Greater focus on agriculture needed–FAO

GREATER investments in agriculture, along with innovative and coordinated action, could be key to ending poverty and hunger, the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) said.

The FAO called on nations to pour more resources into farming as the international community observed World Food Day last Oct. 16 and as governments committed to ending hunger incidence by 2030.

The UN agency said this year’s celebration in the Asia Pacific region was marked by small gains in the hunger and poverty reduction goals. It noted, however, 12 percent of the region’s population remain undernourished and without access to social protection since the Millennium Development Goals were set in 2000.

“In order to reach Zero Hunger and end rural poverty, we need investment in agriculture,” said Kundhavi Kadiresan, the newly installed FAO assistant director general. “We need innovative and coordinated approaches.”

Kadiresan, who is also FAO representative for Asia and the Pacific, also said people in rural areas need to have both the protection and the tools they need to build confidence and improve their livelihoods.

“This is not about creating dependency,” she said. “It is not a ‘hand out’ but a ‘hand up.’”

FAO said almost 80 percent of the world’s poor live in rural areas, most of them working in the agriculture sector.