Agriculture is moving up the World Bank’s priority list: On Tuesday, at its annual meetings in Washington, the institution unveiled Mission AgriConnect: Farms, Firms, and Finance for Jobs — an ambitious push to make smallholder farming a cornerstone of its jobs and economic growth strategy.
The initiative is the operationalization of World Bank President Ajay Banga’s pledge last year to double agribusiness and agri-finance investments from $4.5 billion to $9 billion annually by 2030. At the core of the initiative is improving access to financing, technology, and equipment for hundreds of millions of farmers in more than 20 countries.
“Globally, 500 million smallhold farmers produce 80% of the world's food. Yet most of them remain stuck in subsistence farming. They lack electricity, storage, training, market access. Fewer than 1 in 10 have access to commercial finance, let alone crop insurance,” Banga said Tuesday.