Transcript Low Productive Agriculture in the Least Developed Countries

Enhancing Developing World Agricultural
Performance: getting beyond the current
plateau through R&D
Prabhu Pingali
Deputy Director
Agriculture Development
Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation
Keynote address to Conference on “Integrated Assessment
of Agriculture & Sustainable Development”, Egmond aan
Zee, Netherlands, 10-12 March 2009. Views expressed are
Recent Trends in Developing
World Crop Productivity Growth
• Production
– Cereal output in
developing countries
has grown 2.8 percent
annually for three
decades
• Productivity
– Yields, not area, were
responsible for growth
– TFP grew along with
yields
Long run commodity price decline has
had a positive impact on food security and
poverty reduction
Real prices for commodity group
Small holder productivity growth triggered
overall rural growth and rural
transformation.
Investments in agricultural
research and development yield
high returns.
• Agricultural research
and development (R&D)
yield returns of 40-50
percent.
• Returns are high in all
regions, including SubSaharan Africa.
• International & national
public sector played a
crucial role.
• Public research carried
out in OECD countries
had large spillover
effects in developing
countries.
Developing world agriculture is
facing increasing divergence
• Low Productive Agriculture in the Least
Developed Countries
• Modernizing Agriculture in the
Transforming Economies
Low-Productivity Agricultural
Economies
• Generally the Least Developed Countries
(LDCs)
• Ag has a large share of GDP yet
productivity is low
• Low NARS capacity & low private sector
interest
• Low prospects for reaching the MDG goals
on poverty and hunger & high levels of
environmental degradation
The least developed countries are
relying more on food imports …
Billion US $
12
10
8
DEFICIT
6
4
2
0
61 64 67 70 73 76 79 82 85 88 91 94 97 00 03
Agricultural Imports
AgriculturalExports
Constraints to agricultural
transformation in the LDCs
Age old constraints
– Low demand
– Poor public good
provision
– Lack of technology
R&D
– Low agro-climatic
potential
– Institutional barriers
New issues
– Declining
competitiveness
– Availability of lower
priced food imports
– Volatility in aid
flows & directions
– Capacity limitations
in meeting sanitary
and phyto-sanitary
Implications for Agricultural R&D:
back to basics?
• Focusing on productivity improvement but
with the benefit of modern science and 40
years of lessons learnt on trade-offs.
• Dealing with the “Changing Locus of
Agricultural Research” -- Public to Private
Sector
• Going further down the impact pathway
than in the past
• Building local capacity for R&D
Transforming Economies
• Dietary transformation fueled by economic
growth and demographic shifts
• Organizational changes in retail, wholesale,
processing, and procurement
• Tremendous heterogeneity observed w/
respect to participation and distribution of
benefits
Transforming Economies:
implications for R&D
• Sustaining and enhancing staple crop
productivity gains
• Making domestic agriculture globally
competitive
• Diversifying agricultural systems &
household incomes
• Reducing rural poverty & malnutrition,
especially in marginal environments
Cross cutting issues and
concerns
• Investing in tropical agricultural science
• Revitalizing breeding programs
• Achieving scale in crop & resource
management
• Dealing with the consequences of climate
change
National and International public
sector breeding programs are no
longer the primary suppliers of
innovations
Declining Expenditures in Plant Sciences:
the case of the CGIAR
(shares of total investment, 1972-2005, by research
category)
80
70
Shares of total investments (%)
60
50
40
30
20
10
0
1972-76
1977-81
1982-86
1987-91
1992-96
Increasing Productivity
Protecting the Environment
Improving Policies
Strengthening NARS
1997-2001
2002-2005
Saving Biodiversity
Source: CGIAR annual report 2001 for data from 1972-2001; Executive Summary of the 2004 CGIAR Financial Results (May 2005) for data from 2002 to
2005 (latter year projected).
No nation– and no ongoing breeding
program– can be self sufficient in
terms of its requirements for genetic
resources.
REBUILD THE INTERNATIONAL NETWORKS
FOR THE FLOW OF GENETIC RESOURCES
AND IMPROVED GERMPLASM.
Crop and Resource Management
Technologies: Can we achieve scale?
• Few examples of wide spread, cross
country use of non-breeding technologies
• Technologies for sustainable use of inputs
(eg., water use efficiency) have had limited
success
• Knowledge-intensive practices (such as
IPM) have not scaled up well
• We need a new paradigm for addressing
sustainable crop & resource management
Integrating Climate Change
Concerns
• Climate change adaptation should be seen
as an integral part of the work on stressprone environments (eg., drought
tolerance)
• Sustainable management practices could
contribute to mitigating climate change
(eg., conservation agriculture)
• Added focus on climate change increases
the ex ante returns to agricultural R&D
Way Ahead
• A renewed and revitalized CGIAR that is sharply
focused on the international dimensions of
agricultural research
• Reviving university based tropical agricultural
research and capacity building
• Developing composite tools for addressing
persistent problems (eg., plant breeding coupled
with molecular biology tools)
• Promoting multi-disciplinary approaches for
solving complex problems