Rural areas are poised to be a significant economic driver in developing countries. According to the latest 2017 State of Food and Agriculture report by the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), the key to achieving the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development are transforming rural communities and promoting agriculture. “Since the 1990s, rural transformations in many countries have led to an increase of more than 750 million in the number of rural people living above the poverty line,” says FAO. “To achieve the same results in the countries that have been left behind, the report outlines a strategy that would leverage the enormous untapped potential of food systems to drive agro-industrial development, boost small-scale farmers’ productivity and incomes, and create off-farm employment in expanding segments of food supply and value chains.”
