The Islamic Development Bank (IDB) announced at the weekend an extra USD 1 billion to support farmers in developing countries in a project with the UN food agency, the agency said. The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) announced the move ahead of a food security summit Nov. 16 in Rome which brought together 60 world leaders, AFP reported. The UN agency said it is hoped that the framework agreement, which was concluded in Rome by IDB President Ahmad Mohamed Ali and FAO Director-General Jacques Diouf, will help leverage additional resources and bring total investment in the IDB-FAO program to some USD 5 billion by 2012. Organizers of summit hope to wean national policies away from long-standing emphasis on food aid and instead generate support for a new approach: help farmers, livestock herders and fishermen to produce enough food for their own people. UN officials point to villages in Kenya, Pakistan and Haiti to show that is possible.
