Dubbed the “50 X 2030” Initiative is an unprecedented effort to harness the power of data to boost the productivity and livelihoods of the world’s 500 million small-holder farmers. This effort will drive a new era of targeted solutions to food production challenges, increasing sustainable production by smallholder farmers in the face of climate change and population growth, which is key to end extreme poverty and progress toward “zero hunger.”

The commitment, one of the largest ever investments in collecting data for agricultural development, comes in the wake of new alarming numbers that hunger levels have risen for three consecutive years, and sends a signal that the development community is committed to ensuring its interventions lead to results.

The “50 X 2030” initiative, launched Monday at an event on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly, monitored by the Ghana News Agency, is an ambitious effort to conduct regular surveys of farming households in 50 low- and lower-middle-income countries by 2030.

It seeks to make the data, combined with other information sources, widely available to guide governments to make evidence-based decisions to increase agricultural productivity sustainably with expected 30 from sub-Saharan Africa, 10 from Asia, and 10 from Latin America and the Caribbean to benefit.

Accurate data were key to helping these countries take the lead in their own agricultural growth and development progress. Donors were contributing to the initial data collection efforts, but the 50 countries will co-finance the initiative over time.

Laura Tuck, Vice President for Sustainable Development at the World Bank, said “We are witnessing today a fundamental transformation of food systems in developing countries, with rising incomes, changing consumption patterns and the emergence of more business-oriented small- and medium-scale farmers.” 

“By making agricultural data more readily available in 50 low-income countries, we can help accelerate this transformation, to boost sustainable food production and allow farmers to thrive."  It said two well-established surveys—the Integrated Surveys on Agriculture (ISA) that is part of the World Bank’s Living Standards and Measurement Study (LSMS), and the AGRISurvey from the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO)—will provide the foundation for the initiative’s data collection efforts with experts from the World Bank and FAO supervising much of the technical work.

It is anticipated, basic agricultural data—such as the different crop varieties farmers were planting, how much they were harvesting and their access to inputs and financing—were often missing in developing countries. But these insights can have a big impact on productivity and incomes.

Recent assessments of available agriculture data showed that, in sub-Saharan Africa in particular, basic statistics from the farm sector were often incomplete or unreliable with only two out of 44 countries in the region deemed to have high-quality agriculture data.

“Kenya welcomes the cooperation shown today, to work with 50 countries in supporting millions of smallholder farmers,” said Mr William Ruto, Deputy President of Kenya.  “Through our Big four Agenda, we are committed to achieving food security and job creation through agriculture, and we know that better data is the key to driving our transformation and growth.” 

With hunger rising after years of decline, experts say the lack of farm-level data is speding effective interventions that could help reverse this particularly challenging moment for food security.

It indicates just as good data have significantly improved global health interventions, data can also drive more effective agriculture solutions, particularly as efforts accelerate toward achieving the second of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), which includes pledges to end hunger worldwide, achieve food security, improve nutrition, double smallholder productivity and promote sustainable agriculture. 

Key partners on the initiative include the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), Government of Australia’s Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT), Government of Germany’s Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ), World Bank, Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) and Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.