Strategi/plan
Fighting Poverty through Agriculture Norwegian Plan of Action for Agriculture in Norwegian Development Policy
Three-quarters of the 1.2 billion people who live in extreme poverty live and work in rural areas. In the least developed countries about 70 per cent of people make a living from the primary industries, mainly agriculture, which is the largest economic sector in many of these countries. In spite of this, agriculture has long been given low priority in both Norwegian and international development cooperation. Agricultural development is of crucial importance in achieving the MDG of eradicating poverty and hunger. In the last few years, however, there has been a stronger focus on the national and international framework conditions that are needed if agriculture is to make a real contribution to reducing poverty. The World Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg in 2002 provided a good foundation for further efforts, with its focus on the WEHAB initiative, which identifies agriculture as one of five priority areas (the other four are water, energy, health and biodiversity). The developing countries themselves are in the process of developing more coherent policies based on national poverty reduction strategies. All this provides a good framework for a broad effort to promote agricultural development. The Norwegian government wishes to make a greater contribution to agricultural development in developing countries as part of the fight against poverty.