“Halving hunger is possible. The world is ready to invest in rural development.” With these words at the international panel discussion entitled “Agricultural and Rural Development” held on 13 May at GTZ-Haus Berlin, Pedro A. Sanchez expressed his confidence. Sanchez is the coordinator of the UN Millennium Project Hunger Task Force. He qualified his statements however, by adding that more financial support was needed to sustainably fight the “silent tsunamis”, which he used to refer to the 200,000 people who die of hunger every day in Africa.

Sanchez said that US$ 110 per capita and year were required to achieve the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). The donors’ share of this amount is  US$ 7, according to Sanchez, which is two to three times more than is currently being made available. Although only 20 percent of the per capita amount is available for developing rural areas and agriculture, it is a key factor in achieving the MDGs. According to Pedro Sanchez, “Agriculture is the engine for economic development.”

Conversely, an underdeveloped agricultural sector is a genuine development constraint if not enough food can be produced for the population: “Hunger is an obstacle to productivity. Its impact on the gross national product of a country is huge,” said Kostas Stamoulis, chief of the agriculture sector of the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO). He called for politics to invest more in agriculture, especially in small-farmer structures. “This would sustainably increase the productivity of the entire rural area.”

Uschi Eid, BMZ Parliamentary State Secretary, proposed that agricultural subsidies that distort trade be removed and redirected to rural development in the partner countries, where they should be earmarked for special purposes. Eid also felt that there was a problem with the political priorities of the partner governments themselves. The fact that for the most part, their regular voters live in urban areas means that rural areas are less relevant for them. “In order to fight poverty, the national development strategies in the partner countries have to put the topic of agriculture at the very top of their agendas.” “But that means that we also need to keep to these development strategies. The people know what they need, but we don’t ask them. I don’t know whether a farmer in eastern Sudan understands a German expert. We need to be more sensitive. Sometimes we miss things. We don’t need to give them a voice. We need to listen to them,” Eid concluded.