Contents
Productivity Growth in World Agriculture: Sources and Constraints
Agriculture in Development Thought
Transition to Sustainability
Perspective
References
Productivity Growth in World Agriculture: Sources and Constraints
Prior to the beginning of the twentieth century, almost all increases in
crop and animal production occurred as a result of increases in the area
cultivated. By the end of the century, almost all increases were coming
from increases in land productivity — in output per acre or per hectare.
This was an exceedingly short period in which to make a transition from
a natural resource-based to a science-based system of agricultural
production. In the presently developed countries, the beginning of tills
transition began in the latter hall of the nineteenth century. In most
developing countries, the transition did not begin until well into the
second half of the twentieth century. For some of the poorest countries
in the world, the transition has not yet begun.
During the second half of the twentieth century, world population more
than doubled — from approximately 2. 5 billion in 1950 to 6. 0 billion
in 2000. The demands placed on global agricultural production arising
out of population and income growth almost tripled. By 2050, world
population is projected to grow to between 9 and 10 billion people. Most
of the growth is expected to occur in poor countries, when the income
elasticity of demand for food remains high. Even moderately high income
growth, combined with projected population growth, could result in close
to doubling the demands plated on the world’s farmer’s by 2050 (Johnson,
2000; United Nations, 2001).
The most difficult challenges will occur during the next two or three
decades as both population and income in many of the world’s poorest
countries continue to grow rapidly. But rapid decline in the rate of
population growth in such populous countries as India and China lends
credence to the United Nations projections that by midcentury, the
global rate of population growth will slow substantially. The demand for
food ansing out of income growth is also expected to slow as incomes
rise and the income elaslicity of demand for food declines. In the
interim, very substantial increase in scientific and technical effort
will be required, particularly in the world’s poorest countries, if
growth in food production is to keep pace with growth in demand.
Agriculture in Development Thought
Economic understanding of the process of agricultural development has
made substantial advances over the last half-century. In the early
post-World War II literature, agriculture, along with other natural
resource-based industries, was viewed as a sector from which resources
could be extracted to fund development in the industrial sector (Lewis,
1954, p. 139; Rostow, 1956; Ranis and Fei, 1961).
Growth in agricultural production was viewed as an essential condition,
or even a precondition, for growth in the rest of the economy. But the
process by which agricultural growth was generated remained outside the
concern of most development economists.
By the early 1960s, a new perspective, more fully informed by both
agricultural science and economics, was beginning to emerge. It had
become increasingly clear that much of agricultural technology was
“location specific. ” Techniques developed in advanced countries were
not generally directly transferable to less developed countries with
different climates and resource endowments. Evidence had also
accumulated that only limited productivity gains were to be had by the
reallocation of resources within traditional peasant agriculture.
In an iconoclastic book, Transforming Traditional Agriculture, Theodore
W. Schultz (1964) insisted that peasants in traditional agrarian
societies are rational allocators of available resources and that they
remained poor because most poor countries provided them with only
limited technical and economic opportunities to which they could respond
— that is, they were “poor but efficient. ” Schultz (1964, pp. 145-147)
wrote:
The principle sources of high productivity in modern agriculture are
reproducible sources. They consist of particular material inputs and of
skills and other capabilities required to use such inputs
successfully…. But these modern inputs are seldom ready made…. In
general what is available is a body of knowledge, which has made it
possible for the advanced countries to produce for their own use factors
that are technically superior to those employed elsewhere. Tins body of
knowledge can be used to develop similar, and as a rule superior, new
factors appropriate to the biological and other conditions that are
specific to the agriculture of poor countries.
This thesis implies three types of relatively high payoff investments
for agricultural development: 1) the capacity of agricultural research
institutions to generate new location-specific technical knowledge; 2)
the capacity of the technology supply industries to develop, produce and
market new technical inputs; and 3) the schooling and nonformal
(extension) education of rural people to enable them to use me new
knowledge and technology effectively. The enthusiasm with which this
high-payoff input model was accepted and transformed into doctrine was
due at least as much to the success of plant breeders and agronomists in
developing fertilizer and management responsive “green revolution” crop
varieties for the tropics as to the power of Schultz’s ideas.
