Agriculture & Food Production

Agriculture is often the industrial driving force in many developing countries. According to the World Trade Organisation (WTO), agriculture accounts for over a third of export earnings for almost 50 developing countries and around half for as many as 40 of them.

Trade restrictions

Many farmers from these countries are unable to participate in global trade, leading to a reduction in income and profit streams and making it harder for them to escape from poverty. Consumers within these countries are denied the benefits of the lower priced food and agricultural products often found within a competitive marketplace.

In these developing countries, it is often the case that both farmers and their consumers are forced to subsidise the high costs and often damaging effects of production. Barriers to imports also remain high in both developed and developing countries alike, creating further trading obstacles.

Food security

Achieving food security for all is at the heart of efforts to ensure that people have regular access to enough high quality food to lead active and healthy lives.

Targets for providing global food security include:

• Raising levels of nutrition
• Improving agricultural productivity
• Bettering the lives of rural populations
• Contributing to the growth of the global economy

Other key requirements include:

• Technical skills to increase crop yields
• Legal advice needed to smooth the transition from state to private land ownership
• Mobilising action to aid against the threat of famine

Increased competition

Improvements in agricultural production and distribution as well as increased competition on the global market represent huge political challenges. Though the Humanitarian Development Summit will be a solutions-based forum as opposed to one for political debate, it will focus on the production of high protein, high calorie crops and strategies appropriate to developing nations, such as organic farming and agroecology.

Organic farming

Organic refers to agricultural production systems used to produce food and fiber. All kinds of agricultural products are produced organically, including produce, grains, meat, dairy, eggs, fibers such as cotton, flowers, and processed food products.

Organic farming management relies on developing biological diversity in the field to disrupt habitat for pest organisms, and the purposeful maintenance and replenishment of soil fertility. Organic farmers are not allowed to use synthetic pesticides or fertilisers. Some of the essential characteristics of organic systems include: design and implementation of an "organic system plan" that describes the practices used in producing crops and livestock products; a detailed recordkeeping system that tracks all products from the field to point of sale; and maintenance of buffer zones to prevent inadvertent contamination from adjacent conventional fields.

Agroecology is concerned with the maintenance of a productive agriculture that sustains yields and optimises the use of local resources while minimising the negative environmental and socioeconomic impacts of modern technologies. In industrial countries, modern agriculture with its yield maximising high-input technologies generates environmental and health problems that often do not serve the needs of producers and consumers. In developing countries, in addition to promoting environmental degradation, modern agricultural technologies have bypassed the circumstances and socioeconomic needs of large numbers of resource-poor farmers.