World Bank: Without agriculture growth, poverty in Yemen will increase

from The Yemen Times

SANA’A, Jan. 23 — The World Bank presented its 2008 World Development Report on Wednesday, which featured plans for more investment in the agriculture sector of Yemen’s economy.

This year’s world development report and subsequent presentation focused on agriculture’s role in relieving poverty. It explained that though 75 percent of the world’s poor live in agriculturally-based developing countries, only 4 percent of international aid goes to agriculture.

On a national level, 84 percent of Yemen’s citizens are impoverished rural-dwellers, and 52 percent of rural households in Yemen live by subsistence farming, meaning they grow only enough food for their own consumption, according to the report.

Alain de Janvry of the University of California at Berkeley, a co-author of the report, outlined the steps Yemen can take to relieve pervasive rural poverty.

“Yemen is both an agriculturally-based country and a transforming country,” said de Janvry. “Growth in agriculture is more effective for poverty reduction than growth that originates from other methods.”

However, most of the report’s suggestions, such as the immediate recommencement of the long-stalled Doha trade talks and redirecting more money from the budget towards the agricultural industry, would rely heavily on the Yemeni government’s initiatives and could take years before affecting any change.

De Janvry also warned that unless agriculture becomes a higher priority for the Yemeni government and international aid donors, the poverty rate will not only fail to meet the Millennium Development Goals set by the United Nations, it would also increase enormously.

Mustapha Rouis, the World Bank’s country manager for Yemen, praised the World Bank-supported (and government-implemented) rainwater farming aid system that is already in place, but said that the World Bank should do more to help increase investments in Yemen’s agriculture industry.

The presentation was attended by the Minister of Planning and International Cooperation, the Minister of Agriculture and Irrigation and many World Bank employees. This was the first time in 25 years that the World Bank’s world development report focused on agriculture, and Yemen hosted the first in a series of similar presentations scheduled to take place in other countries, including Morocco, Tunisia and Iran.