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ing
thePoor
By Dalila Cervantes-Godoy
and Michael G. Plummer
Year of
Agriculture
atSAIS
How agricultural productivity
is reducing poverty and strengthening
food security in the developing world
Developed and developing countries
often disagree on economic
priorities. This was painfully clear
in the failure to produce an accord
at the World Trade Organization’s
Doha Round negotiations.
However, one rare area of global
consensus is the need to place greater priority on the
eradication of absolute poverty.
In developing countries, this suggests
the need to focus on the agricultural
sector. Most people who depend
on agriculture for their living in these
countries are poor, and most of the
world’s poor depend on agriculture for
a living.
The U.N. Food and Agriculture
Organization estimates that in 2010
there were 1.02 billion undernourished
people. Hence, extreme poverty
remains an alarming problem in the
developing world. Yet, the poverty rate
has declined substantially over the past
30 years: In 1981, 1.9 billion people
were living on less than $1.25 a day, but
since that time great progress has been
made, particularly in East Asia. This
achievement is attributable largely to
economic growth; certainly, the lion’s
share of empirical studies shows that
poverty tends to fall with growth.
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