International Assessment of Agricultural Knowledge,
Science and Technology for Development (IAASTD)
Global Summary for Decision Makers
Authors: Nienke Beintema (the Netherlands), Deborah Bossio (USA), Fabrice Dreyfus
(France), Maria Fernandez (Peru), Ameenah Gurib-Fakim (Mauritius), Hans Hurni
(Switzerland), Anne-Marie Izac (France), Janice Jiggins (UK), Gordana
Kranjac-Berisavljevic (Ghana), Roger Leakey (UK), Washington Ochola (Kenya), Balgis
Osman-Elasha (Sudan), Cristina Plencovich (Argentina), Niels Roling (the Netherlands), Mark
Rosegrant (USA), Erika Rosenthal (USA), Linda Smith (UK)
Statement by Governments
All countries present at the final
intergovernmental plenary session held in
All countries see these Reports as a valuable and important contribution to our understanding on agricultural knowledge, science and technology for development recognizing the need to further deepen our understanding of the challenges ahead. This Assessment is a constructive initiative and important contribution that all governments need to take forward to ensure that agricultural knowledge, science and technology fulfills its potential to meet the development and sustainability goals of the reduction of hunger and poverty, the improvement of rural livelihoods and human health, and facilitating equitable, socially, environmentally and economically sustainable development.
In accordance with the above statement, the following governments approve the Global Summary for Decision Makers.
Armenia, Azerbaijan, Bahrain, Bangladesh, Belize, Benin, Bhutan, Botswana, Brazil, Cameroon, China (People’s Republic of), Costa Rica, Cuba, Democratic Republic of Congo, Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Ethiopia, Finland, France, Gambia, Ghana, Honduras, India, Iran, Ireland, Kenya, Kyrgyzstan, Lao People’s Democratic Republic, Lebanon, Libyan Arab Jamahiriya, Maldives, Republic of Moldova, Mozambique, Namibia, Nigeria, Pakistan, Panama, Paraguay, Philippines, Poland, Republic of Palau, Romania, Saudi Arabia, Senegal, Solomon Islands, Swaziland, Sweden, Switzerland, United Republic of Tanzania, Timor-Leste, Togo, Tunisia, Turkey, Uganda, Uruguay, Viet Nam, Zambia (57 countries)
While approving the above statement the following governments did not fully approve the Global Summary for Decision Makers and their reservations are entered in the Annex.
Background
In August 2002, the World Bank and the Food and Agriculture Organization
(FAO) of the United Nations initiated a global consultative process to
determine whether an international assessment of agricultural knowledge,
science and technology (AKST) was needed. This was stimulated by discussions at
the World Bank with the private sector and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs)
on the state of scientific understanding of biotechnology and more specifically
transgenics. During 2003, eleven consultations were held, overseen by an
international multistakeholder steering committee and involving over 800
participants from all relevant stakeholder groups, e.g. governments, the
private sector and civil society. Based on these consultations the steering
committee recommended to an Intergovernmental Plenary meeting in Nairobi in
September 2004 that an international assessment of the role of agricultural
knowledge, science and technology (AKST) in reducing hunger and poverty,
improving rural livelihoods and facilitating environmentally, socially and
economically sustainable development was needed. The
concept of an International Assessment of Agricultural Knowledge, Science and
Technology for Development (IAASTD) was endorsed as a multi-thematic,
multi-spatial, multi-temporal intergovernmental process with a multistakeholder
Bureau cosponsored by the Food and Agricultural Organization of the United
Nations (FAO), the Global Environment Facility (GEF), United Nations
Development Programme (UNDP), United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP),
United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), the
World Bank and World Health Organization (WHO).
The IAASTD’s governance structure is a unique hybrid of the
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and the nongovernmental
Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (MA). The stakeholder composition of the Bureau
was agreed at the Intergovernmental Plenary meeting in Nairobi; it is
geographically balanced and multistakeholder with 30 government and 30 civil
society representatives (NGOs, producer and consumer groups, private sector
entities and international organizations) in order to ensure ownership of the
process and findings by a range of stakeholders.
About 400 of the world’s experts were selected by the Bureau, following
nominations by stakeholder groups, to prepare the IAASTD Report (comprised of a
Global and 5 sub-Global assessments). These experts worked in their own
capacity and did not represent any particular stakeholder group. Additional
individuals, organizations and governments were involved in the peer review
process.
The IAASTD development and sustainability
goals were endorsed at the first Intergovernmental Plenary and are consistent
with a subset of the UN Millennium Development Goals (MDGs): the reduction of
hunger and poverty, the improvement of rural livelihoods and human health, and
facilitating equitable,
socially, environmentally and economically sustainable development. Realizing
these goals requires acknowledging the multifunctionality of agriculture: the
challenge is to simultaneously meet development and sustainability goals while
increasing agricultural production.