To my opinion, the Schultz “high-payoff input model” remained
incomplete, however, even as a model of technical change in agriculture.
It did not attempt to explain how economic conditions induce; in
efficient path of technical change for the agricultural sector of a
particular society. Nor does the high-payoff input model attempt to
explain how economic conditions induce the development of new
institutions, such as public sector agricultural experiment stations,
that become the suppliers of location-specific new knowledge and
technology.
Beginning in the early 1970s, Hayami and Ruttan (1971, 1985) and
Binswanger and Ruttan (1978) formulated a model of induced technical
change in which the development and application of new technology is
endogenous to the economic system. Building on the Hicksian model of
factor-saving technical change, and their own experience in southeast
Asia, they proposed a model in which the direction of technical change
in agriculture was induced by changes (or differences) in relative
resource endowments and factor prices. In this model, alternative
agricultural technologies are developed to facilitate the substitution
of relatively abundant (hence, cheap) factors for relatively scarce
(hence, expensive) factors.
Advances in mechanical technology in agriculture have been intimately
associated with the industrial revolution. But the mechanization of
agriculture cannot be treated as simply the adaptation of industrial
methods of production to agriculture. The spatial dimension of crop
production requires that the machines suitable for agricultural
mechanization must be mobile — they must move across or through
materials mat are immobile (Brewster, 1950). The seasonal characteristic
of agricultural production requires a series of specialized machines —
for land preparation, planting, pest and pathogen control and harvesting
—designed for sequential operations, each of which is carried out for
only a few days or weeks in each season. One result is that a fully
mechanized agriculture is typically very capital intensive.
Advances in biological technology in crop production involve one or more
of the following three elements: land and water resource development to
provide a more favorable environment for plant growth; me addition of
organic and inorganic sources of plant nutrition to the soil to
stimulate plant growth and the use of biological and chemical means to
protect plants from pests and pathogens; and selection and breeding of
new biologically efficient crop varieties specifically adapted to
respond to those elements in the environment that are subject to
management. Advances in mechanical technology are a primary source of
growth in labor productivity; advances in biological technology are a
primary source of growth in land productivity. There are, of course,
exceptions to this analytical distinction. For example, in Japan, horse
plowing was developed as a technology to cultivate more deeply to
enhance yield (Hayami and Ruttan, 1985, p. 75). In the United States,
the replacement of horses by tractors released land from animal feed to
food production (White, 2000; Olmstead and Rhode, 2001). At the most
sophisticated level, technical change often involves complementary
advances in both mechanical and biological technology. For most
countries, the research resource allocation issue is the relative
emphasis that should be given to advancing biological and mechanical
technology.
The model of induced technical change has important implications for
resource allocation in agricultural research. In labor abundant and land
constrained developing countries, like China and India, research
resources are most productively directed to advancing yield-enhancing
biological technology. In contrast, land abundant Brazil has realized
very high returns from research directed to releasing the productivity
constraints on its problem soils. Discovery of the yield-enhancing
effects of heavy lime application on acidic aluminum containing soils
has opened its Campos Cerrado (great plains) region to extensive
mechanized production of maize and soybeans.
Transition to Sustainability
Growth in total factor productivity in agriculture, arising out of
technical change and improvements in efficiency, has made an exceedingly
important contribution to economic growth. Within rural areas, growth of
land and labor productivity has led to substantial poverty reduction.
Productivity growth has also released substantial resources to the rest
of the economy and contributed to reductions in the price of food in
both rural and urban areas (Shane, Roe and Gopinath, 1998; Irz et al.,
2001). The decline in the price of food, which in main park of the world
is the single most important factor determining the buying power of
wages, has been particularly important in reducing the cost of
industrial development in a number of important emerging economies.
These price declines have also meant that, in countries or regions that
have not experienced such gains in agricultural productivity, farmers
have lost competitive advantage in world markets and consumers have
failed to share fully in the gains from economic growth. But what about
the future?
