THE POOREST OF THE WORLD’S POPULATION RELY ON FARMING TO MAKE A LIVING
According to the UN, around 1.2 billion people are living in extreme poverty, which means that they are living on USD 1.25 or less per day.1 Three out of four of these people live in rural areas and the vast majority of them make a living from agriculture or occupations linked to agriculture.
The latest calculations from the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) indicate that almost 800 million people in the world are hungry and undernourished. In this group too, three out of four live in rural areas, making a living from agriculture, fishing or forestry. However, production is seldom sufficient to avoid hunger and malnutrition. This creates negative spirals with malnutrition impairing people’s physical capability and increases susceptibility to illness, which in turn reduces their ability to look after the family farm in the best way.
Saffron Aid is helping to increase the production of food for families by supplying good quality vegetable seed and training in animal husbandry to enable the family to produce enough food to sustain them and having excess to sell at markets.