The International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) on Tuesday warned that the Iran War in the Middle East is creating severe disruptions for smallholder farmers and producers around the world and exposing the global food system’s structural vulnerabilities to external shocks.
IFAD is the only international financial institution exclusively focused on transforming rural economies. IFAD invests in rural people and their communities, building food security, shared prosperity and stability. As of today, IFAD and its partners have nearly US$23 billion invested in ongoing projects that are transforming rural economies.
In a new position paper released at the World Bank Group-IMF Spring Meetings in Washington DC, IFAD laid out how crisis of the Iran war is already being absorbed by small-holder farmers who produce a third of the world’s food.
The presentation, according to a statement, was based on IFAD’s ground-level view working with local producers and small-scale agricultural businesses titled Global Shock, Local Crisis: Smallholder farmers and producers again under strain.
According to the statement, “as policymakers and finance ministers gather in Washington, the paper presents IFAD’s proven solutions to building long-term resilience to recurrent shocks at the “first mile” of global food systems, and calls investments in resilient rural economies a geostrategic imperative for stable global food value chains in an era of geopolitical, climate, and environmental volatility.”
