The first in-person authors' and Advisory Board meeting of the #RDR2025, Rural Development Report 2025, titled ''Financing for Rural Transformation'' occurred in #Rome this week. On behalf of the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) as the lead agency, we welcomed the entire team and we spent it discussing, writing and sharing. We are getting ready for launch just before the #FFD summit in Spain in July 2025 (#Financing for Development). So watch this space. Some key things already important/emerging: 1. Despite 3.5 billion (47%) people living in rural areas today, there is almost no data on rural people and rural areas. In 2050, this number will still be large (3 billion!) 2. Despite 80% of the poor (AND 80% of the extremely poor) living in #rural areas, we dont know what we need in terms of financing for basic needs (or for #SDGs). Is this millions or billions or trillions? (Any guesses?) 3. What we dont measure, we dont treasure. 4. So far, a large part of development thinking, has positioned rural areas as subservient to urban ones (the main argument being economies of scale/aggregation). We dont, have any idea what an empowered, strong, thriving rural transformation, could look like. 5. That argument changes dramatically, if we consider that with disaggregated, high frequency, data we can use the high fragmentation, to create ''e-scale economies'': Billions of data points representing lots of agents, helps us hedge, invest, and insure better at the meso/meta level. Suddenly, its actually important to have lots of small disaggregated farms and businesses rather than large ones. Small becomes truly beautiful. 6. Rural areas can be an #investment opportunity, BECAUSE, they have fewer #stranded assets, and there is the opportunity of creating new markets. 7. Rural areas represent the opportunity to re-imagine our future! Rural transformation means areas are PERC (Prosperous, Equitable, Resilient and Connected). Our fantastic advisory board: (In picture) Shenggen Fan, Ana María Ibáñez, Chris Clubb, Lee Ann Jackson, Louise Fox, Patricia Ojangole; We missed Johan Swinnen and @thomas Reardon. Our authors (global/regional): Adolfo Brizzi, @Niklas Kesseler, Joel Moktar, Jan Priebe Narasimhan Srinivasan, Hezekiah Agwara, Randa Hamza, Nick Maddock, Miguel Robles (and their teams), Nadia Martinez, MBA, Saib Ahmad, Alexia Ipiotis Mikhail Kourenkov and myself. We have excellent support (physical, academic, mental and in spirit and in humor) from Dr. Alvaro Lario, Gerardine Mukeshimana, Constanza Di Nucci, Alessandra Garbero, Rick Van Der Kamp, Gulnara Yunusova, Claudia ten Have, Malek Sahli, Stephanie Micallef, Caterina Firova, Alexandra Enascut, Federica Cerulli Irelli, @Ronald Hartman and many others. Special thanks to EIIS - European Institute of Innovation for Sustainability and Andrea Geremicca for their stewardship. It takes a village.
It was a great meeting indeed, with rich and deep contributions of leading experts! looking forward to the launch during the #FinancingforDevelopment forum 2025 #FfD4 .
It was an honor for us at EIIS - European Institute of Innovation for Sustainability to host such an important delegation. Thank you for your work, Jo Puri, Ph.D. It was also great to meet and work with you, Alexia Ipiotis and team.
Congratulations Jo Puri, Ph.D and team. I could not agree more with: "Rural areas represent the opportunity to re-imagine our future!" I am also a believer that much of our future depends on how we transform and enable the leapfrogging of rural areas towards a #regenerativeeconomy, and that is why the development of our agricultural value chains is so essential. I would love to learn more about this new concept of ''e-scale economies''.
was a very nice meeting - great to hear from so many wise minds. Well done IFAD team - Jo and Nadia, and the the fantastic team
You always share very encouraging news.
Bravo, I wish I could be part of your team 😊 I just registered for the certificate program with EIIS. Abbraccio
Somewhat disappointing stats Jo Puri, Ph.D but Insightful...so much more to do to make the world's people and resources more equitable
Great work and Ifad milestone! Nice to see this unique global report sustained since 2011 !! Will follow #RDR2025
Deputy-Director of Agrifood Economics and Policy at FAO
2moLook forward to read it!!! It is a great complement to SOFI 2024