, are now able to read, write and keep track of their income generating activities.

PADPPA’s community-driven development (CDD) aspect helped the programme to better understand the needs of the people it was serving. Did it do an equally good job in making sure that the communities also understood what was their role in the equation?

Well, maybe not quite. It seems that not everyone - and here we’re talking about beneficiaries, extension workers, programme and government colleagues - fully appreciated CDD’s fundamental pillar of giving control over planning decisions and investment to communities and local government.

PADPPA also focused on rehabilitating wetlands, water bodies and engaged in reforestation activities. Amongst other things, it financed the creation of a number of spawning beds, which are allowing fishers to count on secure catch. “I believe that thanks to PADPPA activities, we’ve managed to lay the foundation of a national fisheries policy for Benin”, says Afomasse T. Mesmin, the officer for the wetland management component.

In terms of project management, the programme could have benefitted from a more efficient and effective administrative and financial management team. This weakness ended up hampering implementation, causing unnecessary delays in the provision of services to beneficiaries.

The programme witnessed a turning point in 2009 when IFAD started to provide implementation support and directly supervise its activities. I wonder how things would have panned out if we had provided implementation support and directly supervised this programme from the beginning.

What came out loud and clear
Here are my take-home messages and I am sure none of these are new to anyone. I just wonder, why is it that we do not systematically apply the learning from one programme to another.... I guess that is a whole other debate.

• for a project to be sustainable, the beneficiaries and their communities need to own it
• do not underestimate the value of exchange visits. Seeing is believing and there is nothing better than hearing from a peer how a rural development activity has changed their lives
• changing people’s mindset and behaviours does not happen overnight. It requires systematic and sustained coaching, mentoring and awareness raising
• it is absolutely crucial for everyone on the project team to have a common understanding of what the project is set to achieve
• it is equally important for everyone on the team to understand their respective roles and responsibilities, know what is expected from them and be accountable for delivering results
• efficient and effective administrative and financial management is key to good project management
• sound monitoring and evaluation mechanism allows the project team to detect challenges early on and address these promptly
• project coordination unit staff need to be rooted and grounded in the field, in touch with the reality on the ground and systematically provide backstopping

What next?

Many of the people who benefitted from PADPPA indicated access to credit as an enormous challenge. Lea Afi Amoussou, a farmer in the village of Nicou-condji in Grand-Popo shared her plight of getting a loan: “I went to ask for credit. Completed all the forms and submitted them. A month after submitting, I followed-up and was told to come back. When I went back, they just told me I cannot have the loan and did not offer any explanation”. Rose Mensah the successful rabbit farmer wanted to get a loan to build a new rabbit pen and was faced with the same obstacle as Amoussou.

IFAD in close cooperation with the Government of Benin is in the process of finalizing the results-based country strategic opportunities programme which will guide IFAD’s intervention in the country for the next five years. It is within this context that IFAD’s next interventions in Benin amongst other things will also focus on rural finance. This will hopefully allow people like Amoussou and Mensah to finally have access to credit and be able to expand their businesses and turn their dreams into reality.

In a couple of hours time I will be catching my flight back home. I am leaving Benin with a heavy heart. It was such an amazing mission. It was a treat to work with great people such as Daouda Aliou and his colleagues. I am ever so grateful to Ndaya Beltchika for giving me this opportunity. It was a great learning experience and I hope I met her expectations.

I still have to tell the stories of the fishers, crab collectors and my humbly experience when I visited the lake village of Ganvie. So, keep an eye on this space.  I am leaving behind the “Centre de miracle”, but hope to share and transmit all the positive vibes I got to my colleagues in Rome.

Once a fisher always a fisher? Maybe not....

WOW, I had one of the most productive days in a long time. It was a day with no meetings, no emails, no phone calls, no deadlines and no process work. Wondering why it was so productive?

Well, I had the privilege of spending an entire day meeting and listening to the stories of smallholder producers who benefitted from the IFAD-funded Participatory Artisanal Fisheries Development Support Programme, better known as PADPPA.

Ndaya Beltchika, was appointed as the country programme manager for Benin in 2010. In closing PADPPA she took the bold step of documenting the success and challenges of this programme so that others could avoid making the same mistakes and reinventing the wheel.

Kudos to Beltchika, as she is a true knowledge worker and one of the few people I’ve worked with who fully appreciates the power and potential of learning both from successes and failures.

I think it is fair to say that PADPPA has both impressive achievements and faced massive challenges.

It was approved in 2003 and has a 50-50 cofinancing arrangement with African Development Fund (AfDF).

It took over two years before it started its operations in 2005. For the first four years it only disbursed 10.13%, which classifies it as a poor-performing project.

