For years, IFAD has been promoting access to inclusive rural financial services for some of the almost 3 billion people in rural areas who still live on less than US$2 a day. There is increasingly robust evidence that this could have positive impacts on household welfare, through increasing local economic activities, and, at the macroeconomic level, on the development of a more sustainable and inclusive financial system. In basic agricultural economics, to produce anything in the agriculture sector, natural resources (land and water), labour and capital are needed. Each of these factors has subcategories; for example, capital can be divided into human, social,2 physical and financial capital.