Meeting these goals has to be placed in the context of a rapidly
changing world of urbanization, growing inequities, human migration,
globalization, changing dietary preferences, climate change, environmental
degradation, a trend toward biofuels and an increasing population. These
conditions are affecting local and global food security and putting pressure on
productive capacity and ecosystems. Hence there are unprecedented challenges
ahead in providing food within a global trading system where there are other
competing uses for agricultural and other natural resources. AKST alone cannot
solve these problems, which are caused by complex political and social dynamics,
but it can make a major contribution to meeting development and sustainability
goals. Never before has it been more important for the world to generate and
use AKST.
Given the focus on hunger, poverty and livelihoods, the IAASTD pays
special attention to the current situation, issues and potential opportunities
to redirect the current AKST system to improve the situation for poor rural
people, especially small-scale farmers, rural laborers and others with limited
resources. It addresses issues critical to formulating policy and provides
information for decision makers confronting conflicting views on contentious
issues such as the environmental consequences of productivity increases,
environmental and human health impacts of transgenic crops, the consequences of
bioenergy development on the environment and on the long-term availability and
price of food, and the implications of climate change on agricultural
production. The Bureau agreed that the scope of the assessment needed to go
beyond the narrow confines of S&T and should encompass other types of
relevant knowledge (e.g. knowledge held by agricultural producers, consumers
and end users) and that it should also assess the role of institutions,
organizations, governance, markets and trade.
The IAASTD is a
multidisciplinary and multistakeholder enterprise requiring the use and
integration of information, tools and models from different knowledge paradigms
including local and traditional knowledge. The IAASTD does not advocate specific
policies or practices; it assesses the major issues facing AKST and points
towards a range of AKST options for action that meet development and
sustainability goals. It is policy relevant, but not policy prescriptive. It
integrates scientific information on a range of topics that are critically
interlinked, but often addressed independently, i.e., agriculture, poverty,
hunger, human health, natural resources, environment, development and
innovation. It will enable decision makers to bring a richer base of knowledge
to bear on policy and management decisions on issues previously viewed in
isolation. Knowledge gained from historical analysis (typically the past 50
years) and an analysis of some future development alternatives to 2050 form the
basis for assessing options for action on science and technology, capacity
development, institutions and policies, and investments.
The IAASTD is conducted according to an open, transparent,
representative and legitimate process; is evidence-based; presents options
rather than recommendations; assesses different local, regional and global
perspectives; presents different views, acknowledging that there can be more
than one interpretation of the same evidence based on different world views;
and identifies the key scientific uncertainties and areas on which research
could be focused to advance development and sustainability goals.
The IAASTD is composed of a Global assessment and five sub-Global
assessments: Central and West Asia and
North Africa - CWANA; East and South Asia and the Pacific - ESAP; Latin America
and the Caribbean - LAC; North America and Europe - NAE; sub-Saharan Africa –
SSA. It (i) assesses the generation, access, dissemination and use of public
and private sector AKST in relation to the goals, using local, traditional and
formal knowledge; (ii) analyzes existing and emerging technologies, practices,
policies and institutions and their impact on the goals; (iii) provides
information for decision makers in different civil society, private and public
organizations on options for improving policies, practices, institutional and
organizational arrangements to enable AKST to meet the goals; (iv) brings
together a range of stakeholders
(consumers, governments, international agencies and research organizations,
NGOs, private sector, producers, the scientific community) involved in the
agricultural sector and rural development to share their experiences, views,
understanding and vision for the future; and (v) identifies options for future
public and private investments in AKST. In addition, the IAASTD will enhance
local and regional capacity to design, implement and utilize similar
assessments.
In this assessment agriculture is used in the widest sense to include
production of food, feed, fuel, fiber and other products and to include all
sectors from production of inputs (e.g. seeds and fertilizer) to consumption of
products. However, as in all assessments, some topics were covered less
extensively than others (e.g. livestock, forestry, fisheries and the
agricultural sector of small island countries, and agricultural engineering),
largely due to the expertise of the selected authors. Originally the Bureau
approved a chapter on plausible futures (a visioning exercise), but later there
was agreement to delete this chapter in favor of a more simple set of model
projections. Similarly the Bureau approved a chapter on capacity development,
but this chapter was dropped and key messages integrated into other chapters.