“One of the major challenges of PADPPA was the 50-50 cofinancing arrangements between AfDF and IFAD”, says Gerard Gnakadja, the National Coordinator. “If I had to redo the project, I would strongly recommend against such an arrangement and would have each donor fully finance a component thus making implementation more efficient and effective.”

The turning point was in 2009, when IFAD started supervising its own projects and providing direct implementation support. As a result, literally overnight there was a boast in the project activities and in just a little more than two years the disbursement rate increased from 20.47% to 50.53%.

The programme is coming to and end. Over the last eight years, it has focused on strengthening the fisheries sector in Benin by:

• rehabilitating wetlands and lakes to increase fishing opportunities
• strengthening fisher’s community and building their capacity to better manage the fisheries resources and other natural resources
• encouraging fishers to take up alternative income generating activities

My productive day started with meeting three extraordinary smallholder producers who had given up fishing for other types of income generating activities.

Agriculture is cool: Meet Paul Allognon, the fisher who became a farmer

Paul Allognon, once a fisher, today thanks to the programme is a successful smallholder farmer. He is one of the 200 fishers who received training on agriculture-related activities offered by the Vice-President of the Agricultural Chamber, Adjehoda Amoussou, and his colleagues.

“Usually these training sessions last between 15 to 30 days and afterwords, the project provides extension services and monitors the farmers to make sure they apply what they learnt”, explains Amoussou. “However, the PADPPA trainees benefitted from an abridged version of the training and from what I understand not all of them received the post training backstopping”.

Although Allognon did not benefit from the full training programme, however, he learnt the basic agricultural practices such as rotating crops, when to plant what, when and how to use fertilizer, when to harvest and how and where to market and sell his produce. Understanding the importance of a good irrigation system, he installed a water pump and has a CFA350,0001 irrigation system on his land.

As a result, Allognon is now cultivating onions, tomatoes, pepper, parsley and cucumber.

“The village ladies visited me a couple of weeks ago and asked for onions. This is why we’re planting them now”, explains Allognon. “I plant based on needs, this way, I hardly ever have any surplus.”

On this farm, Allognon has a number of coconut palm trees which are another source of income. “I sell the coconut oil for CFA500 per litre. Every three months on average I manage to produced 120 litres of oil”, mentions Allognon.

“I dry the shell which is then used as firewood. The shell is also on high demand by the ladies who are in fish smoking business and also as animal feed”, says Allognon with a smile.

By embracing agriculture, Allognon has managed to triple his income. He is now able to offer employment to six other people and can afford paying them CFA15,000 per month.

“I would never go back to fishing. Believe me, fishing is not worthwhile. You go out to the sea at crack of dawn, stay out 3-5 days or if you make day trips, you come back at dusk and with what? What a basket full of small fish”, remarks Allognon.

Thanks to a steady income, Allognon is able to send all his 9 and 4 year old children to school. He has managed to buy an 2000 m2land, and is in the process of building a house for his family.

Reflecting on PADPPA’s achievements, Olivier Vigan, Secretary-General of the Ministry of Agriculture, Livestock and Fisheries observed: “Only if we could have changed the mindset of many more fishers, that would have made this programme a success”. “In retrospect, we should have had many more awareness building programmes and prepared the fishers psychologically to convert from fishing to other acitivities”.

I wish, the programme would have used people like Paul Allognon as mentors to show the benefits of embracing agriculture and engaging in agriculture-related projects. And yes, more awareness building and proactive actions to change the fisher’s mindset would have definitely resulted in many more fishers converting to agriculture, rabbit farming or other income generating activities.


Rabbit farming: a viable alternative to fishing

On this very special day, after meeting Paul Allognon, I met Rose Mensah and Kuassi Oke, two former fishers who are now fully emerged and engaged with rabbit farming.

Mensah lives by Aeheme lake where she used to be a fish wholesaler. However, the lake’s fish stock has depleted significantly, thus making fishing a risky business. Mensah was lucky to benefit from PADPPA’s rabbit farming activities. In 2007, PADPPA gave her three female and 1 male rabbit.

In a month’s time she had 18 rabbits and ever since then, it has been a growing business. Today she has over 200 rabbits and can count on a steady flow of 30 rabbits per month.

Thanks to her new activity, she has 20 fixed clients - among which some hotels in Cotonou. On average she makes CFA100,000 a month.

“I sell the rabbits for CFA3000. Thanks to the money I make from my rabbit farm, not only I am able to feed the family, send the children to school, but I am also able to put aside at least CFA10,000 a month”, explains Mensah.

Mensah’s vision is to be able to build another big rabbit pen. “But to do that I need one million CFA and I need to able to get a loan. And that is not an easy thing to do.”

