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But sweeping transformations needed to unlock their potential to help feed and employ a younger, more crowded planet - new report
(22).png "Rural areas, too long seen as poverty traps, key to economic growth in developing countries")
Figure: With the right mix of investment and policies, rural areas can be lands of economic opportunity.
FAO 9 October 2017, Rome - Millions of young people in developing countries who are poised to enter the labour force in the coming decades need not flee rural areas to escape poverty, argues a new FAO report published today.
Rural areas actually have vast potential for economic growth pegged to food production and related sectors, The State of Food and Agriculture 2017 says. And with the majority of the world's poor and hungry living in these areas, achieving the 2030 development agenda will hinge on unlocking that oft-neglected potential, it adds.
Doing so will require overcoming a thorny combination of low productivity in subsistence agriculture, limited scope for industrialization in many places, and rapid population growth and urbanization — all of which pose challenges to developing nations' capacity to feed and employ their citizens.
There is ample evidence that changes to rural economies can have major impacts. Transformations of rural economies have been credited with helping hundreds of millions of rural people lift themselves up out of poverty since the 1990s, the report notes.
However that progress has been patchy, and demographic growth is raising the stakes.
Between 2015 and 2030, the ranks of people aged 15-24 years are expected to rise by about 100 million, to 1.3 billion. Almost all that increase will take place in sub-Saharan Africa — the lion's share of it in rural zones.
But in many developing countries — most notably in South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa — growth in the industrial and service sectors has lagged, and they will not be able to absorb the massive numbers of new job seekers set to enter the workforce.
Nor will agriculture — in its current form.
So rural people who relocate to cities will likely run a greater risk of joining the ranks of the urban poor, instead of finding a pathway out of poverty. Others will need to look for employment elsewhere, leading to seasonal — or permanent — migration.
This is why targeting policy support and investment to rural areas to build vibrant food systems and supporting agro-industries that are well connected to urban zones —especially small and medium size cities — will create employment and allow more people to stay, and thrive, in the countryside represents a strategic intervention, today's report says.
Transformed rural economies won't necessarily be a panacea that solves all the pressures that drive people to relocate, but they will generate much-needed jobs and contribute to making out-migration more of a choice, rather than a necessity.
"Too often ignored by policy-makers and planners, territorial networks of small cities and towns are important reference points for rural people — the places where they buy their seed, send their children to school and access medical care and other services," FAO Director-General José Graziano da Silva notes in his forward to the report.
"Policy-makers are urged to recognize the catalytic role of small cities and towns in mediating the rural-urban nexus and providing smallholder farmers with greater opportunities to market their produce and share in the benefits of economic growth," he adds.
See more: http://www.fao.org/news/story/en/item/1042091/icode/
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