Despite limited natural resource endowments and its massive, mainly youthful, population base, the Asia-Pacific region has made substantial inroads in eradicating poverty and food insecurity during the last few decades. This progress was underpinned by declining fertility rates, rapid economic growth in the 1990s - sometimes coupled with pro-poor policies, among other factors. Since 1945, the region’s economy has grown faster than any other region. Literacy rates have increased considerably, and improved nutrition and public health programmes have raised life expectancies by over a generation in only half a century.
Despite this progress, an estimated 503 million people in the region are undernourished, comprising 63 percent of the developing world’s ill-fed populace. Rural dwellers, in particular women and children, ethnic minorities and disabled persons, constitute a disproportionately high percentage of the vulnerable. Ensuring access to food for the hungry and poor persists as a major challenge for national leaders, governments, civil society and development partners in the Asia-Pacific region.
Historically, the region has been the centre of many agricultural advances such as the domestication of farm animal and plant species, aquaculture, and the green revolution in rice. Today, over 50 percent of the world’s industrial crops are produced in the Asia-Pacific region and production continues to expand. These past achievements form the context for new advances, many in critical development areas: extensive education and agricultural research networks; developments in information and communication technologies; modern biotechnology; social innovations in development, including resource decentralization; direct foreign investment; growing regional and global economic linkages; and international trade.
Broader citizen participation in decision-making and governance is reflected in dynamic non-governmental organizations (NGOs), increased women’s suffrage and decision-making processes open to multistakeholder participation. Information flows more freely in the media and within civil societies.
Enabling policy and economic environments have led to many success stories, including unique rural development models: from agro-industrial entrepreneurship, cooperatives and rural financial systems to farmer field schools in integrated pest management (IPM).
Against this rapid regional growth there have been setbacks due to man-made or natural disasters. The El Niño events brought widespread and devastating droughts. The Asian economic crisis slowed growth in several countries and affected the livelihoods of millions of people. The severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) epidemic in 2003 and the avian influenza outbreaks in Asia since 2002 have caused enormous economic losses and threatened human health.
Despite sufficient food production to feed all people, many factors in the region affect its ability to achieve general and sustainable food security. Although the direct link between population and poverty remains strong, especially among the most deprived, other demographic trends play important roles such as the outmigration of young males and the skilled, the greying and feminization of farms and fishing villages - rural communities peopled mainly by the elderly and women. Population dynamics thus remain a key factor in vital developmental and environmental issues, including formal education, HIV/AIDS and rural health, migration, urbanization and unemployment.
Important trends in the agricultural sector that are having the greatest impact on the achievement of sustainable agriculture and rural development are outlined below.
Subsistence-oriented agriculture is in transition as industrialization and commercialization increase. The needed growth in agricultural production must come from intensification and wider use of modern technology. Capacity building and investment in natural resource conservation and technology transfer are, as a consequence, rising in priority. These realities shape FAO’s intervention strategies. Requests from member states for assistance are likely to increase, especially in biotechnology, efficient water use, IPM, nutrient and weed management, food safety, on-farm diversification, agribusiness and marketing.
Asian agriculture remains highly labour intensive, but the spread of industries and commerce is drawing the talented and trained to urban centres, leaving the unskilled in rural areas. The employment and integration of (surplus) rural workers into modernizing economies will require sustained skill development built around comprehensive human resource development programmes.
A livestock revolution is reshaping the industry. Asia and the Pacific account for the largest farm animal population worldwide. The region also possesses the biggest pool of farm animal genetic resources. Owing to consumer-driven demand, meat and milk production grew at 5 percent while egg output expanded at 7 percent per annum in the 1990s. This contrasts with 1.4 percent and 0.9 percent respectively for the rest of the world. This accelerated livestock production, though, may result in serious environmental degradation stemming primarily from the faulty application of new technologies, particularly in intensification, feeding and disease control. Moreover, expanding international trade of livestock and livestock products and growing international travel have sharply increased the risk of disastrous pest outbreaks and transboundary diseases, including zoonotic diseases. Effective prevention and progressive control of transboundary animal diseases at regional and international levels are urgently needed.
