International Fund for Agricultural Development

Abstract

At the 1974 World Food Conference there was unanimous agreement (Resolution XIII) that an International Fund for Agricultural Development should be established immediately to finance agricultural development projects primarily for food production in the developing countries. On 13 December 1977-some three years later-the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) became a reality, thus officially becoming the thirteenth specialized agency of the United Nations and constituting the only new United Nations fund created in the 1970s. Those considerations alone make IFAD worthy of serious academic attention. The establishment of IFAD is an important event that, at least potentially, could be of moderate consequence to those who live in an environment that, to use Robert McNamara's phrase, must be portrayed as one of "absolute poverty."' That is, IFAD's principal target is "the poorest of the poor": those 959 million persons in 1975 who lived in twenty-eight nation-states in which the average GNP per capita income was $140 (U.S.), according to estimates of the World Bank. It should be emphasized, moreover, that the central and limited objective of IFAD is to improve significantly the production of food, both quantitatively and qualitatively, in those nations. As stated in its Articles of Agreement (Article 2), "The objective of the Fund shall be to mobilize addi-