Agricultural Development and Sustainability : An Inevitable Nexus

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  • 農業の発展とその持続性 : 必然的な関連性

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Intimate relationships between agricultural development and other areas of human activity determine countless linkages with global issues of environmental protection, population increase, food supply, and world trade. This broad background leads to different perceptions of sustainable agriculture by different interest groups. The profitable diversification away from overproduction of basic commodities and satisfaction of environmental pressure groups are major concentrations in developed countries. Elsewhere, the main concern is to maintain a trend of increasing production: food security with a future dimension. Achieving this depends crucially on protecting the agricultural resource base. Input and input substitution are important correlated issues, but the core of sustainability is avoidance of any attrition of the potential for future production. It demands safeguarding soil and water qualities, gene pools and the natural resource base against loss and degradation. Most of the resource degradation and eroding potential are rooted in economic, social and political issues; few such problems will be Solved unless the primacy of these issues is addressed and recognized. We should consider trade-offs between agricultural development and its probable impact on nature or society. In order to stabilize our food production system, alternative paths of development in the agricultural sector are to be sought concomitantly. There will be development but it should be sustained for the future. The research and extension agenda, thus, are required to be considered in a timely and need-base fashion. Sustainable agriculture will probably remain illusive until government, and concerned agencies recognize it as arising only as the aftermath of a synthesis of strategies on population, employment, economic planning, technical research, strategies of extension and national investment.

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