IFAD warns of growing risks to rural supply chains and global food security amid Middle East conflict
The International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) warns in a new position paper released at the World Bank Group-IMF Spring Meetings that conflict in the Middle East is creating severe disruptions for smallholder farmers and producers around the world and exposing the global food system’s structural vulnerabilities to external shocks.
Based on IFAD’s ground-level view working with local producers and small-scale agricultural businesses, Global Shock, Local Crisis: Smallholder farmers and producers again under strain, lays out how this crisis is already being absorbed by small-holder farmers who produce a third of the world’s food. As policymakers and finance ministers gather in Washington, the paper presents IFAD’s proven solutions to building long-term resilience to recurrent shocks at the “first mile” of global food systems, and calls investments in resilient rural economies a geostrategic imperative for stable global food value chains in an era of geopolitical, climate, and environmental volatility.
The paper is available for download here: https://www.ifad.org/en/w/publications/global-shock-local-crisis