Published: 27th Apr, 2020
With the COVID-19 pandemic and economic slowdown threatening the lives and livelihoods of the world's most vulnerable people, the UN's International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) launched a multi-donor COVID-19 Rural Poor Stimulus Facility (RPSF) to support farmers and rural communities to continue growing and selling food.
Context
With the COVID-19 pandemic and economic slowdown threatening the lives and livelihoods of the world's most vulnerable people, the UN's International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) launched a multi-donor COVID-19 Rural Poor Stimulus Facility (RPSF) to support farmers and rural communities to continue growing and selling food.
About
- IFAD's new multi-donor fund, the COVID-19 Rural Poor Stimulus Facility, will mitigate the effects of the pandemic on food production, market access and rural employment.
- As part of the broader UN socio-economic response framework, the Facility will ensure that farmers in the most vulnerable countries have timely access to inputs, information, markets and liquidity.
- On top of its own contribution, IFAD aims to raise at least $200 million more from Member States, foundations and the private sector.
- The planned interventions fall into four main categories:
- Providing inputs and basic assets for production of crops, livestock and fisheries
- Facilitating access to markets to support small-scale farmers in selling their products in conditions where market functions are restricted
- Targeting funds for rural financial services to ensure sufficient liquidity and to ease repayment requirements so as to maintain services, markets and jobs
- Promoting the use of digital services to deliver key information on production, weather, finance and markets
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About IFAD:
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The issue:
- About 80 percent of the world's poorest and most food-insecure people live in rural areas. Even before the outbreak, more than 820 million people were going hungry every day.
- A recent United Nations University study warned that in a worst-case scenario, the economic impact of the pandemic could push a further half-billion people into poverty.
- A majority of the world's most impoverished people are already suffering the consequences of climate change and conflict.
- An economic downturn in rural areas could compound these effects, generating more hunger and increasing instability, especially in fragile states.
- The COVID-19 crisis could undo the progress the world has made in reducing rural poverty (SDG1) and threatens to aggravate already declining food security (SDG2).
Significance of the initiative:
- The Rural Poor Stimulus Facility aims to improve the food security and resilience of poor rural people by supporting production, market access and employment.
- The ultimate goal of the RPSF is to accelerate the recovery of poor and vulnerable rural people from the COVID-19 crisis.
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