This week, the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) celebrated its thirtieth anniversary in Rome on the fringe of its governing council annual meeting.

Delegates of more than 160 countries spent two days talking about rural poor and how to help them get out of poverty.

From almost a billion people in the world who live in extreme poverty, 80 per cent are in rural areas, and those are responsible for feeding the world while suffering from hunger and deprivation.

IFAD was launched in late 1970s by Opec and OECD (Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development) countries in response to famine crises in Africa and Asia, and as part of the United Nations it works closely with sister Rome-based organisations like FAO (Food and Agriculture Organisation) and WFP (World Food Programme).

This year's meeting comes at a time when food prices are rocketing high and climate change is threatening sustainable land and water utilisation to produce enough food for the half a dozen billion people on earth. Agricultural commodities' rising prices and increased global demand on food was supposed to help IFAD and likes reduce the number of rural poor — unfortunately the opposite happened.

About 18 months ago, food and agriculture big producers — like the US, Brazil and Japan — were suffering from low prices of their production and the global market looked oversupplied, so they were thinking of dumping the produce to keep prices stable.

Now, prices of almost all food items have doubled and the market is short of supply. Rural poor are more negatively affected by these price hikes, and the increase in revenue goes to the middlemen and big corporations. They are squeezed between the difficulties of harder and non-profitable farming and expensive food to keep their families living.

According to one farmers' association in Asia, global rural poor numbers increased by about 50 million last year. Is this a shocking fact about the inequality in today's world and a major setback for the virtues of globalisation? It might be for the global public, but not for economists and policymakers.

That trend has been building up for decades, with investment in agriculture dwindling and the sector's share of global economy losing ground to the service sector.

Subsidies

Developed countries are aware of that and debate the issue regularly, coming up with solutions such as anti-globalisation. Farm subsidies in the rich industrialised world, especially in Europe, is a striking example.

A cow in Europe gets about three dollars a day of government subsidy, while more than a billion people in Africa, Asia and Latin America live on a dollar a day. It is worth noting that the problem of food and hunger is not just an inequality problem to be thrown totally on the shoulders of the rich nations, as the developing world shares responsibility as well.

Governments in the developing world are keen on restructuring their economies to impress the international institutions and in the process they damage one of their main advantages. Even when they consider investment in agriculture, it is left to big corporations or private sector businesspeople who follow a dangerous practice that is aggravating the sustainability of the land and water of the planet.

Unfortunately, people still consider agriculture a sign of backwardness. This is really absurd. Agriculture means feeding the world, and without food nothing can be done from IT revolution to super PR modelling. People forget the fact that in the years when there were no major arms contracts, agriculture was the main export of the US, generating most of the nation's revenue. There is another factor concerning the developed world.

For example, of the total international aid, the share of agriculture sector decreased from 18 per cent in 1979 to less than three percent lately. Let alone the corruption and mismanagement of aid to rural areas. All this is adding to the global problem of food and hunger in today's world. It might be better to look at the issue from a different perspective.

It is not only a moral issue with the rich being kind to the poor. If agriculture is still the main sector of employment in the developing world, youth unemployment and the subsequent problems of illegal immigration and extremism can be uprooted by investment in agriculture.

Dr Ahmad Mustafa is a London-based Arab writer.