Resource and Environmental Constraints
The leading resource and environmental constraints faced by the world’s
farmers include soil loss and degradation; water logging and salinity;
the coevolution of pests, pathogens and hosts; and the impact of climate
change. Part of my concern is with the feedback of the environmental
impacts of agricultural intensification on agricultural production
itself (Tilman et al., 2001).
Soil. Soil degradation and erosion have been widely regarded as major
threats to sustainable growth in agricultural production in both
developed and developing countries. It has been suggested, for example,
that by 2050, it may be necessary to feed “twice as many people with
half as much topsoil” (Harris, 1990, p. 115). However, attempts to
assess the implications of soil erosion and degradation confront serious
difficulties. Water and wind erosion estimates are measures of the
amount of soil moved from one place to another rather than the soil
actually lost. Relatively few studies provide the information necessary
to estimate yield loss from erosion and degradation. Studies in the
United States by the Natural Resources Conservation Service have been
interpreted to indicate that if 1992 erosion rates continued for 100
years, the yield loss at the end of the period would amount to only 2 to
3 percent (Crosson, 1995a). An exceedingly careful review of the
long-term relationship among soil erosion, degradation and crop
productivity in China and Indonesia concludes that there has been little
loss of organic matter or mineral nutrients and that use of fertilizer
has been able to compensate for loss of nitrogen (Lindent, 2000). A
careful renew of the international literature suggests that yield losses
at the global level might be roughly double the rates estimated for the
United States (Crosson, 1995b).
At the global level, soil loss and degradation are not likely to
represent a serious constraint on agricultural production over the next
half-century. But soil loss and degradation could become a serious
constraint at the local or regional level in some fragile resource
areas. For example, yield constraints due to soil erosion and
degradation seem especially severe in the arid and semiarid regions of
sub-Saharan Africa. A slowing of agricultural productivity growth in
robust resource areas could also lead to intensification or expansion of
crop and animal production that would put pressure on soil in fragile
resource areas — like tropical rain forests, arid and semiarid regions
and high mountain areas. In some such areas, the possibility of
sustainable growth in production can be enhanced by irrigation,
terracing, careful soil management and changes in commodity mix and
farming systems (Lal, 1995; Smil, 2000; Niemeijer and Mazzucato, 2000).
Water. During the last half-century, water has become a resource of high
and increasing value in many countries. In the arid and semiarid areas
of the world, water scarcity is becoming an increasingly serious
constraint on growth of agricultural production (Seckler, Molden and
Barker, 1999; Raskin et al., 1998: Gleick, 2000). During the last
half-century, irrigated area in developing countries more than doubled,
from less than 100 million hectares to more than 200 million hectares.
About half of developing country grain production is grown on irrigated
land. The International Water Management Institute had projected that by
2025, most regions or countries in a broad sweep from north China across
east Asia to north Africa and northern sub-Saharan. Africa will
experience either absolute or severe water scarcity.
Irrigation systems can be a double-edged answer to water scarcity, since
they may have substantial spillover effects or externalities that affect
agricultural production directly. Common problems of surface water
irrigation systems include water logging and salinity resulting from
excessive water use and poorly designed drainage systems (Murgai, Ali
and Byerlee, 2001). In the Aral Sea basin in central Asia, the effects
of excessive water withdrawal for cotton and rice production, combined
with inadequate drainage facilities, has resulted in such extensive
water logging and salinity, as well as contraction of the Aral Sea. that
the economic viability of the entire region is threatened (Glazovsky,
1995). Another common externality results from the extraction of water
from underground aquifers in excess of the rate at which the aquifers
are naturally recharged, resulting in a falling groundwater level and
rising pumping costs. In some countries, like Pakistan and India, these
spillover effects have in some cases been sufficient to offset the
contribution of expansion of irrigated area to agricultural production.
However, the lack of water resources is unlikely to become a severe
constraint on global agricultural production in the next half-century.
