Agriculture holds key to prosperity in the region

With more than 680 million people in Asia and the Pacific region continuing to live on less than US$1.25 a day, “There remains an urgent need to invest more and better in agriculture and rural areas in developing countries, based on a new approach to smallholder agriculture that is both market-oriented and sustainable,” says IFAD's Thomas Elhaut in a new report that looks at how investment by governments in agriculture contributes substantially to GDP growth and poverty reduction.