A billion poor

The Rural Poverty Report issued by the International Fund for Agricultural Development revealed that the global population is 6.7 billion people, out of which, the report says a billion live in extreme poverty. 62% of all rural people living on less than U.S. $1.25 a day.

More than 70 per cent of them live in rural areas of developing countries. Nearly one billion do not have enough to eat. South Asia remains home to half of the world's poor people. 500 million poor rural people living in South Asia today.

"For many, many farmers climate change is already happening. Rains aren't as reliable as they used to be. The knowledge that they had about the seasons is losing its value. There's greater uncertainty," Heinemann, the report's coordinator, said. "Longer-term we're going to see potentially devastating changes. Not just longer dry periods, more flash floods. We're going to see areas that are currently arable go out of production altogether," he added