The productivity growth of farming in Asian countries over the past few decades highlights the high returns on investments in agricultural research and extension made in the region. This publication examines the performance of agricultural research and extension programmes in Asia, including the World Bank's training and visit (TandV) system, the challenges they face, and ways of improving their relevance, responsiveness, and cost- effectiveness. Conclusions reached include the importance of raising agricultural productivity through new technology in order to promote long- term growth and poverty reduction, and the need for less intensive and more environmentally sound agricultural practices.
In this original and thoughtful book, Govindan Parayil draws together current scholarship from disciplines ranging from history to economics to sociology as he develops a cohesive theory of technological change. Drawing on a detailed case study of the Green Revolution in Indian agriculture, Parayil convincingly argues that technological change is contingent upon the social-historical process of knowledge change.
Commemorative volume published on the 75th birth anniversary of V.S. Vyas, economist from Rajasthan, India; most of the papers presented at a seminar held at Jaipur in February 2008.
Agricultural innovation has played a critical role in the economic transformation of developing East Asian countries over the past half century. The Green Revolution—in the form of modern seed varieties, chemical fertilizers, pesticides, and modern machinery—has contributed to increased crop yields and farm incomes, and decreased poverty across the region. Although policy makers’ traditional focus on expanding and intensifying agricultural production has brought many benefits, the focus on productivity has come at a rising cost. The environmental sustainability of agricultural production is increasingly under threat. Moreover, as countries in the region have become more urbanized and demand for processed foods has risen, inadequate food safety systems and related food safety hazards have created a new form of food insecurity. As detailed in Agricultural Innovation in Developing East Asia: Productivity, Safety, and Sustainability, a new generation of innovation in agriculture has the potential to address the challenges of productivity, sustainability, and food safety to deliver a “triple win.†? To make the most of this promising wave of agricultural innovations, policy makers in the region will need to act to strengthen countries’ agricultural innovation systems. This effort will require a cross-cutting approach, including policy and institutional reforms, improved governance of countries’ agri-food systems, and efforts to build farmers’ and firms’ capacities to adopt new technologies and to innovate.
This book presents an extensive account of the green revolution's effect on the performance of Asian agriculture over the past two decades, as well as the second-generation problems that the green revolution is now experiencing.
The specific focus of this seminal work is on the economic impact of climate change on agriculture world wide, and how faced with the resultant environmental alterations, agriculture might adapt under varied and varying conditions. Enhanced with a detailed and comprehensive index, Climate Change and Agriculture is highly recommended for academic library environmental studies and economic studies reference collections and supplemental reading lists. The Midwest Book Review Despite its great importance, there are surprisingly few economic studies of the impact of climate on agriculture and how agriculture can adapt under a variety of conditions. This book examines 22 countries across four continents, including both developed and developing economies. It provides both a good analytical basis for additional work and solid results for policy debate concerning income distributional effects such as abatement, adaptation, and equity. Agriculture and grazing are a central sector in the livelihood of many people, particularly in developing countries. This book uses the Ricardian method to examine the impact of climate change on agriculture. It also quantifies how farmers adapt to climate. The findings suggest that agriculture in developing countries is more sensitive to climate than agriculture in developed countries. Rain-fed cropland is generally more sensitive to warming than irrigated cropland and cropland is more sensitive than livestock. The adaptation to climate change results reveal that farmers make many adjustments including switching crops and livestock species, adopting irrigation, and moving between livestock and crops. The results also reveal that impacts and adaptations vary a great deal across landscapes, suggesting that adaptation policies must be location specific. Finally, the book suggests a research agenda for the future. Economists in academia and the public sector, policy analysts and development agencies will find this broad study illuminating.
This book is open access under a CC BY-NC-ND license. This book addresses the issue of how a country, which was incorporated into the world economy as a periphery, could make a transition to the emerging state, capable of undertaking the task of economic development and industrialization. It offers historical and contemporary case studies of transition, as well as the international background under which such a transition was successfully made (or delayed), by combining the approaches of economic history and development economics. Its aim is to identify relevant historical contexts, that is, the ‘initial conditions’ and internal and external forces which governed the transition. It also aims to understand what current low-income developing countries require for their transition. Three economic driving forces for the transition are identified. They are: (1) labor-intensive industrialization, which offers ample employment opportunities for labor force; (2) international trade, which facilitates efficient international division of labor; and (3) agricultural development, which improves food security by increasing supply of staple foods. The book presents a bold account of each driver for the transition.
Digital agriculture has the potential to contribute to a more economically, environmentally and socially sustainable agriculture and meet the agricultural goals of a country or a region more effectively, and both ICTs and agriculture are important enablers in achieving SDGs. Most stakeholders have long recognized the need for national e-agricultural strategies. Nevertheless, most of the countries have not yet implemented a national strategy for the agricultural sector's use of ICTs. ITU Offices for Europe and CIS regions in collaboration with FAO Regional Office for Europe and Central Asia developed this report on state of Digital Agriculture and Strategies developed in 18 countries. The emerging role of ICTs in Europe and CIS region is clearly observed and experienced as an engine for agricultural development, especially in view of the growing demand for reliable information and its quick access at all levels of the industry. The state of the digital agriculture ecosystem differs from country to country and is also fragmented by the regions, within the individual countries. There is an overwhelming wave of innovation in this area where a digital agriculture strategy can be helpful in finding the right path.