The IAASTD draft
Report was subjected to two rounds of peer review by governments, organizations
and individuals. These drafts were placed on an open access web site and open
to comments by anyone. The authors revised the drafts based on numerous peer
review comments, with the assistance of review editors who were responsible for
ensuring the comments were appropriately taken into account. One of the most difficult issues authors had to address was
criticisms that the report was too negative. In a scientific review based on
empirical evidence, this is always a difficult comment to handle, as criteria
are needed in order to say whether something is negative or positive. Another
difficulty was responding to the conflicting views expressed by
reviewers. The difference in views was not surprising given the range of
stakeholder interests and perspectives. Thus one of the key findings of the
IAASTD is that there are diverse and conflicting interpretations of past and
current events, which need to be acknowledged and respected.
The Global and sub-Global Summaries for Decision Makers and the
Executive Summary of the Synthesis Report were approved at an Intergovernmental
Plenary in April 2008. The Synthesis Report integrates the key findings from
the Global and sub-Global assessments, and focuses on eight Bureau-approved
topics: bioenergy; biotechnology; climate change; human health; natural
resource management; traditional knowledge and community based innovation;
trade and markets; and women in agriculture.
The IAASTD builds on
and adds value to a number of recent assessments and reports that have provided
valuable information relevant to the agricultural sector, but have not
specifically focused on the future role of AKST, the institutional dimensions
and the multifunctionality of agriculture. These include: FAO State of Food Insecurity in the World
(yearly); InterAcademy Council Report: Realizing the Promise and Potential of
African Agriculture (2004); UN
Millennium Project Task Force on Hunger (2005); Millennium Ecosystem Assessment
(2005); CGIAR Science Council
Strategy and Priority Setting Exercise (2006); Comprehensive Assessment of
Water Management in Agriculture: Guiding Policy Investments in Water, Food,
Livelihoods and Environment (2007); Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
Reports (2001 and 2007); UNEP
Fourth Global Environmental Outlook (2007); World Bank World Development
Report: Agriculture for Development (2007); IFPRI Global Hunger Indices
(yearly); and World Bank Internal Report of Investments in SSA (2007).
Financial support was provided to the IAASTD by the cosponsoring
agencies, the governments of
The Global and sub-Global Summaries for Decision Makers and the
Synthesis Report are written for a range of stakeholders, i.e., government
policy makers, private sector, NGOs, producer and consumer groups,
international organizations and the scientific community. There are no
recommendations, only options for action. The options for action are not
prioritized because different options are actionable by different stakeholders,
each of whom have a different set of priorities and responsibilities and
operate in different socio-economic-political circumstances.
Key
Findings
1. Agricultural Knowledge,
Science and Technology (AKST) has contributed to substantial increases in
agricultural production over time, contributing to food security. This has been achieved primarily through a
strong focus on increasing yields with improved germplasm, and increased inputs
(water, agrochemicals) and mechanization. These increases in productivity have
contributed to a net increase in global food availability per person: from 2360
kcal in the 1960s to 2803 kcal per person per day in the 1990s, at a time when
world population significantly increased.
2. People have benefited
unevenly from these yield increases across regions, in part because of
different organizational capacities, sociocultural factors, and institutional
and policy environments. While
in South Asia the percentage of people living in poverty (<US$2 per day) has
decreased from 45 to 30%, in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), for example, this
percentage (around 50%) has remained the same over the last 20 years. Value added per agricultural worker in
2003 (in 2000
3. Emphasis on increasing
yields and productivity has in some cases had negative consequences on
environmental sustainability. These consequences were often not foreseen as they occurred over time
and, some occurred outside of traditional farm boundaries. For instance, 1.9 billion ha (and 2.6 billion people) today are
affected by significant levels of land degradation. Fifty years ago water
withdrawal from rivers was one-third of what it is today: currently 70% of freshwater
withdrawal globally (2700 km3 – 2.45% of rainfall) is attributable
to irrigated agriculture, which in some cases has caused salinization.
Approximately 1.6 billion people live in water-scarce basins. Agriculture
contributes about 60% of anthropogenic emissions of CH4 and about 50%
of N20 emissions. Inappropriate fertilization has led to
eutrophication and large dead zones in a number of coastal areas, e.g. Gulf of
Mexico, and some lakes, and inappropriate use of pesticides has lead to
groundwater pollution, and other effects, for example loss of biodiversity.
4. The environmental
shortcomings of agricultural practice associated with poor socioeconomic
conditions create a vicious cycle in which poor smallholder farmers have to
deforest and use new often marginal lands, so increasing deforestation and
overall degradation. Loss
of soil fertility, soil erosion, breakdown in agroecological functions have
resulted in poor crop yields, land abandonment, deforestation and
ever-increasing movement into marginal land, including steep hillsides.
Existing multifunctional systems that minimize these problems have not been
sufficiently prioritized for research. There is little recognition of the 
ecosystem
functions that mitigate the environmental impacts.