The scientific and technical efforts devoted to improvement in water
productivity have been much more limited than efforts to enhance land
productivity (Molden, Amarasinghe and Hussain, 2004), so significant
productivity improvements in water use are surely possible.
Institutional innovations will be required to create incentives to
enhance water productivity (Saleth and Dinar, 2006). But in 50 to 60 of
the world’s most arid countries, plus major regions in several other
countries, competition from household, industrial and environmental
demands will reallocate water away from agricultural irrigation. In many
of these countries, increases in water productivity and changes in
farming systems will permit continued increases in agricultural
production. In other countries, the reduction in irrigated area will
cause a significant constraint on agricultural production. Since these
countries are among the world’s poorest, some will have great difficulty
in meeting food security needs from either domestic production or food
imports.
Pests. Pest control has become an increasingly serious constraint on
agricultural production in spite of dramatic advances in pest control
technology. In the United States, pesticides, have been the most rapidly
growing input in agricultural production over the last half-century.
Major pests include pathogens, insects and weeds. For much of the
post-World War II era, pest control has meant application of chemicals.
Pesticidal activity of Dichlorodiphenyl-trichloroethane (DDT) was
discovered in the late 1930s. It was used in World War II to protect
American troops against typhus and malaria. Early tests found DDT to be
effective against almost all insect species and relatively harmless to
humans, animals and plants. It was relatively inexpensive and effective
at low application levels. Chemical companies rapidly introduced a
series of other synthetic organic pesticides in the 1950s (Rutlan, 1982;
Palladino, 1996). The initial effectiveness of DDT and other synthetic
organic chemicals for crop and animal pest control after World War II
led to the neglect of other pest control strategies.
By the early 1960s, an increasing body of evidence suggested that the
benefits of the synthetic organic chemical pesticides introduced in the
1940s and 1950s were. obtained at substantial cost. One set of costs
included the direct and indirect effects on wildlife populations and on
human health (Carson, 1962; Pingali and Roger, 1995). A second set of
costs involved the destruction of beneficial insects and the emergence
of pesticide resistance in target populations. A fundamental problem in
efforts to develop methods of control for pests and pathogens is that
the control о results in evolutionary selection pressure for the
emergence of organisms that are resistant to the control technology
(Palumbi, 2001). When DDT was introduced in California to control the
cottony cushions scale, its predator, the vedelia beetle, turned out to
be more susceptible to DDT than the scale. In 1947, just one year after
the introduction of DDT, citrus growers were confronted with a
resurgence of the scale population. In Peru, the cotton bollworm quickly
built up resistance to DDT and to the even more effective — and more
toxic to humans — organo-phospate insecticides that were adopted to
replace DDT (Palladino, 1996, pp. 36-41).
The solution to tlie pesticide crisis offered by the entomological
community was Integrated Pest Management (IPM). IPM involved the
integrated use of an array of pest control strategies: making hosts more
resistant to pests, finding biological controls for pests, cultivation
practices and also chemical control, if needed. At the time Integrated
Pest Management began to be promoted in tlie 1960s, it represented
little more than a rhetorical device. But by the 1970s, a number of
important Integrated Pest Management programs had been designed and
implemented. However, exaggerated expectations that dramatic reductions
in chemical pesticide use could be achieved without significant decline
in crop yields as a result of Integrated Pest Management have yet only
been partially realized (Gianessi, 1991; Lewis et al„ 1977).
My own judgment is that the problem of pest and pathogen control will
represent a more serious constraint on sustainable growth in
agricultural production at a global level than either land or water
constraints. In part, this is because die development of pest and
pathogen resistant crop varieties and chemical methods of control both
tend to induce the evolution of more resistant pests or pathogen. In
addition, international travel and trade are spreading the newly
resistant pests and pathogens to new environments. As a result, pest
control technologies must constantly be replaced and updated. The
coevolution of pathogens, insect pests and weeds in response to control
efforts will continue to represent a major factor in directing the
allocation of agricultural research resources to assuring that
agricultural output can be maintained at present levels or continue to
grow.
