Poverty is an issue that affects vast places of the rural population. About one in every five people in the world’s population lives on less than a dollar a day, hence are afflicted by poverty. This phenomenon is multidimensional whose causes are also complex. The factors leading to rural poverty include markets, gender, climate, culture, public policy, and many more. On the same note, the diversity that exists in the rural poor is vast both in the challenges they face and the possible solutions to the problems ( Khan, 2001) . However, before devising a way of solving this issue, it is essential to know the dimensions and the extent to which it manifests. Poverty differs in terms of income source, location, age, ethnicity, and gender. In the family unit, women and children suffer the brunt more than men. When it comes to ethnicity, the minority groups feel the pinch more than the majority. Among the rural poor, the wages workers with no land are poorer than the tenants or landowners. These are just some of the differences that show how the issue is complex and thus calling for complex mitigation solutions.
Poverty on the global scale is outrageous and attracts the attention of governments, non-governmental organizations, and global political fronts ( Khan, 2001) . In fact, the first goal of the Sustainable Development Goals is to end poverty everywhere. Thus, several interventions are being put in place to try to fight the issue. Three of the main programs that have been put across include big infrastructure projects, integrated rural development, and structural adjustments. The first one involves uplifting the environment of the people by investing in the construction of utilities such as roads, electricity service lines, mobile connectivity, among others (Nemes, 2005). In other words, it is the program aimed at producing a touch of urbanization and making the third world countries be like the developed ones.
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Structural adjustment programs are the free market policies that are imposed on developing countries by the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund as terms for receiving loans. These initiatives are aimed at making the countries repay their older debts. The free market policies include internal changes like privatization and deregulation and also external ones like reduction of trade barriers. This leads to the economy of the developing countries to become more market-oriented. Thirdly, the integrated rural development is a program that entails the integration of the various economic sectors with social and political systems to help in the development of the rural area ( Chambers, 2014 ). The other aspect of the program is the integration of the disadvantaged social groups like women, the elderly, and the people living with disability in the process of solving poverty.
Of the three, the one that has a potential of reducing poverty at a larger scale is the integrate rural development. While big infrastructure development uplifts the face of the developing countries, it is only concentrated in the urban areas, whereas more than 63 percent of the global poverty is located in remote or rural areas ( Khan, 2001) . This means the impact of this infrastructure on the important population will be less. On the same note, structural adjustment leads to more problems to the affected countries due to the rise of privatization and thus more retrenchment potential. It also means the country is exploited by the free market policy denies the government the power to organize and regulate the internal economy. Therefore, it is paramount to focus on integrated rural development and look at the ways in which it solves at the household level ( Chambers, 2014 ).
Several approaches exist that can help understand the meaning and relationship of integrated rural development and poverty alleviation. First, rural development involves the improvement of places excluding urban areas like cities and towns. It focuses on smaller settlements such as farmsteads, villages, or market towns as the concept of rural areas (Twala, 2012). In this case, most of the land area is supposed to be utilized for agricultural production, forestry, or used in its natural state. The majority of the people in these areas depend on the natural resources to provide their livelihood. Therefore, the advocacy for the integrated rural development in a sustainable manner has the potential of creating employment opportunities for the populations, reducing income disparities, and preventing the premature rural-urban migration. In the overall, there will be a reduction in poverty in its entrenched source.
According to Nemes (2005), integrated rural development is defined as a continuing process that involves outside intervention and local ambitions having a goal to attain the betterment of groups of people dwelling in remote areas and to improve and sustain rural values via the redistribution of key resources, minimizing comparative challenges for competition and obtaining new methods of reinforcing and utilizing the rural resources.
The rural areas are categorized with the richness in natural resources. However, the management and utilization of these are the ones that lack hence producing the disparity in access, and usage. This gap is the main cause of poverty. One of the important characteristics of the rural poor is their dependence on agriculture, fishing, and small-scale industries (Reardon, 2014). The smallholder farmers form the majority of this population with productions barely enough to cater for their daily needs. Lack of access to the required tools like education, technology, and policies surrounding agriculture creates more problems and makes the smallholders become poorer. The agricultural sector is in disarray in the developing countries.
