Overview
IFAD is an international financial institution and specialized United Nations agency based in Rome, the UN’s food and agriculture hub. Since 1978, they have provided over US$21 billion in grants and low-interest loans to projects that have reached about 491 million people. With a growing global population that will exceed 9 billion by 2050, a widening gap between rich and poor, and growing competition for resources, the major issues facing humanity cannot wait. IFAD works where poverty and hunger are deepest: in the most remote regions of developing countries and fragile situations, where few development agencies venture. They have developed a cost-effective, people-centred and partnership-oriented approach that delivers results. Small-scale agriculture is central to development model, which connects farmers and poor rural women and men to markets and services so they can grow more and earn more.