5. Projections based on a continuation of
current policies and practices indicate that global demographic changes and
changing patterns of income distribution over the next 50 years will lead to
different patterns of food consumption and increased demand for food. In the
reference run, global cereal demand is projected to increase by 75% between
2000 and 2050 and global meat demand is expected to double. More than
three-fourths of growth in demand in both cereals and meat is projected to be
in developing countries. Projections
indicate a probable tightening of world food markets with increasing resource
scarcity adversely affecting poor consumers and poor producers. Overall,
current terms of trade and policies, and growing water and land scarcity, coupled
with projected changes in climate is projected to constrain growth in food
production.
6. Agriculture operates within complex systems
and is multifunctional in its nature. A multifunctional approach to implementing AKST will enhance its
impact on hunger and poverty, improving human nutrition and livelihoods in an
equitable, environmentally, socially and economically sustainable manner.
7. An increase and strengthening of AKST
towards[1]
agroecological sciences will contribute to addressing environmental issues while
maintaining and increasing productivity. Formal, traditional and
community-based AKST need to respond to increasing pressures on natural
resources, such as reduced availability and worsening quality of water,
degraded soils and landscapes, loss of biodiversity and agroecosystem function,
degradation and loss of forest cover and degraded marine and inshore fisheries.
Agricultural strategies will also need to include limiting emission of greenhouse
gases and adapting to human-induced climate change and increased variability.
8. Strengthening and
redirecting the generation and delivery
of AKST will contribute to addressing a
range of persistent socioeconomic inequities, including reducing the risk of conflicts resulting
from competing claims on land and water resources; assisting individuals and
communities in coping with endemic and epidemic human and animal diseases and
their consequences; addressing problems and opportunities associated with local
and international flows of migrant laborers; and increasing access to
information, education and technology to poorer areas and peoples, especially
to women. Such redirection and strengthening requires thorough, open and
transparent engagement of all stakeholders.
9. Greater and more effective involvement of
women and use of their knowledge, skills and experience will advance progress
towards sustainability and development goals and a strengthening and
redirection of AKST to address gender issues will help achieve this.
Women farmers, processors and farm workers have benefited less from AKST
than men overall and poor women least of all. Efforts to redress persistent
biases in their access to production resources and assets, occupational
education and training, information and extension services have met with limited
success. Many of the societal, policy-related and operational impediments to
more equitable progress, as well as the private and public costs of such an
uneven pattern of development, are well understood as are the factors that
discourage more determined action to empower women.
10. Many
of the challenges facing agriculture currently and in the future will require
more innovative and integrated applications of existing knowledge, science and technology
(formal, traditional and community-based), as well as new approaches for
agricultural and natural resource management. Agricultural soil and biodiversity, nutrient, pest and water management,
and the capacity to respond to environmental stresses such as climate change can
be enhanced by traditional and local knowledge systems and current technologies.
Technological options such as new genotypes of crops, livestock, fish and trees
and advances in plant, livestock and fish breeding, biotechnology, remote
sensing, agroecology, agroforestry, integrated pest and nutrient management and
information and communication technologies (ICTs) will create opportunities for
more resource-efficient and site-specific agriculture.[2]
Biotechnology
The IAASTD definition of
biotechnology is based on that in the Convention on Biological Diversity and
the Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety. It is a broad term embracing the
manipulation of living organisms and spans the large range of activities from
conventional techniques for fermentation and plant and animal breeding to recent
innovations in tissue culture, irradiation, genomics and marker-assisted
breeding (MAB) or marker assisted selection (MAS) to augment natural breeding.
Some of the latest biotechnologies, called ‘modern biotechnology’, include the use of in vitro modified
DNA or RNA and the fusion of cells from different taxonomic families,
techniques that overcome natural physiological reproductive or recombination
barriers.
11. Some challenges will be
resolved primarily by development and appropriate application of new and
emerging AKST. Such AKST can contribute to solutions provided appropriate institutions
and capacities are in place. Examples
include combating livestock diseases, e.g. vaccine development; mitigating
greenhouse gas emissions from agriculture; reducing the vulnerability of
agriculture to a changing climate; reducing the heavy reliance of agriculture
and commodity chains on fossil fuels; and addressing complex socioeconomic
issues regarding local, national and international public goods.2, [3]
12. Targeting small-scale
agricultural systems by forging public and private partnerships, increased
public research and extension investment helps realize existing opportunities. Strengthening participatory research and extension partnerships,
development-oriented local governance and institutions such as cooperatives,
farmer organizations and business associations, scientific institutions and
unions support small-scale producers and entrepreneurs to capture and add value
to existing opportunities on-farm, post-harvest and in non-farm rural
enterprises. In some instances, opportunities lie in those small-scale farming systems
that have high water, nutrient and energy use efficiencies and conserve natural
resources and biodiversity without sacrificing yield, but high marketing costs
do not allow them to harness these opportunities. The underlying principles,
processes and knowledge may be relevant and capable of extrapolation to larger
scale farming systems, particularly in the face of climate change effects.