Kuassi Oke, a 55 year old rabbit farmer, has an equally thriving farm as Mensah’s. He too in 2007 received 3 females and 1 male and ever since then, he’s gone from success to success.

Oke is a real businessman. To ensure that he has a steady stock, he has put in a place a bullet proof reproduction scheme. “I have 25 females. Each month I have half of them reproduce. This way, the females get a rest every other month and on average I have 115 new rabbits.”

He manages to sell 50 rabbits a month to clients in major cities, hotel owners and in to people in his village. As a true businessman, he has fixed price - CFA3000 per rabbit - and does not provide any preferential treatment to his fellow villagers!

Thanks to his new activity, he is able to provide a good life to his 19 children, three wives and has a monthly saving of CFA40,000. Realizing that not everyone has been lucky as him, to help others, he has created a village saving scheme where on a monthly basis he deposits some of his savings which is used to assist villagers in moments of dire need.

Initially the villagers were a bit intrigued and suspicious of his activity. But, today, thanks to his flourishing business, he has earned a social status. He is now providing rabbit farming training to interested villagers and is the adviser to the village chief.

He has put in place a succession plan by training two of his sons which will take over from him, when and if he decides to retire!

Oke has expanded his business to poultry and is looking forward to be able to buy himself a motorcycle.

New frontiers for rabbit farming: Processing and packaging

One would hope that sooner rather than later Mensah and Oke will learn how to add value to their rabbit farming business by embracing some processing activities. Hopefully, they will be able to access credit, challenging as it may be, so that they can acquire the necessary skills and set up the infrastructure needed for processing, packing and selling rabbit meat.

It would have been nice if PADPPA had seized this opportunity and offered these sterling entrepreneurs the opportunity to add value to their rabbit farm by exposing them to the processing and packaging world.

Keeping close to “Centre de miracle”

As we were driving back, I thought to myself, WOW, what a great day. Would it be possible to replicate this miracle every day? I guess if I keep close to this “Centre de miracle”, I will have a good chance of experiencing it over and over again.

I wonder what will my boss think, if I call or send an email telling her that I have found a new vocation and do not want to leave?

I’ll be covering the story of fishers on the next series of PADPPA blogposts. So, keep on eye on this space. More to come. For now, goodbye and good night.

$1=44CFA

The silent crisis

by Cheryl Morden

Hunger is sometimes called the silent crisis. Silent crises are the ones that are overlooked, crowded off the front pages by late-breaking news. Years of experience tell us that when hungry people are silent, they go unnoticed by the rest of the world. Apparently, to become a real and present crisis, those of us with full bellies need to be shaken awake.

In 2007-08, the world was roused to the plight of hungry people by street riots protesting skyrocketing food prices in some forty countries. And there is reason to believe that rising food prices have also been a factor in the uprisings that have spread across the Middle East. The food riots of 2007-08 prompted the world to focus attention on agriculture in a way that it had not done for twenty-five years or more. So, when hungry people and their supporters stop being silent, things happen.

As the U.S. budget stalemate persists, concerned U.S. leaders and advocates are breaking the silence of hungry people by themselves going hungry. They are trying to ensure that cutting programs that support poor and hungry people around the world is not the easy and uncontested way to balance the budget.

Who are these poor and hungry people? The cruel irony is that small-scale farmers account for half the world’s undernourished people and the majority of those living in absolute poverty and in marginal ecosystems. And at the same time, in a world that needs to increase food production by 70 percent by 2050 while dramatically reducing greenhouse gas emissions, these small-scale farmers represent a vast, undertapped potential.

When the President of the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), Kanayo Nwanze, took office in 2009, the first message he sounded to the world was a plain and unvarnished one: “Poverty and hunger are inhuman and cannot be tolerated.” While holding to that truth, he has since added another: “Every farm, no matter how small, is a business.” This focus on the business dimensions of agriculture and food production recognizes the critical importance of dynamic agricultural markets for sustainably overcoming rural poverty and hunger.

IFAD’s business is investing in projects that enable small-scale farmers to ensure adequate food for their families and increase their income. Targeted investments in gravity-piped water facilities and wells in dryland communities in Ghana, for example, mean that women like Elizabeth Wanjiru, who lives in the Kiambu District, can now fetch in two minutes the clean water that used to take six hours each day to fetch. With more time and training in improved farming practices, Elizabeth has moved from subsistence production to a profitable and more environmentally sustainable enterprise.

This kind of investment in self-reliance resonates deeply with American culture and ethics. Since its founding more than thirty years ago, IFAD has reached some 300 million poor producers like Elizabeth Wanjiru. And, with the encouragement of member states and contributors like the US, IFAD has been achieving steadily greater impact with each dollar it invests.

