This is why FAO has launched an internal informal Task Force on Education and Food for All cutting across the Organization's fields of competence, and aiming at identifying, co-ordinating and strengthening our initiatives aimed at expanding and improving basic education for agriculture, rural development and food security. Two thirds of the word's poor live in rural areas. Most of the 800 million under nourished people are also illiterates, and the out of school children are a category more at risk of being among the undernourished. The majority of the 113 million children out of school and of the 880 million illiterates accounted for in 1998 live in rural areas in developing countries. Access to education is more difficult for rural populations, and quality of education in rural areas is lower than in urban areas.
Basic education affects the productivity of smallholder subsistence farmers in a positive manner.
Moreover, farmers with more education generate more income from the use of new technologies and adjust more rapidly to technological changes. The expansion and improvement of provision of basic educational services in rural areas can substantially improve productivity and livelihoods. In the globalisation era and knowledge based economies access to quality education will become the yardstick that will differentiate and increase the gap among rich and poor. The use of information and communication technology, and distance education. Education of rural girls and women.