13. Significant pro-poor
progress requires creating opportunities
for innovation and entrepreneurship, which explicitly target resource poor
farmers and rural laborers.
This will require simultaneous investments in infrastructure and facilitating access
to markets and trade opportunities, occupational education and extension
services, capital, credit, insurance and in natural resources such as land and
water. The increasing market influence of large scale buyers and market
standards are especially challenging for small producers necessitating further
innovation in public and private training, education and extension services and
suitable legal, regulatory and policy frameworks.
14. Decisions around small-scale
farm sustainability pose difficult policy choices. Special and differential treatment for
developing countries is an acknowledged principle in
15. Public policy, regulatory
frameworks and international agreements are critical to implementing more
sustainable agricultural practices. Urgent challenges remain that call for additional effective agreements and
bio-security measures involving transboundary water, emerging human and animal
diseases, agricultural pests, climate
change, environmental pollution and the growing concerns about food safety and
occupational health. Achieving development
and sustainability goals calls for national and international regulations to
address the multiple economic, environmental and social dimensions of these transboundary
issues. These policies need to be informed by broad-based evidence from natural
and social sciences with multistakeholder participation. Improved governance
and strengthening engagement of stakeholders can redress some of the inadequacies
where identified in AKST arrangements that often privilege short-term over
long-term considerations and productivity over environmental and social sustainability
and the multiple needs of the small-scale farm sector.
16. Innovative institutional arrangements
are essential to the successful design and adoption of ecologically and
socially sustainable agricultural systems. Sustainable agricultural production is more likely when legal
frameworks and forms of association provide secure access to credit, markets, land
and water for individuals and communities with modest resources. Creating market-based
opportunities for processing and commercializing agricultural products that
ensure a fair share of value addition for small-scale producers and rural
laborers is critical to meeting development and sustainability goals.
17. Opening national
agricultural markets to international competition can offer economic benefits,
but can lead to long term negative effects on poverty alleviation, food
security and the environment without basic national institutions and
infrastructure being in place. Some developing countries with large export sectors have achieved
aggregate gains in GDP, although their small-scale farm sectors have not
necessarily benefited and in many cases have lost out. The small-scale farm
sector in the poorest developing countries is a net loser under most trade
liberalization scenarios that address this question. These distributional
impacts call for differentiation in policy frameworks as embraced by the
18. Intensive export oriented
agriculture has increased under open market operations but has been accompanied
by both benefits and adverse consequences depending on circumstances such as exportation
of soil nutrients and water, unsustainable soil or water management, or
exploitative labor conditions in some cases. AKST innovations that address sustainability and development goals would
be more effective with fundamental changes in price signals, for example,
internalization of environmental externalities and payment or reward for
environmental services.
19. The choice of relevant approaches
to adoption and implementation of agricultural innovation is crucial for
achieving development and sustainability goals. There is a wide range of such approaches in
current use. In the past, most AKST policy and practice in many countries were
undertaken using the ‘transfer of technology’ approach. A critical decision for
AKST stakeholders is the selection of approaches suited to the advancement of
sustainability and development goals in different circumstances.
20. More and better targeted
AKST investments, explicitly taking into account the multifunctionality of
agriculture, by both public and private sectors can help advance development
and sustainability goals.
Increased investments in AKST, particularly if complemented by supporting
investments in rural development (for example, infrastructure,
telecommunications and processing facilities) can have high economic rates of
return and reduce poverty. AKST investments also generate environmental,
social, health, and cultural impacts. More evidence is needed on the actual
levels and distributional effects of the economic and non-economic benefits and
costs of these investments for better targeting of future AKST investments.
21. While public private
partnerships are to be encouraged the establishment and enforcement of codes of
conduct by universities and research institutes can help avoid conflicts of
interest and maintain focus on sustainability and development in AKST when
private funding complements public sector funds. Government capacity to
understand, and where necessary mediate public/private partnerships, can be
assisted for instance by means of monitoring systems.
22. Achieving sustainability
and development goals will involve creating space for diverse voices and
perspectives and a multiplicity of scientifically well-founded options,
through, for example, the inclusion of social scientists in
policy and practice of AKST helps direct and focus public and private research,
extension and education on such goals. Diverse and conflicting
interpretations of past and current events, coupled with the under-valuation of
different types of AKST limit progress in the field. Understanding the
underlying sources of competing interpretations of AKST is crucial to addressing
goals. Some interpretations have been privileged over others and have helped
push formal AKST along certain pathways, to the neglect of other scientifically
sound options. Some of the by-passed options originate in traditional knowledge
or civil society experience and may be better able to contribute to poverty
reduction, social inclusion, equity and generate multifunctional outcomes.
