Improvements in agriculture pave the way for broad economic growth and provide governments with the resources to invest in education, health, and other sectors, allowing them to make progress on all the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).
Goal 1: Eradicate extreme poverty and hunger: Improving agricultural productivity not only increases the amount of food available in poor countries, it stimulates economic growth by creating jobs, both on- and off-farm, which raise people’s incomes and enable them to purchase food.
Goal 2: Achieve universal primary education: By raising incomes, agricultural growth enables parents to send children to school rather than to work. Education, particularly for girls, prepares children to take advantage of economic opportunities.
Goal 3: Promote gender equality and empower women: Women play a critical role in agriculture in much of the developing world, especially in sub-Saharan Africa. Throughout the 1990s, roughly 80 percent of the agricultural labor force in the least developed countries was female. This is projected to decline but remain above 70 percent into the next decade.29
Goals 4 & 5: Reduce child mortality and improve maternal health: Increased and diversified agricultural production is one of the most reliable, sustainable interventions to improve nutrition and reduce child malnutrition and mortality.30 More children die before the age of five in rural areas than in urban ones. About half of these deaths are due to malnutrition.
Goal 6: Combat HIV/AIDS, malaria, and other diseases: When people with HIV lack sufficient food and proper nutrition, they develop AIDS more rapidly.31 The agricultural sector in developing countries can help by generating income to purchase food and increasing the availability of nutritious food.
Goal 7: Ensure environmental sustainability: Agricultural practices that increase productivity may also cause damage to the environment—deforestation, farming on marginal lands, overgrazing. Overuse and misuse of agricultural chemicals can pollute surface and groundwater supplies and leave dangerously high residues in food. Increasing investment in sustainable farming methods can reduce agriculture’s large environmental footprint.
Goal 8: Develop a global partnership for development: Many domestic agricultural policies in rich countries hurt poor countries. Agricultural protectionism in rich countries continues unabated despite agreements to bring agriculture within the purview of the World Trade Organization.