It’s time we better understood how intimately our future is linked with that of poor rural people the world over. Investments today in enterprising, small-scale farmers will pay dividends for generations.

Originally posted on HungerFast.org

Meeting the “Father of the Evergreen Revolution”

Yesterday, May 25, I had the good luck and privilege to be invited to Bioversity International to attend the launch of Professor M. S. Swaminathan’s new book, “In Search of Biohappiness, Biodiversity and Food, Health and Livelihood Security.” Professor Swaminathan has been an inspiration to myself and my colleagues here at IFAD as, together with a range of partners, we developed IFAD’s first Environment and Natural Resource Management Policy. The timing could not have been better: we are launching the policy on June 1, so I took the opportunity to interview the Professor about his views on smallholders, biohappiness and scaling up sustainable agriculture while I was there.

Having been a sports reporter earlier in my career, I rushed in wanting to take as little of his time as possible, ready to “roll tape” immediately, and get out before my time was up (sports figures usually have little time for journalists). But he settled me down immediately and calmly invited me to introduce myself and talk about the topic before starting the interview (view the interview below). Unsurprisingly, he is a true gentleman and a softspoken but deeply persuasive speaker.

He could not be a stronger or more credible advocate: he calls sustainable agriculture, “the only pathway for job-led economic growth.”



In our ENRM Policy, the phrase “evergreen revolution” appears six times – including in our Results and Implementation Matrix (see the annex)! For us at IFAD, scaling up sustainable agriculture as part of an evergreen revolution with smallholders is achievable. Join us (along with our president, Kanayo Nwanze and UNEP’s Executive Director, Achim Steiner) and contribute your experience and concrete suggestions to help focus our the discussion on how to get things moving.

With Professor Swaminathan continuing his research and advocacy – and now even President Obama calling for an evergreen revolution – I think the time is ripe. Do you?

Small farmers can energize rural economies in Africa, they hold the future of food security in their hands

by Tina Joemat-Pettersson and Kanayo F. Nwanze


As news headlines scream fresh concerns about global food security – and as many African countries continue to struggle with poverty and hunger – too little attention is being directed at what could be a major part of the solution to all this: smallholder farming.

Africa’s smallholder farmers not only have the potential to produce enough food for export – and thereby contribute to food security worldwide – but also to lead the way to robust growth and development across the continent.

It is an accepted fact that price volatility for agricultural commodities is no longer the exception, but the norm. And we believe that, with the right kind of investment, access to information services and markets, African farmers can lead an economic renaissance on the continent.

But to get there we have to accelerate the investments and policy prescriptions that will invigorate African agriculture and empower smallholder farmers to increase their productivity and their success.

The first steps in this direction are already showing great promise. Thanks to new policies and innovative investments by national governments, donor countries and multilateral organizations – as well as many civil society organizations and private sector enterprises – rural women and men in a number of African countries are reaping the benefits of access to markets where they can purchase seeds and fertilizers, and where they can sell the crops they grow. They are responding by increasing their yields, increasing their production and increasing their marketed surplus. And their surrounding communities are benefiting from this.

But much more needs to be done for people living and working in sub-Saharan Africa’s rural areas to enable them to raise their productivity and increase their incomes.

According to the recently released Rural Poverty Report 2011 by the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), sub-Saharan Africa has the highest incidence of rural poverty anywhere in the world, and is the only region in the world where the numbers of rural people living in extreme poverty is still on the rise. More than 300 million rural people on the continent – some 60 per cent of the rural population – live in extreme poverty.

The importance of farming as an income source on the continent cannot be underestimated. Agricultural markets are changing. No longer do we need to think exclusively in terms of export crops; new market opportunities are emerging on Africa’s own doorstep. As cities expand and incomes increase, people in the urban areas are changing their eating habits and are becoming consumers who want more meat, dairy products and vegetables, and they expect higher quality standards – we are seeing this across the continent. And agricultural value chains are expanding and becoming better organized to respond to this new demand. These modern markets bring with them their own challenges for some smallholder farmers in terms of higher entry costs, but the potential opportunities they bring cannot be overlooked.

So what needs to happen to make the most of these opportunities, and for smallholder agriculture in Africa to lead the way to economic growth and food security?

For starters, national governments and the international community need to reverse the longstanding neglect of rural development. We need to improve governance in rural areas and create a better economic environment for smallholder farmers to succeed and grow not only food but their businesses as well.

We need to invest in rural infrastructure. Nearly a third of the rural population in Africa lives more than five hours away from a market town, and fewer than 20 per cent live within an hour of a market town. Only one in five Africans has access to a national electricity grid. Targeted investments in road-building and utility construction can go a long way toward improving farmers’ capabilities and access to markets.

