A/HRC/19/75 7. These views and comments were all taken into account in the drafting of this final study.1 The great majority of them supported the main conclusions and recommendations of the preliminary study of the Advisory Committee. 8. At its eighth session, the Advisory Committee considered and approved the present study, to be submitted to the Human Rights Council at its nineteenth session. II. Identification of vulnerable groups working in rural areas that are subject to discrimination A. Overview of the situation of peasants and other people working in rural areas 9. The United Nations Millennium Development Project Task Force on Hunger has shown that 80 per cent of the world’s hungry live in rural areas.2 Of the 1 billion people who suffer from extreme poverty in the world, 75 per cent live and work in rural areas. 3 This situation was compounded by the global food crisis of 2008 and 2009. Today, 50 per cent of the world’s hungry are smallholder farmers who depend mainly or partly on agriculture for their livelihoods. Some 20 per cent of those suffering from hunger are landless families who survive as tenant farmers or poorly paid agricultural labourers who often have to migrate from one insecure, informal job to another. And 10 per cent of the world’s hungry live from traditional fishing, hunting and herding activities in rural communities. As much as 70 per cent of the world’s hungry are women and a great majority of them work in agriculture. 10. In the present study, the Advisory Committee focuses on the rights of the most vulnerable people working in rural areas, in particular on those of smallholder farmers, landless workers, fisher-folk, hunters and gatherers. The Committee does not focus on the rights of other people working in rural areas, such as those working in the business industry or public administration. In other studies requested by the Human Rights Council in its resolution 16/27, the Advisory Committee will look at the rights of rural women and the urban poor. B. Smallholder farmers 11. Around 50 per cent of the world’s hungry live on small plots of land and produce crops for subsistence and/or sale on local markets. Most of them cannot produce enough to feed themselves, essentially because they do not have sufficient access to productive resources such as land, water and seeds. Two thirds of smallholder farmers live on remote and marginal lands in environmentally difficult conditions, such as in mountainous areas or areas threatened by drought and other natural disasters, while good, fertile land tends to be concentrated in the hands of wealthier landowners. 1 2 3 4 The members of the drafting group on the right to food thank Christophe Golay of the Geneva Academy of International Humanitarian Law and Human Rights for his important input during the drafting of the present study. Pedro Sanchez and others, Halving Hunger: It Can Be Done, UN Millennium Project 2005, Task Force on Hunger (London, 2005). International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), Rural Poverty Report 2001: The Challenge of Ending Rural Poverty, 2001. Available from www.ifad.org/poverty/.