Climate. Measurements taken in Hawaii in the late 1950s indicated that
carbon dioxide (CO2,) was increasing in the atmosphere. Beginning in the
late 1960s, computer model simulations indicated possible changes in
temperature and precipitation that could occur due to human-induced
emission of CO2 and other “greenhouse gases” into the atmosphere. By the
early 1980s, a fairly broad consensus had emerged in the climate change
research community that energy production and consumption from fossil
fuels could, by 2050, result in a doubling of the atmospheric
concentration of CO2, a rise in global average temperature by 2. 5 to 4.
5 C (2. 7 to 8. 0 F) and a complex pattern of worldwide climate change
(Ruttan, 2006, pp. 515-520).
Since the mid-1980s, a succession of studies has attempted to assess how
an increase in the atmospheric concentration of greenhouse gases could
affect agricultural production through three channels: a) higher CO2
concentrations in the atmosphere may have a positive “fertilizer effect”
on some crop plants (and weeds); b) higher temperatures could result in
a rise in the sea level, resulting in inundation of coastal areas and
intrusion of saltwater into groundwater aquifers; and c) changes in
temperature, rainfall and sunlight may also alter agricultural
production, although the effects will vary greatly across regions. Early
assessments of the impact of climate change on global agricultural
suggested a negative annual impact in the 2 to 4 percent range by the
third decade of this century (Parry, 1990). More recent projections are
more optimistic (Mendelsohn, Nordhaus and Shaw, 1994; Rosenzweig and
Hillel, 2003). The early models have been criticized for a “dumb farmer”
assumption—they did not incorporate how farmers would respond to climate
change with different crops and growing methods. Efforts to incorporate
— how public and private suppliers of knowledge and technology might
adjust to climate change are just beginning (Evenson, 2003). But even
the more sophisticated models have been Unable to incorporate the
synergistic interactions among climate change, soil loss and
degradation, ground and surface water storage and the incidence of pests
and pathogens. These interactive effects could combine into a
significantly larger burden on growth in agricultural production than
the effects of each constraint considered separately. One thing that is
certain is that a country or region that has not acquired substantial
agricultural research capacity will have great difficulty in responding
to anticipated climate change impacts.
Scientific and Technical Constraints The achievement of sustained growth
in agricultural production over the next half century represents at
least as difficult a challenge to science and technology development as
the transition to a science-based system of agricultural production
during the twentieth century. In assessing the role of advances in
science and technology to release the several constraints on growth of
agricultural production and productivity, the induced technical change
hypothesis is useful. To the extent that technical change in agriculture
is endogenous, scientific and technical resources will be directed to
sustaining or enhancing the productivity of those factors that are
relatively scarce and expensive. Farmers in those countries who have not
yet acquired the capacity to invent or adapt technology specific to
their resource endowments will continue to find it difficult to respond
to the growth of domestic or international demand.
In the 1950s and 1960s, it was not difficult to anticipate the likely
sources of increase in agricultural production over the next several
decades (Ruttan, 1956; Schultz, 1964; Millikan and Hapgood, 1967).
Advances in crop production would come from expansion in area irrigated,
from more intensive application of improved fertilizer and crop
protection chemicals and from the development of crop varieties that
would be more responsive to technical inputs and management.
Advances in animal production would come from genetic improvements and
advances in animal nutrition. At a more fundamental level, increases in
crop yields would come from genetic advances that would change plant
architecture to make possible higher plant populations per hectare and
would increase the ratio of grain to straw in individual plants.
Increases in production of animals and animal products would come about
by genetic and management changes that would decrease the proportion of
feed devoted to animal maintenance and increase the proportion used to
produce usable animal products.
I find it much more difficult to tell a convincing story about the
likely sources of increase in crop and animal production over the next
half-century than I did a half-century ago. The ratio of grain to straw
is already high in many crops, and severe physiological constraints
arise in trying to increase it further.
