Sustainable Agricultural Development by John M. Antle & Srabashi Ray

Author:John M. Antle & Srabashi Ray
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9783030345990
Publisher: Springer International Publishing

Fig. 4.2Major farming systems in South Asia. (Source: Dixon et al. 2001)

Fig. 4.3Major farming systems in East Asia and the Pacific (Source: Dixon et al. 2001)

Figure 2.​1 shows that most low- and lower-middle-income countries are located in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia . These regions along with China are projected to be home to 70% of the global population in 2050. The contribution of agriculture in terms of GDP and employment is comparable in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia and lower in China due to its rapid growth over recent decades (World Bank 2019a). The agricultures of sub-Saharan Africa and Asia can be broadly differentiated on the basis of productivity, intensity in input use, mechanization, and commercialization. We use the examples of low-intensity semi-subsistence systems in Kenya and Tanzania and higher-intensity ‘transitional’ systems in India and China to distinguish the challenges of subsystems within the developing world. We distinguish transitional systems from semi-subsistence systems since they remain starkly different from industrialized agriculture (Chap. 5), yet have some of the characteristics of more intensive systems. We use these examples to focus on the broad sustainability issues that are distinct between low- and high-intensity production systems within developing countries. It is important to remember that at most levels of spatial aggregation, these examples are an oversimplification. Western Kenya and the Southern Highlands of Tanzania have agricultural systems that resemble high-productivity regions of India . At the same time, subsistence agriculture similar to Kenya and Tanzania is prevalent within most agricultural systems in India . In fact, these ‘stylized’ examples fall at different points along a continuum of systems with many diverse features and characteristics ranging from the very-low-income, subsistence-level systems to those very similar to the large-scale, commercial systems typical of the industrialized world that we discuss in Chap. 5.

In the next section, we briefly describe the agricultural systems in developing countries. Then, we highlight the current challenges to sustainability in terms of the indicators discussed in Chap. 3. Finally, we describe some of the available strategies for moving agricultural systems in more sustainable directions.

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