In Africa, most food is produced by women smallholder farmers.

Organizations like IFAD can help link the private sector and smallholder farmers.

Investment in agriculture in Africa must focus on creating a dynamic smallholder sector.

Moreover, sustainable investment linkages between smallholder farmers and the private sector are needed.

Moreover, large companies should use their global supply chains to empower their workforces and women smallholder farmers.

New drought tolerant maize varieties, for example, are already benefiting more than two million smallholder farmers in Africa.

Agricultural development efforts should, therefore, focus on promoting the growth and sustainability of smallholder farmers and small rural businesses.

By enabling farmers to increase their output and incomes, smallholder inclusive private investment can bolster economic growth and food security.

Indeed, smallholder farmers are often extremely efficient producers per hectare, and can contribute to a country s economic growth and food security.

Much needed capital investment can enable smallholder farmers to provide the private sector with a sustainable supply of high quality agricultural produce.

But supporting that smallholder in launching a farming business that could generate a five fold increase in income amounts to poverty eradication.

If smallholder farmers are to be given the opportunity to become viable businesses, it is essential that they be connected to markets.

For example, Vietnam transformed itself from a food deficit country to the second largest rice exporter in the world by developing its smallholder farming sector.

In Haiti, and in developing countries around the world, smallholder farmers can contribute to food security and economic growth just as they did in Vietnam.

The results of these projects are summarized in the two books African Biodiversity in Smallholder Farms of East Africa and Managing Agrodiversity the Traditional Way.

In Davos, I will work to ensure that the interests of the world s smallholder farmers in Haiti and in developing countries around the world are represented.

Three quarters of the world s poorest people get their food and income from farming small plots of land, and most of these smallholder farmers are women.

Each link in the value chain, from the smallholder to the local trade agents and agro processors to regional and national markets, needs to be strengthened.

A patch of potatoes grown by a Peruvian peasant or an Irish smallholder for personal use could be described as either a garden or a farm.

One cornerstone of the project was smallholder farmers, meaning peasant farm families in Africa, Latin America, and Asia working farms of around one hectare (2.5 acres) or less.

The lessons of history are clear. Getting seed and fertilizer to smallholder farmers at highly subsidized prices (or even free in some cases) will make a lasting difference.

Many individual donor countries have declared that they are now prepared to increase their financial support for smallholder agriculture, but are searching for the appropriate mechanisms to do so.

At the same time, smallholder farmers need easier access to markets to sell their crops for a fair price, rather than relying on expensive middlemen or inefficient government bodies.

In most of Asia, land reform has focused on converting tenants into private smallholder owners, except in China, where a different model promoting the household responsibility system has been adopted.

We should consider not only how to improve the ability of smallholder farmers to grow food we also must strengthen their ability to participate in markets, while improving the way those markets function.

But that is not all With knowledge, technology, infrastructure, and enabling policies, smallholder farmers in Africa and elsewhere can drive sustainable agricultural development, contribute to global food security, and catalyze economic growth worldwide.

NEW YORK The G 8 s 20 billion initiative on smallholder agriculture, launched at the group s recent summit in L Aquila, Italy, is a potentially historic breakthrough in the fight against hunger and extreme poverty.

If smallholder farmers have the basic infrastructure they need to get their goods to market, they will not only be able to feed themselves and their communities, but will contribute to wider food security.

Noting that hundreds of millions of women worldwide live in poverty and that the majority of poor women throughout the world live in rural areas, where their livelihoods are dependent on subsistence and smallholder agriculture,

There is growing recognition that these smallholder farmers and their rural communities are a major part of the solution to food insecurity and poverty but only if they have what they need to do their jobs.

Not only in Africa in countries like Burkina Faso and Ethiopia but also in emerging countries like China, India, and Vietnam, experience has repeatedly shown that smallholder farmers can lead agricultural growth while stimulating broader economic development.

Agricultural development efforts should, therefore, focus on promoting the growth and sustainability of smallholder farmers and small rural businesses. This requires a more supportive regulatory environment, technical assistance, as well as connections to suppliers, distributors, and finance providers.

At the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), we believe that farming, regardless of size or scale, must be seen as a business, and smallholder farmers as small scale business owners rather than poor people who need handouts.

In IFAD s experience, working simply to double the income of a smallholder farmer who scrapes by on less than a dollar a day is poverty management, because at two dollars a day, he or she still remains poor.

The economy will have a simple structure in the coming years, with most economic activities focused in five sectors smallholder, or peasant, agriculture reconstruction port services and light manufacturing local small scale trade and public services, including health care and education.

ROME Recently, I was on a road in the Southern Choma District of Zambia to meet with Rosemary Pisani, a smallholder farmer and mother of eight who struggled to feed her children prior to joining a farmer s cooperative to raise goats.

The Hunger Task Force determined that Africa could substantially increase its food production if help was given to smallholder farmers, in the form of agricultural inputs. The Millennium Project recommended a big increase in global funding for this purpose. Drawing on that work and related scientific findings, Annan launched a call in 2004 for an African Green Revolution, based on an expanded partnership between Africa and donor countries.