Insert Figure GSDM-1. Global hunger.
Context
Agricultural Knowledge, Science and
Technology (AKST) can play a key role in addressing development and
sustainability goals—reducing hunger and poverty, improving rural livelihoods
and facilitating equitable, environmentally, socially and economically
sustainable development. This
task requires that AKST address the multifunctionality of agriculture, not just
as a site for food production, but also as a foundation for communities,
economies and a host of ecological relationships. Hence effective management
of physical and natural resources, the internalization of externalized costs and
the continuing availability of, and access to, public goods, such as biodiversity,
including germplasm, and ecosystem services are critical to meeting development
and sustainability goals. [3]
Agriculture, for the purposes of the IAASTD,
is a range of production systems, and is considered to be a linked, dynamic
social-ecological system based on the maintenance, utilization and regeneration
of ecosystem services managed by people. It includes cropping, animal
husbandry, fishing, forestry, biofuel and bioproducts industries, and the
production of pharmaceuticals or tissue for transplant in crops and livestock
through genetic engineering. IAASTD looks at the entire system of goods and
services from agriculture.
Insert Figure GSDM-2. A multifunctional
perspective of agriculture.
Agriculture
provides a livelihood for 40% of the global population; 70% of the poor in developing countries live in
rural areas and are directly or indirectly dependent on agriculture for their
livelihood. Agriculture also has a major influence on essential ecosystem
services such as water supply and purification, pollination, pest and disease
control, and the uptake and release of carbon. [Ch 3]
Globally, AKST can contribute in important
ways to addressing poverty alleviation for the 3 billion people who live on
less than US $2 per day and must provide adequate and nutritious food for
everyone, particularly for 854 million undernourished people. Other global
development challenges include clean water for the 1.3 billion people who live
without it and environmentally sustainable energy sources for 2 billion people;
AKST can also play a role in addressing these challenges [Ch 1, 3]
By focusing on development and
sustainability goals at the global scale, this assessment naturally emphasizes the
challenges facing developing countries and poor rural communities where the
greatest numbers of people depend on agriculture for their livelihoods and
where poverty and environmental degradation exist. However, challenges to
meeting these goals exist in all countries and local and national solutions need
to appreciate their interrelationships and the global context.
In order to realize development and sustainability goals, we must
distinguish two areas for action. One area is technology development: continued
crop, tree, fish and livestock improvement, and sustainable practices for using
water and other natural resources and energy. However, goals can only be
reached if we pay attention to a second area of action: organizational capacity
and policy and institutional development. For example, the use of new
technologies usually is predicated upon the existence of markets with remunerative
prices, access to credit, inputs and a host of other services and supports that
are often neglected.
Trends in investment in agricultural
research and development are a critically important contextual component
relevant to achieving development and sustainability goals because in general,
public funding is more able to incorporate the interests of the underprivileged
and the environment than private sources of funding. Investments in agricultural
research and development (R&D) are still growing, but the growth rate declined
during the 1990s. In addition, investment trends among countries have
increasingly diverged. Investment in publicly funded agricultural R&D in
many industrialized countries has stalled or declined and has become a small
proportion of total spending on science and technology (S&T). Many
developing countries have also stagnated or slipped in terms of publicly funded
agricultural R&D investments, except for a few, often more industrialized,
countries. Investments by the private sector have increased in industrialized
countries, but have remained small in developing countries. Comprehensive data
needs to be compiled for a fuller assessment of the state of agricultural
R&D including areas such as extension, traditional and local AKST, farming
systems evolutions, social sciences, certain health sector research, mitigation
and adaptation of climate change. [Ch 8]
Public investments in AKST can have economic
rates of return in the order of 40–50% under favorable market conditions and
contribute to meeting development and sustainability goals. But AKST
investments also generate social, environmental, health and cultural costs and
benefits, some of which are considered as externalities (positive and negative)
and spillovers. [Ch 2] These non-economic effects are also important to
society, but are often not included in conventional rate of return (ROR)
analyses because they present problems of attribution, quantification and
valuation. Furthermore, ROR analysis fails to account for the distribution of
costs and benefits among economic classes and stakeholder groups. [Ch 8]
Insert
Figure GSDM-3. Public and private agricultural R&D spending by region, 2000.
