Agriculture and Food Security

Ensuring food security, agricultural development and sustainable natural resources management

Boosting agricultural yields in food-scarce areas has been at the centre of the Aga Khan Foundation’s activities since it began. Agriculture remains the single largest employer in the world, providing livelihoods for 40 percent of today’s global population. The world’s 500 million small farms worldwide provide up to 80 percent of the food consumed.

However, 800 million people worldwide still lack regular access to adequate amounts of food. Adding to the traditional challenges is a changing climate that is impacting many farmers: global emissions of carbon dioxide have increased by almost 50 percent since 1990; and Himalayan snow and ice are expected to decline 20 percent by 2030.

In organising AKF’s activities in the following categories, AKF aims to provide enduring solutions to chronic or emerging issues. For example, it is mindful of how the gender gap affects agriculture and food security. It is estimated that the elimination of the gender gap would lower the number of undernourished people in the world by 150 million.

“As we enhance the productivity of agriculture, small commerce and leisure activities, we have to bring a better quality of life to the rural environments. Whatever we can do to improve the quality of life in the rural environment is critical.”

His Highness the Aga Khan

Our Agriculture and Food Security programmes work towards these UN Sustainable Development Goals:

Our goals

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Enhanced food security

By providing better equipment and training on latest growing techniques

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Improved livelihoods from agriculture

Connecting small-scale farmers to larger buyers and marketplaces

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Increased sustainable utilisation of natural resources

Ensuring precious resources are carefully managed and shared

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Improved resilience towards climate change

Through improved infrastructure, and mitigation techniques

Our impact

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THOUSAND
people worldwide who have benefitted from AKF’s farm livelihoods and natural resource management interventions
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THOUSAND
farmers (112,000 individual and 3,000 groups) worldwide who have benefitted from AKF’s climate-smart interventions
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THOUSAND
remote-dwelling Afghans who have benefitted from AKF’s transport infrastructure interventions
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THOUSAND
people in India who have benefitted from AKF’s water management programmes

Programme spotlight

In Madagascar, locally grown rice does not meet the national demand, so the SPEEDRICE project has been developed with our partner, innocent foundation, to combat this.

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SPEEDRICE, Madagascar (2019–)

Training farmers to grow higher yields of rice using gender-friendly and climate-smart techniques.

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