Similarly, we need to make investments in the education and skills of rural people so that they themselves can make the most of new opportunities to engage in agricultural markets or work in non-farm industries. This should include strengthening their collective capabilities – and particularly farmers’ organizations – so that they can support each other in managing the risks they face, learn new techniques for improving their productivity, and market their products.

Importantly, our investments need to recognize and address the major challenges and risks that rural people in Africa face – such as the deterioration of the natural resource base, growing competition for land and water, and the effects of climate change on the rural landscape. We need to help small farmers not only to become more productive, but to farm in a way that is more sustainable in their use of natural resources, and more resilient to the shocks of climate change.

The rural poor are not charity cases. They are people whose innovation, dynamism and hard work will ultimately lead the way into a new era of growth, development and prosperity across Africa.

If we can succeed in creating the conditions for poor rural people in Africa to move permanently out of subsistence and into the marketplace – in country after country – then we will have our best chance to transform Africa into a continent that not only feeds itself, but also exports surpluses to increase global availability of food. What a momentous and welcome accomplishment that would be.

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Tina Joemat-Pettersson is South Africa’s Minister of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries. Kanayo F. Nwanze is President of the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), an international financial institution and a specialized UN agency. They will be participating in a 3 May event in Cape Town, New challenges, new opportunities: African agriculture in the 21st Century convened to discuss IFAD’s Rural Poverty Report 2011.

Brave Enough To Become a Pioneer? Economic Analysis of Adaptation in Agriculture

On Wednesday, March 16, enthusiastic IFAD staff came together for a "standing-room only" presentation on a World Bank publication, "Economic Evaluation of Climate Change Adaptation Projects: Approaches for the Agricultural Sector and Beyond," by co-author Dr. Gretel Gambarelli, followed by a lively discussion. Gretel, our moderator Thomas Elhaut and others share their views below... share yours, too!

Gretel Gambarelli, Senior Climate Adaptation Officer, IUCN
I was invited by IFAD to present in a seminar on economic evaluation of climate change projects, with a focus on agriculture. My talk was based on a World Bank 2010 publication by Mike Toman and myself. My presentation

Are you brave enough? Economic evaluation of climate change adaptation projects

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covered the specific challenges that make economic evaluation of adaptation different from more standard projects that do not incorporate climate change considerations, and introduced some state of the art methodologies - including non-economic approaches - that may help address those challenges. I was very pleased to find an interested and engaged audience, with about 40 IFAD staff from different departments following the presentation and asking lots of good questions. This is a good index that ex-ante project evaluation is regaining attention by development professionals in IFAD as a way to improve overall project design and make sure investments are truly "sustainable", i.e. bringing economic, social and environmental benefits. Since we're just starting to understand how to approach the economic evaluation of adaptation at the project level, I would encourage IFAD staff to become "pioneers" and test some of the possible approaches in real projects, so as to contribute to this important field of knowledge.

Thomas Elhaut, Director, Asia and Pacific Region, IFAD
The seminar on the “economic valuation of adaptation to climate change” was timely. It came at the time IFAD is reviewing the role of economic analysis of investment projects as a decision tool, and more importantly as a tool to support design choices early on in the process. It also underscored the rationale for reengaging in agriculture, as the new food equation makes agriculture more profitable (i.e. economically viable); but also threatened by climate change (i.e. volatility) and resource scarcity (i.e. high opportunity costs). It finally highlighted the issues related to the present value of future and intergenerational benefits versus current costs and consumption preferences (i.e. the discount rate trade-offs). The seminar reconfirmed the value of the “classic” cost-benefit analysis (CBA); and called for further work to: better define the costs of adaptation to climate change; design methods to measure the additionality of benefits and co-benefits, such as the change in behaviour of farmers; deal with uncertainty, given the inadequate probabilistic information; assess the with and without project values of land, water, etc…; elaborate a more hybrid approach to complement the CBA methodology with real option analysis, a landscape approach and ultimately a multi-criteria approach.

Elwyn Grainger-Jones, Director,
Environment and Climate Division, IFAD
Would you expect standing-room only for a seminar on economic appraisal? That's what we had on Wednesday. Looking at adaptation to climate change through the lens of economic appraisal is important for IFAD since adaptation to climate change is an essential element of reducing rural poverty. Most of our projects are in areas that are already ecologically fragile hence particularly vulnerable to climate change. My "take-aways" from the seminar were: 1) climate uncertainty can be reduced as forecasting improves, but will not go away; 2) cost-benefit analysis is not always the best option for assessing adaptation (it does not necessarily tell us when to invest, and the sensitivity analysis struggles to handle adaptation parameters - luckily there are alternative or complementary approaches); 3) the time dimension is critical - what should today's value be of future adaptation to climate change, and who should make that valuation? We could have spent a week just on the final point. As we have seen, different stakeholders attribute very different values to landscapes and hence have different views on the value of preserving different aspects of landscapes in the face of climate change. Further, an important issue on climate change is inter-generational poverty - what value should we attribute to preserving landscapes for future generations? We have learnt that recognizing the interconnections across the landscape is essential to building resilience - that means we have to manage a lot more complexity in how we think about rural development. It is good to see economic analysis trying to address this.