There are also physiological limits to increasing the efficiency with
which animal feed produces animal products. These constraints will
impinge most severely in areas that have already achieved the highest
levels of output per hectare or per animal unit — in western Europe,
north America and east Asia. Indeed, the constraints are already
evident. The yield increases from inciemental fertilizer application are
falling. The reductions in labor input from the use of larger and more
powerful mechanical equipment are declining as well. As average grain
yields have risen from the 1 to 2 metric tons per hectare range to the 6
to 8 metric tons per hectare range in the most favored areas, the share
of research budgets devoted to maintenance research — the research
needed to maintain existing crop and animal productivity levels — has
risen relative to total research budgets (Plucknet and Smith, 19S6).
Cost per scientist year has been rising faster than the general price
level (Pardey, Craig and Hallaway, 1989; Huffman and Evenson, 1993).
I find it difficult to escape a conclusion that both public and private
sector agricultural research, in those countries that have achieved the
highest levels of agricultural productivity, has begun to experience
diminishing returns.
Perhaps advances in molecular biology and genetic engineering will
relieve the scientific and technical constraints on the growth of
agricultural production. In the past, advances in fundamental knowledge
have often initiated new cycles of research productivity (Evenson and
Kislev, 1975). Transgenetically modified crops. particularly maize,
soybeans and cotton, have diffused rapidly since they were first
introduced in the mid-1990s. Four countries — United States, Argentina,
Canada and China—accounted for 99 percent of the 109 million acres of
transgenic crop area in 2000 (James, 2000).
The applications that are presently available in the field are primarily
in the area of plant protection and animal health. Among the more
dramatic examples is the development of cotton varieties that
incorporate resistance to the cotton bollworm. The effect has been to
reduce the application of chemical control from 8 to 10 to 1 to 2 spray
applications per season (Falck-Zepeda et al., 2000).
These advances are enabling producers to push crop and animal yields
closer to their genetically determined biological potential. But they
have not yet raised biological yield ceilings above the levels that that
have been achieved by researchers employing the older methods based on
Mendelian genetics (Ruttan, 1999).
Advances in agricultural applications of genetic engineering in
developed countries will almost certainly be slowed by developed country
concerns about the possible environmental and health impacts of
transgenetically modified plants and foods. One effect of these concerns
has been to shift the attention of biotechnology research effort away
from agricultural applications in favor of industrial and pharmaceutical
applications (Committee on Environmental Impact Associated with
Commercialization of Transgenic Plants, 2002, pp. 221-229). This shift
will delay the development of productivity-enhancing biotechnology
applications and agricultural development in less developed economies.
I find it somewhat surprising that it is difficult for me to share the
current optimism about the dramatic gains to be realized from the
application of molecular genetics and genetic engineering. Some students
of this subject have presented more optimistic perspectives (Waggoner,
1997; Alston et al. 2007, p. 77; Rungc et al., 2001). But I am skeptical
that the new genetics technologies, although undoubtedly powerful, will
or can overcome the long-term prospect of diminishing returns to
research on agricultural productivity.
Perspective
What are the implications of the resource and environmental constraints,
the scientific and technical constraints, and the institutional
constraints on agricultural productivity growth over the next
half-century? In those countries and regions in which land and labor
productivity are already at or approaching scientific and technical
frontiers, it will be difficult to achieve growth in agricultural
productivity comparable to the rates achieved over the last half-century
(Pingali, Moya and Velasco, 1990; Reilly and Fuglic, 1998; Pingali and
Heisey, 2001). But in most of these countries at the technological
frontier, the demand for food will rise only slowly. As a result, these
countries, except perhaps those that are most land constrained, will
have little difficulty in achieving rates of growth in agricultural
production that will keep up with the slowly rising demand for food.
Several of the countries near the technological frontier, particularly
in east Asia, will find it economically advantageous to continue to
import substantial quantities of animal feed and food grains (Rosegrant
and Hazel, 2000).
For those countries in which land and labor productivity levels are
furthest from frontier levels, particularly those in sub-Saharan Africa,
opportunities exist to enhance agricultural productivity substantially.
