The next crisis: hunger

It is no surprise that the Ebola crisis in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone has been capturing headlines for months. Several Ebola fatalities have now been confirmed in Mali as well, which could presage a wider outbreak.

The virus has already sickened at least 14,000 people and claimed more than 5,000 lives in the region. According to the World Health Organization, it is the largest Ebola epidemic ever recorded.

But in this case, focusing intensely on the immediate crisis may blind us to the implications of another, largely untold story. It is a story not just of where we are, but how we got here and where we are headed. And it is a story whose ending remains unwritten.

The spread of Ebola is #link:http://www.ifad.org/media/events/2014/world_food_prize.htm:hitting people in rural areas hard#. Long-term neglect has left small-scale farmers in these areas ill-equipped in terms of infrastructure, resources, knowledge and capital to cope with emergencies.

It is already becoming clear that Ebola has endangered West Africa's food supply. Farming families are staying away from their fields out of fear of contracting the virus, or simply because there is no one left to farm the land. Trade has been blocked by borders closed to prevent contagion.

The region's economy is suffering, stockpiles of staple crops are being depleted, and the disruption of food systems threatens to bring on a second crisis – hunger. In fact, the World Food Programme reported this week that food insecurity now affects all areas of Liberia.

Even as we act to address this crisis, the international community must make sustained, long-term efforts in the places where smallholder farmers live and work. More than three-quarters of the world's poorest people live in the rural areas of developing countries – a world that has been largely "invisible" to Western eyes and media.

These areas are vulnerable to shocks and crises precisely because they are already close to the edge, with little or nothing to fall back on.

It is time for the developed, "visible" world to understand that unless rural communities become more resilient, we will be reduced to treating the symptoms rather than the disease of poverty.

From a global perspective, we depend on rural areas for our collective survival. They supply our food and are home to vast natural resources. There are 500 million smallholder family farms providing up to four-fifths of the food supply in the developing world.

We are now seeing just how quickly disease can put that supply under threat.

In a global era, we can't treat rural people as if they were invisible. Anyone who doubts this has only to look at the trajectory of Ebola. As long as it mainly affected remote rural Africa, it received little attention. However, viruses do not respect provincial or national borders, and this one spread rapidly from rural to urban areas. And with the appearance of several confirmed Ebola cases in Europe and the United States this fall, the whole world was trembling.

But this story doesn't have to end in tragedy. We can break the cycle of poverty, hunger and instability. First we have to recognize that rural areas and cities depend on each other. Then we have to invest seriously in rural development.

Given the requisite tools and resources, small-scale agricultural producers and rural entrepreneurs can transform their communities into thriving places that offer decent lives and livelihoods. And thriving communities are a force for global stability and security.

I have seen it with my own eyes, time and again, on field visits to projects financed by the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) and our many partners.

Good roads, electricity, running water, banks, schools and health clinics would improve life immeasurably for the 3 billion people who live in rural areas. Indeed, if West Africa had a more developed level of rural services and infrastructure, it is unlikely that the Ebola epidemic would have spread, virtually unchecked, for as long as it has.

Investing in rural men, women and children is what institutions like IFAD do on a daily basis. But there must be a serious increase in both resources and political will to improve rural infrastructure, technology, financial services, local institutions and the rest. Governments, development agencies, the private sector and others all have roles to play.

With long-term rural investment, we can shift from a crisis-to-crisis approach by taking measures that sustainably reduce poverty, ensure food security, promote social development and build resilience in communities at risk.

Not only is this the right thing to do, it is also in everyone's interest. Our world is global. What happens in Monrovia, Freetown or Conakry is felt in New York, Berlin, Hong Kong and beyond.