Eloisa de Villalobos Thomann, Financial and Economic Technical Adviser, Policy & Technical Advisory Division, IFAD
As an economist who recently joined IFAD working for the Technical Advisory Division responsible for reviewing the economic and financial feasibility of project proposals, I was curious to see how these new approaches could be integrated in the way we currently analyse economic impacts of IFAD projects. It was particularly interesting to get an overview of multi-criteria methodologies as a complementary option to traditional CBA analyses in cases where environmental assimilation costs or benefits are too complicated to measure. In my view, a crucial point is to develop simple ways of applying these complex methodologies at the producers' level. However, simplification should not come at any cost: the quality of the analysis has to be ensured and the use of these particular tools clearly justified in order to achieve robust results. It was interesting for me to see the diverse reactions from the different participants of the seminar. I particularly agree with the idea expressed that these kinds of analyses should be carried out from the very beginning of the project design stage, integrating environmental impact assessment into economic analysis and the overall logframe of the project design. I thank the organizers and look forward to see and assist whoever will be brave enough to pilot these analyses!

Gretel also introduced the group to Adaptation Guidance Notes available on the World Bank's website and gave an overview presentation on IUCN. Check it out!

About IUCN

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IFAD strengthens its partnership with indigenous peoples #ip2011

Indigenous peoples have repeatedly asked for a more systematic dialogue with United Nations agencies. In response to this request, IFAD has taken a series of initiatives in the past seven years and accumulated valuable experience in establishing constructive dialogue with indigenous peoples.

In 2009 IFAD developed its Policy on Engagement with Indigenous Peoples. The policy proposed to establish an Indigenous Peoples’ Forum as a concrete attempt to institutionalize a process of consultation and dialogue with indigenous peoples’ representatives at the national, regional and international levels.

From IFAD’s perspective, the objectives of such forum is to:

• share and discuss the assessment of IFAD’s engagement with indigenous peoples among IFAD staff, Member States and indigenous peoples’ representatives;
• consult on rural development and poverty reduction; and
• promote the participation of indigenous peoples’ organizations in IFAD’s activities at the country, regional and international levels.

On Thursday 17 February, approximately 100 people participated in the workshop establishing indigenous people's forum. The indigenous delegated kicked off the meeting with a traditional ritual of blessing and calling on the spirits of different regions for guidance.


In his welcoming address, IFAD's President, Dr Kanayo Nwanze, reiterated that indigenous peoples have a "vast well of untapped potential, with unique forms of knowledge, practices and understanding of ecosystem management."

"Indigenous peoples’ ancestral memory is a storehouse full of thousands of different species capable of responding to new challenges and climatic conditions – just as they have done for centuries before", said Nwanze

"And we must place special emphasis on creating opportunities for the young people of indigenous communities. Theirs is a special challenge: to build a bridge between their rich cultural heritage and the demands and opportunities of today’s world. As was described in the Kari-Oca Declaration of 1992, they must be able to walk to the future in the footprint of their ancestors."

Dr Nwanze concluded that "We must listen to each other, learn from each other, and work together – today, tomorrow, and many days into the future."

Kevin Cleaver talked about IFAD's engagement with indigenous peoples, underscoring the importance of access to ancestral land and other natural resources such as water, forest. IFAD colleagues  gave an overview of situation and status of indigenous peoples in Africa, Asia and Latin America. Victoria Tauli-Corpuz, executive director Tebtebba Foundation and former Chair of the UNPFII gave a history of IFAD's engagement with indigenous peoples.

Mirna Cunningham, director of the Center for indigenous peoples’ autonomy and development and Member of the UNPFII, talked about how the important role indigenous peoples in producing food to ensure food security.  She complimented IFAD for giving indigenous peoples a voice.

Later during the day, in an interview, Mirna outlined the challenges and opportunities facing indigenous peoples. We immediately posted the interview on Facebook and tweeted about it. Some of our fans have asked us to add Spanish subtitles. We'll definitely do so!

The participants spent the rest of the day discussing issues and options for the forum's modalities, organization, participation and governance. They will be sharing the outcomes of these discussion on Friday afternoon.

The IFAD social reporting team will be reporting live from the final session of the workshop. Make sure you tune in. Follow us on Facebook and on Twitter. Follow #ip2011.

