Globally, 1.2 billion people are
extremely poor (surviving on less than USD 1 a day), and three quarters live in
rural areas. Poverty is predominantly a rural phenomenon. Extremely poor peoplespend more than half of their income to obtain (or produce) staple foods, whichaccount for more than two thirds of their caloric intake. Most of these people
suffer from nutritional deficiencies, and many go hungry at certain times of
the year. In recent years, development agencies and national governments have
renewed their commitment to reducing poverty, hunger and other human
deprivations, as evidenced by the Millennium Development Goals. Among other
objectives, the goals aim to halve the proportion of people living on less than
USD 1 a day by 2015 (from the starting level of 1990). That means cutting the
share of extremely poor people in low- and middle-income countries from 28 to
14%.
The goals also call for halving
the proportion of people suffering from hunger by 2015. Rural poverty and
hunger fell sharply between 1975 and 1990, but the rate of poverty reduction
has since slowed. Net aid (that is, official development assistance) to
developing countries fell from 0.35% of the gross national income in the
countries of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development in
1982-83 to 0.24% in 2002-03. The real value of net aid disbursed to agriculture
in the late 1990s was only 35% of the level in the late 1980s, according to
IFAD. And, although the proportion of the economically active population engaged
in agriculture has been falling in developing regions, it still exceeds 50% in
Africa and Asia.(Read More)
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