Investment in developing country agriculture

Agricultural investments are essential to promoting agricultural growth, reducing poverty and hunger and promoting environmental sustainability. The FAO State of Food and agriculture 2012: Investing in agriculture for a better future shows that farmers are the largest investors in developing country agriculture and argues, therefore, that farmers’ investment decisions must be central to any strategy aimed at improving agricultural investment. The report also concludes that the regions of the world where hunger and extreme poverty are most widespread – South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa – have seen stagnant or declining rates of investment per worker in agriculture for three decades.

In October 2012 the Committee on World Food Security (CFS) approved the Terms of Reference or an inclusive consultation process within CFS to develop and ensure broad ownership of principles for responsible agricultural investments (rai). The principles emanating from the CFS consultative process will be submitted for endorsement by CFS at its 41st Session in October 2014.

The objective of the round table is to raise the awareness among Swedish stakeholders of the importance of investments in agriculture and to disseminate information of the rai-process to Swedish stakeholders and give Swedish stakeholders an opportunity to provide input to the international rai-process.

For more information, please open PDF-file above.