One last comment before filing this report: We often talk about bridging the digital divide and in doing so, we talk about providing the appropriate technology and locally relevant content to the people we work with. 

We also know that both modern and old information communication technologies (ICTs), be it computers, mobile phones, radio allow poor rural people and indigenous groups to take part in socio-economic activities of their respective communities. ICTs can be used to help indigenous peoples to preserve and promote their ancestral traditions and allows them to share knowledge.

So you can imagine how pleasantly surprised I was when I saw our Ethiopian indigenous delegate with an iPad! He is using it to connect to the world and also to share what he is learning with the rest of his community. Wonder which indicator we need to use to assess the impact of Steve Jobs!

See photo gallery

Rural Poverty Report 2011: Mixed progress but also new hope in reducing rural poverty #rpr2011

by Kanayo F. Nwanze

On 6 December 2010, at 11:00GMT at the opening of a major international conference on food security convened by Chatham House IFAD will launch the Rural Poverty Report 2011.

Just think, what would your life be like if you were one of the 1.4 billion women, men and children who live in extreme poverty? Chances are you would live in a rural area, as 70 per cent of the world’s extremely poor people do.

Like Pascaline Bampoky from Senegal, you wouldn’t have had much of an opportunity to study, you would be farming rice, raising pigs, selling ice cream and cleaning houses – all in a day’s work to feed your family.

Like Shazia Bibi from Pakistan, you might wonder if your garlic will compete at the market with lower priced imports and whether your profits will cover the costs of your children’s education and treatment for your heart condition.

And if you are a young man like Williams Novoa Lizardo in Peru, you might lose hope of making a living where you were born and consider migrating to a city to find work.

The good news, according to the Rural Poverty Report 2011 issued by IFAD, is that over the last ten years more than 350 million rural people have pulled themselves out of extreme poverty. During this time, the percentage of the world’s rural inhabitants living on less than US$1.25 a day has dropped from nearly half to about one-third.

Accounting for much of the progress has been East Asia, and particularly China, where the number of extremely poor people in rural areas fell by two-thirds – from 365 million to 117 million – as did the rate of extreme poverty, which went from 44 to 15 per cent.

There was also good progress in both Latin America and the countries of the Middle East and North Africa, where extreme poverty rates in rural areas fell by about half over the past decade.

But, this progress notwithstanding, the problem remains a pervasive one, especially in Sub-Saharan Africa, where the rate of rural poverty has fallen slightly in the last decade but is still above 60 per cent, and in South Asia, which is home to half of the world’s one billion extremely poor rural people.



Just as these statistics tell a story of uneven progress in reducing rural poverty, changes that are underway in rural areas are giving rise to both challenges and new hope for rural people in their struggle for a better life.

The challenges include increasingly volatile food prices, which complicate life for rural people both as producers and buyers of food. And there are other emerging threats such as the deterioration of the natural resource base, growing competition for land and water, and the potential harm that climate change can cause to the rural landscape.

But good things are happening, as well. As cities expand and the world becomes more urbanized, there is a growing demand for high value food, and accordingly agricultural markets are expanding and becoming better organized. Supermarkets, for example, have grown rapidly across much of the developing world, and in some parts of Latin America they typically account for 60 per cent or more of retail food sales. To be sure, modern markets and value chains bring with them their own challenges for some smallholder farmers in terms of higher entry costs, but the potential opportunities they also bring cannot be overlooked.

And while agriculture continues to be a key driver of rural growth – four-fifths of rural households worldwide are engaged in farming at some level – technological advancements and changes in the global economy are also creating non-farm jobs and development in rural areas. The potential for growth is further enhanced by the search for renewable energy sources that is ramping up around the world.

All of this means opportunity for greater numbers of poor rural women and men to lift themselves out of poverty and create a better life and a future for themselves and their children. But making the most of it requires an overall policy and investment approach that is, at the same time, both market-oriented and environmentally sustainable.

For starters, national governments and the international community need to reverse the longstanding neglect of rural development. We need to improve governance in rural areas and create a better economic environment for smallholder farmers to succeed and grow not only food but their businesses as well.

We need to invest in rural infrastructure and in the education and skills of rural people so that they themselves can make the most of new opportunities to engage in agricultural markets or work in non-farm industries. We need to strengthen their collective capabilities so that they can support each other in managing the risks they face, learn new techniques for improving their productivity, and market their products.

Above all, we need to stop treating the rural poor as charity cases and truly recognize that they are people whose innovation, dynamism and hard work will ultimately lead the way out of poverty’s darkness and into the bright sunshine of growth, development and prosperity.

Nothing less than global food security hangs in the balance. The experts say that agricultural production will have to increase 70 per cent by 2050 – and output in developing countries will have to double – in order to feed the world’s growing global population, expected to reach nine billion by then.

