Development experts and policymakers understandably focus on migration to urban areas and the need for sustainable urbanisation. But they should not lose sight of the dramatic changes happening in rural areas, which are too often ignored.

While the growing demand for food — driven by rising population and incomes — is creating opportunities for rural people, hunger and poverty remain concentrated in rural parts of developing countries.

Unless rural development receives more attention, young people will continue to abandon agriculture and rural areas in search of better livelihoods in cities or abroad.

Last year at the United Nations General Assembly, world leaders adopted the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), which include a commitment to “leave no one behind”. 

And, with the number of forcibly displaced people reaching all-time highs this year, the UN will hold a summit on September 19 to discuss the problem. But no effort to address the issues surrounding the global surge in migrants and refugees will succeed unless it specifically targets the plight of the world’s rural poor.

According to the World Bank, in 1990, some 37 per cent of people in developing regions lived on less than $1.90 a day.

By 2012, 12.7 per cent did, amounting to more than 1 billion people rising out of extreme poverty. And yet, inequality between rural and urban areas has increased. 

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The writer is president of the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) and the first recipient of the Africa Food Prize. ©Project Syndicate, 2016. www.project-syndicate.org