Developing nations need a major boost in investment in farming after two decades of neglect, which has limited aid flows to the world's rural poor as their wealth gap with city dwellers has widened, the World Bank said Friday, according to DPA. With food supplies under pressure from growing global demand, a fresh focus on producing high-value fruits, vegetables and meat could help lift millions out of poverty, the aid agency said in its annual World Development Report. "The main goal of the agriculture-for-development agenda in transforming countries is to narrow urban-rural income disparities and reduce rural poverty while avoiding the subsidy and protection traps to support rural incomes," the report said. In an appeal aimed at rich countries, World Bank chief Robert Zoellick said governments could help by cutting distorting subsidies and opening markets. Donors, aid groups and governments in poorer countries need to shift agriculture back to the centre of the development agenda to improve the lives of some 900 million rural people who live on less than one US dollar a day, Zoellick said in a statement. "We need to give agriculture more prominence across the board," he said. Most countries whose economies depend heavily on agriculture are in Africa south of the Sahara. In that area and in South Asia, the number of rural poor is rising, the World Bank said. But the bank's chief economist, Francois Bourgignon, said farming growth has been "highly successful" in reducing rural poverty in East Asia over the past 15 years. While 75 per cent of the world's poor live in rural areas, only 4 per cent of government-to-government aid goes to farming in developing countries, the report said. In sub-Saharan Africa, governments also spend just 4 per cent on farming and keep taxes on farmers relatively high, the World Bank said.