I have no doubt that Pascaline, Shazia and Williams are up to the challenge. Are the rest of us?

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On 6 December at 11:00GMT you may download the English version of the Rural Poverty Report 2011 at http://www.ifad.org/rpr2011/report

Meet the women and men from rural areas whose thoughts and perspectives were influential in the preparation of theRural Poverty Report 2011 Read testimonies and watch the video testimonials

On 6 December, IFAD will release the Rural Poverty Report 2011: Meet the lead author, Edward Heinemann

On Monday 6, December during an international conference on food security at Chatham House in London, IFAD will launch the Rural Poverty Report 2011: New realities, new challenges: new opportunities for tomorrow’s generation.
The Rural Poverty Report 2011 is a comprehensive resource for policymakers and practitioners, especially those in developing countries.  The report provides latest estimates on poverty rates in rural areas of developing countries, as well as poverty trends in different regions. It has new information on how many people move in and out of poverty over time, as well as first-hand accounts from poor rural people on the challenges they face in their everyday lives.

The report looks at who poor rural people are, what they do and how their livelihoods are changing.  It explores the challenges that make it so difficult for rural people to overcome poverty, and identifies the opportunities and pathways that could lead towards greater prosperity for them and their communities.  And it highlights key global challenges such as the need to double agriculture output and increase food production by 70 per cent to feed 9 billion people in 2050.

It also highlights the policies and actions that governments and development practitioners can take to support the efforts of rural people themselves, both today and in the years to come.

Writing the report: the back story
Many colleagues were involved at different stages of the report’s preparation. You can find out more about these great people in the report’s acknowledgements, and there are many more who worked behind the scenes. At the end of the day, it ended up being an “all-hands-on-deck” exercise.

Having said that, the report would not have seen the light of the day if were not for Edward Heinemann and Bettina Prato.

Some 10 months ago, Ed, was asked to lead this process and finalize the report. For months, he worked around the clock and hardly left his office. I remember sometime in the summer, not having seen Ed around for weeks, I went up to his office to check on him. I knocked on his door and put in my head and I found an unshaven Ed typing furiously. I said: “Hi Ed, have not seen you around for some time, just came up to see how you were doing”.

Ed smiled and said he was fine. Closing the door, I thought to myself, “I guess he is so busy that he did not have time to shave” and I almost asked him, “Ed, why have not you shaved?”, but thought it was better not to do so.

There are many things Ed has learnt thanks to the Rural Poverty Report process and undoubtedly many experiences and conversations that will stay with him for ever. There is one other thing that, for the time being, seems to have stayed with him – and that is his unshaven look, which has now transformed to a well-groomed beard.

With six days to go to the big day, yesterday I asked Ed to share his state of mind about the launch. Here is what he had to say.

Edward Heinemann – the Rural Poverty Report lead author’s state of mind

“Back in July, when I gave in what I thought was the final draft of the Rural Poverty Report, my idea was that I would be able to wash my hands of it, do something else for a few months, and then re-engage once we had the launch presentations lined up. I got that completely wrong. From September on I spent days, weeks, months looking over galley proofs – a term I didn’t even know three months ago – til the words ran into each other; I rewrote briefs, prepared Q&As, drafted summaries of summaries and reviewed key messages. I looked over the text 273 times, and each time I did I found things that could have been said better, that should have been said differently, or that simply shouldn’t have been said at all. There were corrections and there were corrections to corrections. It was miserable. 

In my worst nightmares, someone somewhere dreams up a question that leaves me gasping for air like a suffocating goldfish.

Now, with a week to go to the launch, I’m looking forward to it, of course. I tell myself it will be fun. I do know that it will be worthwhile, because I am confident that the report will help us and our partners make a real difference in the lives of the poor rural people.”  

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Visit the Rural Poverty Report 2011 website. Make sure you meet the women and men from rural areas whose thoughts and perspectives were influential in the preparation of the Rural Poverty Report 2011.Read testimonies |  Watch the video testimonials

Find out more about the report and join the virtual chats: Follow #rpr2011

• On 6 December from 9:30 to 11:30 GMT, IFAD’s social reporting team will report live from the Chatham House launch event. Follow us on Twitter, Facebook and on this blog. Follow #rpr2011
• On 9 and 10 December from 9:00 to 10:00 GMT and 14:00 to 15:00 GMT, Ed and Bettina will host a virtual chat on Facebook and Twitter. Please send your questions and comments.  Follow rpr2011
• On 17 December from 9:00 to 11:00 GMT, IFAD’s social reporting team will report live from the Rome launch event. Follow us on Twitter, Facebook and on this blog.  Follow #rpr2011

Looking forward to seeing you on line.