'Partnership between govt and int'l community necessary for poverty reduction'

Kishor Kumar Poudel in Rome

Agriculture secretary Jaya Mukunda Khanal stressed the need for strong partnership between Nepal government and international community to reduce poverty in the country.

Addressing the 36th session of the International Fund for Agriculture Development (IFAD) governing council in Rome, Italy, Khanal said there is an urgent need to have a strong partnership between public and private sectors at the national level apart from the coordination between the government and international community to increase investment substantially and scale up smallholder production to address the emerging challenges like food insecurity and climate change that are instrumental for the poverty reduction.

"As agriculture still remains the mainstay of livelihood and sources of income for the majority of people in the world. Forging alliances for its sustainability is a need of the time. More importantly, smallholder farmers are the key actors and have a crucial role to play in feeding the ever growing population of the world," he added.

He further said that the IFAD’s working strategy is more focused on small and poor farmers though the smallholder farmers are still largely left out by policy design and implementation.

"It is high time we developed a new initiative to create a supportive policy environment which would increase public and private investment on smallholder sustainable agriculture with new forms of partnerships for the development of new investment modalities," he further said.

High-lightening the three decade long partnership between Nepal and IFAD, Khanal also said that the leasehold forestry and a livestock programme that link smallholder farmers with value chains of high value commodities, as well as improved seeds and breeds for farmers programmes, are the ongoing operations in Nepal. nepalnews.com