Global
challenges
Challenge: Decrease hunger and
improve health and human nutrition
Food
security: Formal, traditional and local AKST have made
positive contributions to addressing hunger, food security, human health and
nutrition. [Ch 2] Substantial gains in agricultural productivity over the past
50 years have reduced rates of hunger and malnutrition, improved the health and
livelihoods of many millions of people and stimulated economic growth in
numerous countries. World cereal production has more than doubled since 1961
with average yields per hectare increasing around 150% in many high and low
income countries, with the exception of most nations in sub-Saharan
Insert
Figure-GSDM 4a. Total agricultural output.
Insert
Figure-GSDM 4b. Global trends in output; N, P, irrigation and pesticide use.
Despite much progress in agricultural
technologies, persistent challenges remain that call for action in other
domains such as governance. Substantial increases in agricultural production
over time have had an uneven effect on food security. Hunger, malnutrition and food insecurity remain high, affecting
millions of people, particularly in South Asia and sub-Saharan
Rapid growth in demand for meat and milk is
projected to increase competition for land with crop production and to put
pressure on the price for maize and other grains and meals. This is because it
takes 4.5 plant derived calories to produce one calorie of egg or milk and 9
plant derived calories to produce one calorie of beef or lamb meat. Thus
growing demand usually associated with growing income may trigger structural
changes in the livestock sector that could have significant environmental
implications but will not necessarily result in improved human nutrition for
poor people or better opportunities for all small-scale producers.
Increases in livestock numbers projected to 2050
vary by region and species, but substantial growth in livestock production is
projected under a business-as-usual approach to occur in nearly all the
developing world. This projection calls for an increase in resources allocated
to livestock related research; taking an integrated approach to grassland and
crop-livestock systems to solve the multiple problems that beset intensive livestock
production; and offering better prospects for achieving sustainable solutions. [Ch
3; 5]
Marine, coastal and freshwater ecosystems
have been drastically altered over the past 50 years, reducing their
productivity, resilience to stress, and potential to contribute to future food
security. The total world production from capture fisheries has declined in
recent years due to overfishing due to ineffective management, inappropriate
fishing practices and poor understanding of ecosystem-based management
approaches. Future projections indicate that capture fisheries will continue to
decline and aquatic ecosystems will continue to degrade, seriously threatening
food security. Fishing technology has outpaced the development and application
of sound science, management. The development and unregulated use of fishing
gears such as large-scale trawling, gill nets, long-lining and use of other
destructive fishing practices, such as dynamite and cyanide, has damaged the
productivity of ecosystems and habitats upon which fishing depends. [Ch 6]
Food production and the price of food may be
affected by increased biofuel production due to competition for land and
natural resources. The limited access to land by small-scale farmers is likely
to limit their ability to supply and benefit from this new market. Equally
critical, some crops used for liquid biofuel production will require large quantities
of water, already a major constraint to agriculture in many parts of the world.
[Ch 3]
Food security [is] a situation that exists when
all people, at all times, have physical, social and economic access to
sufficient, safe and nutritious food that meets their dietary needs and food
preferences for an active and healthy life (FAO, The State of Food Insecurity
2001).
Food sovereignty is defined
as the right of peoples and sovereign states to democratically determine their
own agricultural and food policies.
The globalized food system affects local
food systems that support the livelihoods of the poor. [Ch 2.3] Low prices for
commodity imports—in contrast to prices for processed food—can be favorable for
poor consumers in net food-importing developing countries (given appropriate
institutional arrangements), but imports at prices below the cost of local
production undercut national farmers and rural development. Investment in AKST
that builds resilience of local food systems to environmental and economic
shocks can stabilize production and increase food security, provided that
appropriate policy measures give temporary protection to local markets.
Improve health and human nutrition: Food
safety hazards, which are biological, chemical or physical contaminants or
agents that affect human health or nutrient bioavailability, may occur anywhere
along the food chain. Pathogen produced toxins, such as mycotoxins, heavy
metals and other contaminants, veterinary drug and pesticide residues can cause
short- and longer-term adverse, even lethal, human health consequences when
present in food systems. These hazards increase with the length of the food
chain. Outbreaks of diseases transferred from food, such as Salmonella and
Bovine Spongiform Encephalitis (mad cow disease), have heightened the demand
for food safety standards. [Ch 2] Concerns
about GMOs in food and feed as well as consumer choice, have heightened demand
for food safety standards and prompted countries to develop and implement regulations
to address this issue.[4] [Ch
2]
Demand for products with high quality and
safety standards is expected to continue to grow, creating a market that will
be accessible only to producers and processors with sufficient AKST capacity
and knowledge (e.g. postharvest handling). In developing countries, better
national quality standards are likely to be a function of increased knowledge
and public awareness about the health effects of nutritional choices and safer
production practices and the expansion of public health regulations, liability
laws and laboratory infrastructure. [Ch 5; 8]
Diet is one of the leading risk factors for
chronic illness. Malnutrition remains a major cause of death, especially among
children, but other illnesses, often correlated, such as obesity, heart
disease, stroke, diabetes, HIV Aids and cancer have emerged. Cardiovascular
disease is a leading cause of death in both industrialized and developing
countries [Ch 1; 3]. Changes in food availability and prices together with environmental,
social and demographic factors (e.g. urbanization) have resulted in a worldwide
dietary transition. This transition has affected social groups differently.