The high pressure on forest resources remains a concern. "In the region's tropical countries, loss of natural forests continued at a rate of around 2.5 million hectares annually between 1991 and 2000." Deforestation is not primarily due to timber harvesting. Today about 28 percent of the region’s land area retains forest cover, equivalent to only one-quarter of a hectare of wooded land per person - the lowest rate for any region. One of the most significant trends has been the shift from exploitation of natural forests towards the development and use of forest plantations. Asia and the Pacific lead the world in forest plantation development. During the 1990s, the forest plantation area increased by 3.5 million hectares annually, which is equivalent to 79 percent of the global growth rate.
Similarly, aquatic resources are under intense pressure. Asia and the Pacific account for 55 percent of the world’s fish catch, but a worldwide decline in fisheries’ production has had apparent negative trends in Asia and the Pacific. Almost two-thirds of the major fish species are either fully exploited or overexploited. Aside from destructive fishing, like the use of dynamite and poison, El Niño and other weather aberrations affect the industry. High technology gear is efficient but can, if not effectively regulated, damage fishing grounds severely.
Conversely, the region produces 90 percent of the world’s aquacultural output, representing the greatest diversity of species and systems. The growing global trade in fisheries’ products makes this a growth area, but problems are emerging owing to environmental impacts and increasing trade barriers.
Water scarcity and land degradation are worsening. Over 20 percent of the landscape under human use is severely degraded. Overexploitation of water and land degradation is aggravated by the lack of clearly defined property rights and vague institutional arrangements. Increasing cropping intensity in agriculture, livestock and aquaculture intensification, and industrialization have also led to land degradation, pollution and the compounded risk of pests and diseases. This stress is reflected in other problems: from widespread topsoil erosion and desertification, waterlogging, salinization of aquifers, agricultural pollution of aquifers and waterbodies to eutrophication from high levels of nitrogen use and even loss of biodiversity.
Information and communication technology is underutilized. Agriculture’s ability to respond to the demand for sustainable production will rely increasingly on its growth as a science and the information-based sector. Tapping such potentials will depend on strengthening currently limited capacities in information and communications technology (ICT). Failure to act decisively may further widen the digital divide between rural and urban populations, as well as the so-called molecular gap between the South and North. Most public sector agencies still neglect adapting ICT to disseminate the results of research and development more rapidly and widely.
The institutional infrastructure to support production, consumption and trade is underdeveloped. Globalization is reshaping the region’s trade and investment landscape and governments are called upon to facilitate an enabling environment for the whole agricultural production and marketing chain to encourage much-needed investments in rural areas. As market integration across countries advances, food safety and nutrition standards will require increased attention. Amidst rapid change, national governments need to revise development strategies and policies, and restructure agriculture towards market-driven production with due attention to farmers’ organizations, rural credit and finance, and marketing systems.
Free trade? fair trade? International organizations are pressed in various fora to increase efforts to help create a level playing field for developing countries in agricultural trade. The need for concerted action at subregional and regional levels - for instance, for the conceptualization and conclusion of bi- and multilateral free trade agreements - further evidences the need to develop the institutional infrastructure for sustainable agriculture and rural development. This trend will impose significant changes in the roles of government, NGOs, civil society organizations and farmers’ organizations, as well as in the mechanisms used by international organizations as service providers.
Partly as a result of the aforementioned trends in the agricultural sector in Asia and the Pacific, there is growing inequity among countries in the region as well as at national and local levels. While productivity gains and commercialization of agriculture have contributed to rural incomes, often inappropriate policies have favoured large producers.
Failure to consider equity in development and governance - including issues raised by decentralization, globalization and trade liberalization - will further marginalize vulnerable groups, especially women, small producers and landless farmers. Some countries can no longer delay the formidable task of comprehensive agrarian reform.
Food security for children and women, in particular adolescent girls who are future mothers, should constitute the key factor in drawing up future policies. There is no shortage of models for pro-poor and pro-environment policies and special programmes for food security.
Effective rural education systems and health and social welfare schemes can increase the incomes of the poor. They also create an enabling environment for marginalized groups to work their way to more humane standards of living and ensure sustained production and social harmony so essential for progress.
