International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD)

Contact

Tel: +39 06 5459 1,
Fax: +39 065 04 3463
E-mail: ifad [at] ifad.org (ifad[at]ifad[dot]org)
Web: www.ifad.org

Web

https://www.ifad.org

Address

International Fund for Agricultural Development
Via Paolo di Dono, 44
00142 Rome, Italy

A specialized agency of the United Nations and an international financial institution, IFAD was established in 1977 as one of the major outcomes of the 1974 World Food Conference. The conference resolved that “an International Fund for Agricultural Development should be established immediately to finance agricultural development projects primarily for food production in the developing countries.”

IFAD’s mandate – improving rural food security and nutrition, and enabling rural women and men to overcome poverty – has never been more relevant. Nearly a billion rural people are living on less than US$1.25 a day. Across the globe, there are about 500 million smallholder farms supporting approximately 2 billion people. In some countries, agriculture is the main source of income for 70 percent of the rural population.

Working with rural poor people, governments, donors, non-governmental organizations and many other partners, IFAD focuses on country-specific solutions, which can involve increasing rural poor peoples’ access to financial services, markets, technology, land and other natural resources.

The Strategic Framework guides IFAD's activities for IFAD 2016-2025. IFAD’s overarching goal is to invest in rural people and overcome poverty and food insecurity in the rural areas through remunerative, sustainable and resilient livelihoods. Despite the challenges, new opportunities are emerging both on and off the farm, and the organization’s role is to help people prepare themselves to exploit them. Rural areas are becoming more dynamic places. IFAD-supported programmes will pursue the following strategic objectives:

Increasing poor rural people’s productive capacities in a sustainable and resilient manner;
Increasing and improving their engagement in markets, while enabling them to better manage related risks; and
Strengthening the environmental sustainability and climate resilience of their economic activities

All of IFAD’s decisions - on regional, country and thematic strategies, poverty reduction strategies, policy dialogue, and development partners - are made with these principles and objectives in mind. IFAD is committed to achieving the Sustainable Development Goals, in particular, the target of eradicating extreme poverty, ending hunger and malnutrition by 2030.

For more information: https://www.ifad.org/topic/overview/tags/sdgs

TCB-related programme

The IFAD Strategic Framework 2016-2025 includes the integration of poor rural people in value chains as a key focus. IFAD works with poor rural women and men to help them access value chains that offer opportunities for them as producers, entrepreneurs, service providers and wage earners. We support them in capturing a larger share of the value added along the chain. Strong links to markets for poor rural producers are essential to increasing agricultural production, generating economic growth in rural areas and reducing hunger and poverty. Our work in this area builds on IFAD’s Private-Sector Strategy, which was approved by the IFAD Executive Board in December 2011.

For more information: http://www.ifad.org/pub/policy/private/2012_e.pdf

The opportunity to expand their access to markets – domestic, regional, and international – is of major importance for smallholder farmers and other rural poor people in developing countries.

With increasing demand for healthy foods and other agricultural products – food, fiber, and fuel – having become a steady feature of markets, this opportunity is all the more important as a pathway for many small agricultural producers and workers to increase their incomes and overcome poverty.

There is a strong link between the development of national and regional markets and beneficial integration of small producers into global value chains. Policy measures aiming to facilitate and better regulate trade at the international and regional levels need to be supported by adequate public and private investments in better functioning markets – not just regarding infrastructure but also of services, institutions, and governance. And small agricultural producers and workers – both women and men on an equal basis - need improved access to financial capital, technology, land, water, infrastructure, and opportunities for the effective organization. They also need access to effective risk management strategies and tools to address challenges related to climate change, volatile markets, and production shocks.

Without such access, and without progress in the development of well-functioning and inclusive national and regional markets, an improved international trade environment would be unlikely to automatically generate benefits for smallholder farmers and other poor rural people.

For more information: https://www.ifad.org/topic/overview/tags/trade_liberalization

As an institution dedicated to combating poverty and hunger in the rural areas of developing countries, all IFAD-funded programmes address food security in some way. IFAD has supported around 464 million poor rural people since it started work.

For more information: https://www.ifad.org/documents/10180/9fa4f004-59f2-4fda-a1cb-4e639037eb6c

Selected TCB programmes and initiatives in this guide

Global Advocacy

Rural poverty advocacy

Trade Policy Development

Results-based Country Strategic Opportunities Programme (COSOP)

South-South and Triangular Cooperation

South-South and Triangular Cooperation (SSTC)

Gender Mainstreaming, Employment and Youth

Successful projects

IFAD has 40 years of experience in meeting the challenges of rural poverty reduction. Over this time IFAD has provided over US$18.5 billion in loans and grants to developing countries for agriculture and rural development programmes and projects, and to support agricultural research. With co-financing from partners and domestic contributions, the total investment is about US$44.6 billion. These initiatives have reached about 464 million poor rural people in 123 countries and territories.

For more information: http://www.ifad.org/story/index.htm

Partnerships

Partnerships have been essential to IFAD’s business model since the organization’s founding as a three-way partnership among the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) and other developing countries. Agenda 2030 brings the critical importance of partnerships – both global and within countries – into sharp relief. IFAD fully recognizes the magnitude of the investments required for smallholder agriculture development and rural transformation. Partnerships will be crucial for promoting synergies of finance, knowledge, and expertise, and thus creating, enabling environments for poor rural people to build their pathways out of poverty.

IFAD will engage with a broad range of partners: The Member States, development institutions, farmer organizations, the private sector, foundations, and other relevant national and international stakeholders.

IFAD developed a partnership strategy, which was reviewed by the organization’s Executive Board in September 2012. IFAD also seeks to consolidate and expand the use of multi-stakeholder approaches such as the recently articulated public-private-producer partnerships mechanism to build mutually beneficial partnerships between the public sector, the private sector, and small-scale rural producers.