‘Market access to farming poor vital for food security in tropical drylands’

The International Crops Research Institute for Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT) has stressed on the importance of agriculture in tropical drylands and noted that market access to the farming poor there will highly improve their food security.

During a lecture on tackling the complexity of challenges in the tropical drylands of Asia and sub-Saharan Africa at the Crawford Fund State Parliamentary Conference held in Brisbane last week, the ICRISAT Director-General, Dr William Dar, sought the attention on the need to seize every opportunity to help alleviate the plight of 300 million people in the dryland tropics living on less than one dollar a day.

This level of absolute poverty in tropical drylands along with unacceptably high rates of child malnutrition of nearly 42 per cent in dryland Asia and nearly 27 per cent in dryland Africa is one of the key motivations behind ICRISAT’s strategy of Inclusive Market-Oriented Development (IMOD).

Dr Dar highlighted the power of market opportunities to offer more prosperous lives for small holder farmers and their families.

He said ICRISAT sees the need for effective social assistance programmes to help the poorest of the poor to connect to markets, but in a way that builds their own resilience rather than creating dependency.

“ICRISAT’s IMOD strategy focuses on helping the farming poor in the drylands to access markets to increase their food supplies and incomes,” he added.

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