In some developed nations, where agriculture is comparatively commercialized, it is the responsibility of the private sector to provide the necessary inputs of production. However, in the least developed places within with low-income countries, the government and some quasi-government agencies carry the load of providing inputs for the farmers. This is especially true in most countries in Africa, where the production of food crops and animals highly depends on government subsidies. Extension and research services are always part of the agricultural service but the monetized inputs, like credit and marketing, are possibly the concern of separate agencies. The marketing boards that concentrate on crops can also be a source of production services. Different ministries are always in charge of specialist services like water control and design of engineering structures of production. Furthermore, local authorities have responsibilities that concern land use and slight public works.
To add to the plethora of agencies are the other central system ministries that deal with cooperative and community development. The list seems endless as all these parties scramble to have contact with the smallholder farmer. However, presently, there is a poor level of coordination amongst these agencies. In part, this causes poor service delivery to the beneficiary. Even at the point where the agencies contact the farmers, there is inconsistency in the advice offered and hence the support from the government becomes unreliable. One of the main pillars of integrated rural development is cooperation between the parties and with the importance of the inclusion of the beneficiary, which in this case is the farmer.
It should be noted that economic growth in itself comprises both agriculture and non-agriculture employment. Unemployment is one of the contributors to poverty (Twala, 2012). This has made government initiatives to be instilled in a bid to curtail the increasing problem. These initiatives include providing skill-enhanced education and training, starting employment-creating projects, and providing financial and non-financial help to SMEs (Twala, 2012). However, while these interventions offer promised a solution to the urban population, the rate of unemployment in the rural poor is still increasing. This rising rate cannot be fully described without referring to the socio-economic needs of the people living in those areas. Thus, integrated rural development programs will help bring in the various parties who are responsible for aligning these factors. Through this, the government and other agencies can help design programs that can include the community members as participants as they understand the social problems in the areas.
The rural non-agricultural employment opportunities lie in the many activities that are connected to the rural foundation of the flowing food from the rural areas to the urban places ( Chambers, 2014 ). These undertakings include agricultural services such as mechanization teams serving the small farm communities. It also includes the distribution of agricultural products which pertains to both logistics and wholesale, and the processing of the produce into value-added commodities. By making the agricultural household climb the value ladder, integrated rural development can increase the income per unit measure of produce (Reardon, 2014). For instance, focusing on smallholder farmers can increase the production of farm produce. By encouraging these households to focus on value addition, they can come from producing low quality or raw produce like vegetables, fish, or livestock to high quality ones. The latter fetches more prices while at the same time offering employment to the people. Increasing quality leads to a more improved income per hectare as compared to producing raw produce (Reardon, 2014).
Integrated rural development has potential in enabling a balanced development of underdeveloped rural areas, and enhancing cooperation between local and central systems of development ( Chambers, 2014 ). In this case, the people living in the communities are also in the forefront of carrying out the initiative which is contrary to the big infrastructure investment and structural adjustment programs that only deal with the government in decision making. The parallel improvement between the two parties (central and local systems) makes a necessary focus on supporting local development. The integration part comes in the sense that the program is managed and controlled locally while leaning on the financial and professional help of the central system. In theory, this is a paradigm that tries to seek how development can be influenced by the center for the benefit of the rural local communities by identifying how to reconfigure the rural resources (Nemes, 2005). All this is done without interference on the rural values for the future. In the farm level, administrative integration can help with organization of input delivery.
IRD is considered the critical triangle encompassing growth, poverty alleviation, and sustainability (Reardon, 2014). All these three are important aspects of improving the lives of the rural poor. It should be noted that from the experience messages around the world on poverty eradication is that a nation cannot alleviate poverty from the rural population without vigorous rural economic growth that is inclusive of the poor (Reardon, 2014). IRD makes a society to attain a stable and cohesive rural community by forming important institutions, sustainable economies, and enhanced access to social amenities. The same was seen in South Africa where IRD was successfully initiated to influence the factors mentioned above and it was able to create a pool of attracting and retaining skilled and knowledgeable people (Government of South Africa, 2000). The initiative equipped the people to be ready to contribute to the growth and development of the rural societies. The South Africa case is notable as it reveals the approach of integration which the government created to bring forth several players in planning rural development. This was aimed at providing the same services offered to the urban areas in these poor places.