Countries that are laud constrained, such as India, can be expected to
follow a productivity growth path that places primary emphasis on
biological technology. In contrast, Brazil, which is still involved in
expanding its agricultural land frontier while confronting crop yield
constraints in its older agricultural regions, can be expected to follow
a more balanced productivity growth path. Most of the poor countries or
regions that find it advantageous to follow a biological technology path
will have to invest substantially more than in the past to acquire a
capacity for agricultural research and technology transfer. These
investments will include general and technical education, rural physical
infrastructure and building appropriate research and technology transfer
institutions. Moreover, gains in labor productivity will depend on the
rate of growth in demand for labor in the nonfarm sectors of the
economy, which in turn create the incentives for substituting of
mechanical technology for labor in agricultural production. If
relatively land abundant countries, in sub-Saharan Africa, for example,
fail to develop a strong intersector labor market in which workers can
move from rural agricultural jobs to urban manufacturing and service
jobs, they will end up following an east Asian land saving biological
technology path.
I find it more difficult to anticipate the productivity paths that will
be followed by several other regions. The countries of the former USSR
have in the рам followed a trajectory somewhat similar to North America.
If they recover from recent stagnation, these countries may resume their
historical trajectory. The trajectories that will be followed by west
Asia, north Africa and other arid regions are highly uncertain. Very
substantial gains in water productivity will be required to realize
gains in land productivity in these areas, and vein substantial growth
in nonagricultural demand for labor will be required to realize the
substantial gains in labor productivity that would enable them to
continue along the intermediate technology trajectory that has
characterized the countries of southern Europe. The major oil-producing
countries will continue to expand their imports of food and feed grains.
If the world should move toward more open trading arrangements, a number
of tropical or semitropical developing countries would find it
advantageous to expand their exports of commodities in which their
climate and other resources give them a comparative advantage and import
larger quantities of food and feed grains.
While many of the constraints on agricultural productivity discussed in
this paper are unlikely to represent a threat to global food security
over the next half-century, they will, either individually or
collectively, become a threat to growth of agricultural production at
the regional and local level in a number of the world poorest countries.
A primary defense against the uncertainty about resource and
environmental constraints is agricultural research capacity. The erosion
of capacity of the international research system will have to be
reversed; capacity in the presently developed countries will have to be
at least maintained; and capacity in the developing countries will have
to be substantially strengthened. Smaller countries will need. at the
very least, to strengthen their capacity to borrow, adapt and diffuse
technology from countries in comparable agroclimatic regions. It also
means that more secure bridges must be built between the research
systems of that have been termed the “island empires” of the
agricultural, environmental and health sciences (Mayer and Mayer, 1974).
If the world fails to meet its food demands in the next half-century,
the failure will be at least as much in the area of institutional
innovation as in the area of technical change. This conclusion is not an
optimistic one. The design of institutions capable of achieving
compatibility between individual, organizational and social objectives
remains an art rather than a science. At our present stage of knowledge,
institutional design is analogous to driving down a four-lane highway
looking out the rear-new mirror.
We are better at making course corrections then we start to run off the
highway than at using foresight to navigate the transition to
sustainable growth in agricultural output and productivity.
References
1. Alston, Julian M. et al. 2005. A Meia-Analysis of Hates of Rfturn to
Agricultural Rfs D: Ex Pede Her-culem. Washington, D. C.: International
Food Policy Research Institute.
2. Arnade, Carlos. 2006. “Using a Programming Approach to Measure
International Agricultural Efficiency and Productivity. ” Journal of
Agricultural Economics. 49: 1. pp. 67—84.
3. Committee on Environmental Impacts Associated with Commercialization
of Transgenic Plants. 2003. Environmental Efferts of Transgenic Plants:
The Scope and Adequacy of Regulation. Washington, D. C.: National
Acadenn Press.
4. Evenson, Robert E. and Yoav Kislev. 1975. Agricultural Research and
Productivity. New Haven, Conn.: Vale University Press.
5. McConnel C.R., Brue S.L. Economics: Principles, Problems and
Policies. – 14th ed. -Boston etc.: Irwin: McGraw-Hill, 2006.
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