A Hand to the Small Farmers How India’s G20 presidency can address global hunger
Context:
- There are significant obstacles that need to be solved by world leaders before the G-20 ministerial conference on agriculture takes place in Hyderabad.
- The Sustainable Development Goals have been severely hampered over the past few years by crisis following crisis, despite being endorsed by UN member states in 2015.
Challenges to global food security and hunger:
- For the first time in decades, there are more hungry people than ever before, despite the fact that we produce enough food to feed 10 billion people.
- There are currently more than 800 million hungry people in the world. Ironically, a large portion of them are the small-scale farmers that produce one-third of the food in the world.
- Hunger is rural because over three-fourths of the world’s poorest and most food insecure people live there.
- Particularly rural economies dependent on agriculture have consistently received insufficient funding.
Issues facing countries with low and medium incomes
- It is challenging for low- and middle-income nations to finance their growth and attempts to address climate change due to global inflation and local currency depreciation. These nations are accruing greater debt as well.
- Additionally, the percentage of overall official development assistance (ODA) allocated to agriculture by donors has remained stable for at least two decades at 4-6%.
- Through 2030, it is predicted that overhauling the food system will cost $300–400 billion USD annually. Therefore, investments must grow at least 30 times faster than current investments.
Monetary assistance for rural agriculture:
- Governments and corporations should both make investments in rural agriculture.
- Local food chains, markets, and production are all growing locally, which promotes peace and global food security.
- Agriculture contributes up to 21% of all emissions, hence reducing agriculture will also reduce GHG emissions.
- The business sector could benefit from investing in small-scale farmers since it will lower production costs and produce strong returns on investment.
- Additionally, farmer groups and cooperatives have proven their capacity to realize economies of scale, and crop diversity can assist farms and markets in managing risk.
- Long-term resilience could be increased by making these investments, which could also mitigate the effects of shocks like climate change. For every dollar spent on resilience, up to $10 in future emergency aid can be prevented.
- When it comes to reducing poverty, those in agriculture are at least 2-3 times more effective than those in other sectors.
The challenge of small-scale agriculture:
But small-scale farming has several challenges. Small-scale producers:
- lacking in credit.
- There are markets.
- Technology is widely available.
- Lack of knowledge, available space, and useful infrastructure.
- This is where international financial institutions like the Multilateral Development Banks and the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) can make a big difference.
- We can help agriculture become the hub of growth it has the potential to be if we use cutting-edge financial products and techniques to de-risk investments.
India’s involvement in preserving world food security:
- India’s G-20 leadership is crucial in order to carry out the promise of the international community to guarantee that everyone has access to affordable, safe, sufficient, and nutrient-rich food.
We can do it by using:
- increasing digitization.
- attracting farmers and insurers to insurance.
- enabling quick and inexpensive loan availability.
- protecting land rights and supporting farmer organizations.
- In the fight to end hunger and poverty in rural regions, India is a crucial ally. The panchayat system has helped India create strong local institutions and increase people’s ability to shape their own development.
- For countries aiming to achieve food security, these experiences serve as an example. India’s thoughtful leadership has helped to advance South-South and triangular cooperation. This has only gotten worse as it has more economic clout.
Moving forward:
- The G-20 can set us on the path to much-needed structural transformation by mobilizing commitments from governments, international financial institutions, investors, and businesses to engage in medium-term sustainable rural development and agriculture.
- As a result, the president of India can present a strategy for inclusive, robust, and sustainable food systems.
- More than 120 million high-quality rural jobs will be generated, 800 million people will no longer face hunger, the bottom 20% of the population will see an increase in earnings, and climate change will be stopped while biodiversity is preserved.
