1 - Challenges and Policy Options for Agricultural Development – Overview and Synthesis

Summary

INTRODUCTION

This book attempts to take stock of the evolution of theoretical and empirical knowledge about economic development, mainly focusing on agricultural and rural development, and drawing mainly (if not exclusively) on experiences in Asia. There have been other such stock-taking exercises in development economics (e.g., Meier and Stiglitz 2001), but this book is somewhat unique in its exclusive focus on agricultural and rural development in Asia.

In the 1970s, agricultural and rural development occupied the centre stage of the economic development debate. Amid the increasing sense of food and resource scarcity, as reflected in rising commodity prices, investment in rural development was ranked top priority among development projects (see Chapter 8 by Barker and Rosegrant). The Green Revolution was in its early stages, and major efforts were underway to deliver complementary inputs such as fertiliser and subsidised credit, culminating in the Integrated Rural Development schemes. The impact of the Green Revolution (especially on small farmers) was then being fiercely debated.

After the 1980s, however, the perceived importance of the agricultural sector in the international development circle waned dramatically. Investments in rural development and agricultural research and development (R&D) declined sharply (see Barker and Rosegrant, Chapter 8). Correspondingly, Roumasset (Chapter 2) notes that the economics of agricultural development “has arguably been in decline,” and is “twice marginalized in the academe.” Nevertheless, Asia still accounts for about 60 per cent of the world's 1 .1 billion poor, and the majority of them are found in rural areas (Balisacan and Fuwa, Chapter 5). In addition, we take note of the following worldwide developments that are wielding tremendous effects on agriculture, to wit: the increasing globalisation, along with rapid changes in marketing systems, which is offering farmers (especially small farmers) in the region the opportunities and enormous challenges for greater competitiveness (Reardon and Timmer, Chapter 12); the Gene Revolution — characterised by rapid advances in agricultural biotechnology, driven mainly by the private sector — which is taking over the Green Revolution (Pingali and Raney, Chapter 6); and the increasing awareness and concerns for environmental problems, such as deforestation (Otsuka, Chapter 1 0; Coxhead, Chapter 11) and water scarcity (Barker and Rosegrant, Chapter 8), which present additional challenges for agricultural and rural development policy formulation.