Institutional reforms for getting an agricultural knowledge system to play its role in economic growth

Pakistan Development Review, Winter, 1999 by Jock R. Anderson

While alarmists shriek the crisis of accelerating soil erosion and declining water quality as the major impediment to the future of global agriculture in supplying the needs of humanity, the argument here is that, although resource degradation is indeed a threat to achievement of satisfactory crop yields over the next several decades, the main threat is not degradation of natural resources. Rather, it is degradation of the capacity of societies, particularly those in the less-developed countries, to develop the knowledge embodied in people, technology and institutions necessary to meet the challenge of higher yields and intensified agricultural production. Dealing with this threat of degradation of knowledge institutions and resources must be an important focus of economic development policy in agrarian societies. In short, the agricultural knowledge and information systems (AKISs) serving the developing world must be put in effective and stable shape to deliver the needful.

1. INTRODUCTION

Food needs calls for steady growth in agricultural production. Today, more than 80 low-income developing countries suffer from chronic food deficits, and about 800 million people live in hunger. By 2025, the world's population may exceed 8 billion and food needs in developing countries may nearly double. If unmatched by increases in food production, mounting demand for food will raise food prices and aggravate food insecurity worldwide, while swelling the ranks of the hungry.

Analysts of the global agricultural system are in general agreement about three characteristics of the system as it likely will evolve over the next several decades [e.g., Islam (1995)]. Global demand for food will double from 1990 to 2030. Over 90 percent of the increase will be in the less-developed countries (LDCs) of Asia, Africa and Latin America, reflecting relatively rapid population growth and steady increases in per caput income in most of those areas. Because of increasing scarcity of agricultural land around the world, most (75-90 percent) of the increased production needed to satisfy future demand will have to come from increased yields, that is, greater partial productivity expressed as increased crop production per hectare.

There is much less agreement about the obstacles that must be overcome if crop yields are to increase fast ,enough to meet global food demand at generally acceptable economic and environmental costs of production. One widely held line of argument--epitomised variously by Brown and Wolf (1984) and Pimentel et al. (1995), for example--is that degradation of natural resources, especially land and water, constitutes a major threat to achievement of the crop-yield increases that will be required. The position taken here is that resource degradation is indeed a threat to achievement of satisfactory crop yields over the next several decades [e.g., Crosson (1995)]. The main threat, however, is not degradation of natural resources [Crosson (1997); Crosson and Anderson (1999)]. Rather, it is degradation of the capacity of societies, particularly those in the LDCs, to develop the knowledge embodied in people, technology and institutions necessary to meet the challenge of higher yields. Dealing with this threat of degradation of agricultural knowledge resources should thus be one important feature of contemporary agricultural development policy. The issues are wide-ranging, and naturally include the functioning and governance of key public agencies such as national agricultural research institutes (NARIs).

2. NATURAL RESOURCE DEGRADATION IS NOT THE MAIN THREAT

Consider first the potential contribution to future yield increases of eliminating past and future degradation of the natural resources that earlier analyses by observers such as Crosson and Anderson (1992) have revealed as most constricting agricultural growth, namely, land and water resources; initially given present knowledge of how to manage these resources, then the potential yield-increasing contribution of advances in knowledge.

Land: Oldeman, Hakkeling and Sombroeck (1990) assessed that soil erosion by water and wind accounts for some 83 percent of the land degradation in the LDCs. Until the early 1990s, there was a strong consensus among students of the field that credible information about global rates of soil erosion, let alone its productivity effects, was lacking. Nelson (1988, p. 1) expressed the consensus view when, after a survey of the literature, he concluded that the evidence with respect to the rate, extent and severity of land degradation around the world was extraordinarily skimpy. Other specialists in land degradation had come to the same conclusion. Dregne (1988, p. 679) noted that estimates of land degradation, including his own, were based on few data and much opinion. Writing specifically of soil erosion and its productivity effects, Dregne (1988, p. 680) observed that "there is an abysmal lack of knowledge of where water and wind erosion have adversely affected crop yields". El-Swaify, Dangler and Armstrong (1982, p. 1), noted that there is little or no documentation of the extend, impact or causes of erosion in tropical environments, a situation not radically changed today [El-Swaify (1999)].