Indeed, undernutrition and overconsumption coexist in a wide range of
countries. Unbalanced diets are often related to low intake of fruits and
vegetables and high intake of fats, meat, sugar and salt. Many traditional
foods, however, are rich in micronutrients and expanding their role in
production systems and diet could have health benefits.
Infectious diseases, including pandemic HIV/AIDS and malaria, are among
the leading causes of morbidity and mortality worldwide and are severely affecting
food security in some developing countries. In addition to the major challenges
that are raised by these illnesses, other diseases related to agricultural
activity are expected to emerge or expand. The incidence and geographic range
of many of these diseases are influenced by production systems (e.g. intensive
crop and livestock), and economic (e.g. expansion of international trade),
social (e.g. changing diets and living patterns), demographic (e.g. population
growth and migration), environmental (e.g. land use and global climate change),
and biological factors (e.g. microbial mutations). Most of these factors will continue
to be relevant and may intensify during this century.
Serious socioeconomic consequences occur when diseases spread widely
within human or animal populations (e.g. Bluetongue disease), or when they
spill over from animal reservoirs to human hosts (e.g. avian influenza);
pathogens that infect more than one host species are of particular concern. In large part due to a
globalized food system, the increase in disease emergence will affect both
high- and low-income countries [Ch 3]. Toxic agrochemicals applied in a wide
range of agricultural systems result in exposure adversely affecting the health
of producers, laborers and communities. Enforcement of rigorous regulations and
implementation of effective risk management strategies can help reduce exposure
but do not eliminate risk.
The health and environmental risks and effects
of agrochemicals have been extensively documented in the scientific and medical
literature. On the other hand, the impacts of transgenic plants, animals and
microorganisms are currently less understood. This situation calls for broad
stakeholder participation in decision making as well as more public domain
research on potential risks. [Ch 2; 3]
Insert Figure GSDM-5. Research budgets of
CGIAR, Monsanto and NARS in South America
Challenge: Decrease poverty and improve
rural livelihoods
AKST has the capacity to improve
livelihoods, although effects have varied by region and social group. The
ability to access and benefit from AKST is uneven, with industrialized
countries gaining more than developing countries (especially those in
Many reasons exist for the expansion of
agricultural trade: increasing interregional relationships, increasing demand
for food, and commodity specialization facilitated by trade liberalization.
Globalization and liberalization will affect countries and groups within
countries in different ways. It is projected that agricultural trade among
developing countries is likely to increase and their agricultural trade
deficits with industrialized countries are likely to increase while industrialized
countries will continue to run agricultural trade surpluses [Ch 4]. In
developing country urban markets with poor rural connectivity there could be
increasing reliance on imports, which provide cheaper food but undermine rural
employment and livelihoods and deter investment in mitigating land degradation.
These trade imbalances also favor high-input, energy-intensive agriculture,
which currently does not internalize environmental or social costs of
production, an increasingly unsustainable approach.
Challenge: Increase environmental
sustainability
Over the last century, the agricultural
sector has typically simplified production systems to maximize the harvest of a
single component, generally ignoring other supporting, provisioning, and regulating
ecological functions and services. When these practices have been associated
with policies that provide resource price-distorting incentives, this has often
led to degradation of environmental and natural resources (e.g. deforestation,
introduction of invasive species, increased pollution and greenhouse gas emissions).
Agriculture currently contributes 60 and 50%
of global anthropogenic emissions of CH4 and N2O,
respectively. During the last 50 years, the natural resource base on which
agriculture depends has declined faster than at any other time in history due
to increased global demand and degradation; 75% of the crop genetic base of
agricultural crops has been lost. Degradation of ecosystem functions (e.g.
nutrient and water cycling), constrains production and may limit the ability of
agricultural systems to adapt to climatic and other global changes in many
regions. Sustainable agricultural practices are part of the solution to current
environmental change. Examples include improved carbon storage in soil and
biomass, reduced emissions of CH4 and N2O from rice
paddies and livestock systems, and decreased use of inorganic fertilizers. Appropriate
policies can promote mitigation of GHG emissions and increased carbon
sequestration.