Asia needs $120 bn annual agriculture investment

The Asian Development Bank (ADB), the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations (FAO), and the International Fund for Agriculture Development (IFAD) have joined forces to tackle widespread hunger and build food security throughout the Asia and Pacific region. FAO’s director-general Jacques Diouf said that ensuring food security will require collective action involving bold business approaches. 

“Asia needs to wake up to the enormous challenge of feeding its population of five billion people by 2050. Gross annual investments of $120 billion are required in the region for primary agriculture and downstream services – in a responsible manner and focused on rural areas through pro-poor programmes and livelihoods activities for poor and small farmers,” Diouf said.

“Several countries in the region have made significant progress towards reducing hunger. We should build on these successful experiences,” he added. 

Signed by the heads of the three organisations on the occasion of the United Nations Summit on the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), the three-year Asia Pacific Regional Food Security Partnership Framework underscores concern that despite Asia and the Pacific’s impressive gains in achieving several of the MDGs, the region is falling behind in the crucial areas of hunger and food security. The MDGs are a set of measurable targets for reducing hunger, poverty, disease, child and maternal mortality, environmental degradation and gender inequality by the year 2015. 

“The Asia and Pacific region is still home to some 578 million hungry people, some two-thirds of the world’s hungry, so it is high time to move out of our comfort zones and forge new partnerships, collaborative arrangements, and networks with the single objective of achieving food for all,” said ADB President Haruhiko Kuroda. 

The new ADB, FAO, and IFAD partnership will promote innovative financing mechanisms to attract private sector investment in agriculture as well as develop inclusive business models that bring benefits for investors and local small farmers. 

The partnership framework establishes four pillars for collective and collaborative efforts: the harmonisation of cross-border and regional investments; promotion of stronger collaboration in the prioritised agricultural research; support to enhance intra- and interregional food trade; and facilitation of sharing of lessons and good practices in policy and institutional response to improve household food security.

USAID to provide $16m for flood-hit farmers

The United States Agency for International Development (USAID) has announced that it will provide $16 million to support wheat planting, prevent further livestock losses and de-silt irrigation systems in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa, one of the provinces most severely affected by floods.

 

The assistance, which will be provided through the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), marks the start for the organisation’s $107 million appeal in the United Nations’ Pakistan Flood Emergency Response Plan announced in New York on Friday.

The appeal came following the worst natural disaster on record in terms of farming and production losses, the FAO said on its website on Thursday.

“With this donation we will be able to rapidly purchase inputs, especially wheat seeds and fertiliser, which should help keep production going during the all-important planting season for wheat,” said Luigi Damiani, FAO’s senior official leading the efforts in Pakistan.

The funds will cover around a quarter of the total wheat seed requirements for the Rabi planting season in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa. The Rabi season runs from September until late October.

Wheat a staple diet

The FAO said unless the farmers receive seeds over the next month they will not be able to plant wheat, the staple diet of rural people, for a year. Although much land has been affected by the floods and cannot be planted immediately, many farmers will still be able to plant wheat on the land that is workable.

The FAO said the money will also fund cash-for-work projects to clean and repair irrigation systems and provide women farmers with much-needed vegetable seeds to boost family nutrition. The programme will also provide supplementary feed and veterinary support for livestock to prevent disease outbreaks.

More than 160,000 households will benefit from the donation, providing food security for over 1.3 million rural farming people. The programme places special emphasis on women, female-headed households and families with children under five years old, the FAO said.

The floods have left around 10 million people vulnerable to hunger, destroying food stocks, around a quarter of standing crops in flood-stricken areas and killing more than a million heads of livestock.

 

The Express Tribune