IRD approach can increase the and encourage decentralization. The experience from this type of move shows improved outcomes. This is because decentralization, supplemented with parallel initiatives to enable the local communities to have greater power and autonomy over decision making can lead to genuine opportunities (Twala, 2012). Empowering and training the rural local authorities can be an important contributor to the development of the regions. This can only happen through the holistic approach of bottom up. This concept is important because it makes the interested parties know what the beneficiaries want instead of the top-down approach where the government assumes the locals need something while their priority is in another.
It should be noted that an integrated approach is a complex concept whose definition and description can become a way of hampering its targets. It involves a large number of parties and this is a potential source of conflict of interest between the agents of development (Baah-Dwomoh, 2016). The governments of the developing nations assume that the non-governmental organizations have hidden political interests in the communities they serve and masquerade in form of assistance. The other challenge is the dependency syndrome that can lead to problems of development efforts in case of donor failure. The other challenge is the time constraints. The planning and implementation of such programs require a long time because of the big number of stakeholders.
Some changes need to be incorporated into the project design to bring lasting benefits to the locals. First, the policy and framework should be made and be informed by the local population or the beneficiaries. The rural societies are not all the same. They have different values, beliefs, and activities. Thus, making policies that are tailored to specifically address their issues is an important step in achieving lasting results. For instance, when designing the IRD project targeted towards Africa, it is essential to note the difference in practices of the tribes and subtribes to ensure that it meets their needs and not making a one-size-fits-all approach.
The other recommendation is to strengthen the local development institutions and authorities. The decisions that are always made on development always come from the agreement between the central systems and the external parties. This always leaves loopholes for exploitation from the investment companies which only come to utilize the local resources with small relevance to local interests like employment. With the strengthening of local development institutions, it can be possible to assess the impact such investment may have on the people and their environment in the end. The decisions made will, therefore, be legitimate and they will be able to bargain with the investors.
Inter-governmental, private-public partnerships are another change that should be implemented in the project design to ensure the impacts are enhanced (Baah-Dwomoh, 2016). NGOs are the main parties involved in funding the current integrated rural development programs. This has its implications as the extent to which the local's’ benefit is not as huge when the governments come together. With regards to the longevity of IRDs, inter-governmental partnerships can prove to be the most sustainable deal. Countries that are well advanced in agricultural production can form bases in the developing ones to ensure transfer of knowledge to the latter. This will make the current model of depending on aid to be routed out.
In conclusion, IRD is an initiative with a high potential of reducing poverty in the modern world. It involves cooperation among different parties to ensure sustainability and improved livelihoods in rural areas. It focuses on the resource redistribution and unlocking the potential of the community. The main area of concern is agriculture as it is an area of potential employment source both on and off-farm. It is, however, important to form policies and frameworks that target the challenges arising from this model and which has seen the failure of the previous initiatives.
References
Baah-Dwomoh J. K. (2016). Integrated Rural Development in Africa: Back to the Future? Background Paper for African Transformation Report 2016: Transforming Africa’s Agriculture. African Center for Economic Transformation (ACET) and Japan International Cooperation Agency Research Institute (JICA-RI).
Chambers, R. (2014). Rural development: Putting the last first . Routledge.
Government of South Africa, (2000), The Integrated Sustainable Rural DevelopmentStrategy (ISRDS), Government of South Africa, Pretoria
Khan, M. H. (2001). Rural poverty in developing countries: implications for public policy (Vol. 26). International Monetary Fund.
Nemes, G. (2005). Integrated rural development-The concept and its operation (No. MT-DP-2005/6). IEHAS Discussion Papers.
Reardon, T. A. (2014). Success Strategies for Poverty-Alleviating Rural Development for Myanmar: Lessons from Asian Experience . The University of Minnesota.
Twala, C. (2012). The impact of rural development on poverty reduction in a post-apartheid South Africa: An ecological discourse. Journal of Human Ecology , 40 (3), 213-221.
