Economic and Agricultur​al Policies and their Impact on Access to Food by Vulnerable​

Atsuko Toda, Country Programme Manager in Vietnam of International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) delivered an engaging presentation at Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy as part of a lunchtime talk series.

Speaker started with sharing some numbers, such as 70% increase in food production is required to meet demand in 2050, 90% of this increase can be achieved through higher yields and intensive agriculture. She further added that unpredictability of food prices makes food crises post 2015 in South and South East Asia very likely.

Ms. Atsuko Toda talked about the difference between chronic and transient poor, where the latter refers to people coming in and out of poverty. Transient poor represent a larger proportion of population and they are also called a productive poor. However, they still remain vulnerable and susceptible to exogenous shocks, such as volatility of food prices, natural disasters, pest outbreaks. Moreover despite the fact that majority of rural poor are involved in the agriculture, the increase in food prices had an overall negative effect on rural households in Vietnam. Therefore, national policies should address these risks to permanently push transient poor out of the poverty.

Ms. Toda highlighted private sector opportunities in developing localised soil, water, livestock management solutions for less-favoured lands (dry land, upland). IFAD recognizing inherent risks of starting a business and public benefits of it, provides start-up grants to pro-poor businesses in Vietnam. IFAD currently focuses on attracting public-private partnerships, integrating smallholders into high value production chains, creating non-farm activities in rural areas and promoting market-based approaches.

The session closed of with a lively Q&A. One of the guests brought up Oxfam study in Vietnam that demonstrated effectiveness of unconditional cash transfers to help chronic poor (evaluation report can be found here), whereas another guest asked why innovative solutions are not being brought from Africa to Asia.