Innovations are fast changing the agricultural landscape driven by the increasing need to shift towards sustainable practices without sacrificing the productivity and profitability of farming. Innovations in technology, institutions, processes, and products have contributed to the growth of agriculture, globally and in developing countries including India and Africa, as observed in the cases of green revolution in cereals; and gene revolution in cotton.
This brochure presents FAO ’s work on agricultural innovation. FAO advocates a shift from interventions focusing on single components of agricultural innovation towards a system-approach aimed at strengthening institutions and stakeholders’ networks that better respond to the needs of smallholder farmers.
This paper attempts to identify the major factors associated with some of the failures and successes of integrated watershed management policies and projects with a particular emphasis on the uplands of mainland Southeast Asia. It argues that many policy measures have been misguided by failing to acknowledge the multi- dimensional facets of sustainable watershed management and putting too much emphasis on command-and-control approaches to resource management and one- size-fits-all conservation models.
Boll guard I & II were introduced in 2002 and 2006 by Mahyco Monsanto with Genetic Engineering Appraisal Committee, Govt. of India. Indian cotton farmers adopted Bt hybrid cotton between 2002-2013 reaching 92% of the cotton area and 95% of the production, replacing conventional hybrids/ varieties of all the species in both rainfed and irrigated conditions. Bt hybrid cotton was presumed to produce record highest average productivities in India and other major cotton growing countries also in 2007 and 2012 with a decline after 2008 due to excess rains. Farmers invested Rs.
Oil palm (Elaeis guineensis) has become the most important oil crop throughout the world. The growing palm oil production was mainly based on the expansion of cultivated area into forest areas, causing serious environmental and social concerns. Increasing yields on existing plantations is a potential pathway to reduce the undesired ecological impacts of oil palm agriculture while enhancing its social benefits. Although oil palm production is still dominated by large private estates, smallholder farmers are increasingly engaging in its cultivation.
The tools of biotechnology present an opportunity to infuse a new round of technology into Indian agriculture, which has been going through "technology fatigue" in recent period. These technologies follow from the conventional plant breeding techniques and complement them in improving crops to resist biotic and abiotic stresses, break yield barriers, and sustain yields in the face of resource degradation and climatic change.
In Asia and the Pacific, the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) is working with member countries to leverage breakthroughs in information and communication technologies (ICT) to fight hunger, improve nutrition and counter the effects of climate change and extreme weather events that can devastate farmers and their crops. In the Philippines, a country prone to typhoons, aerial drones are taking to the sky to map out at-risk areas of agricultural land to mitigate risk. This innovative practice is also able to quickly assess damages when a disaster strikes.
Recent Society 5.0 efforts by the Government of Japan are aimed at establishing a sustainable human-centered society by combining new technologies such as sensor networks, edge computing, Internet of Things (IoT) ecosystems, artificial intelligence (AI), big data, and robotics. Many research works have been carried out with an increasing emphasis on the fundamentals of wireless sensor networks (WSN) for different applications; namely precision agriculture, environment, medical care, security, and surveillance.
Rice is a primary food for more than three billion people worldwide and cultivated on about 12% of the world’s arable land. However, more than 88% production is observed in Asian countries, including Pakistan. Due to higher population growth and recent climate change scenarios, it is crucial to get timely and accurate rice yield estimates and production forecast of the growing season for governments, planners, and decision makers in formulating policies regarding import/export in the event of shortfall and/or surplus.
Recent studies in the literature examining impact of government seed price intervention on adoption of Bt cotton get different results depending on the specifics of the situation analyzed. According to one study, reduction in seed prices enables farmers to buy seeds at lower prices and this can result in surge of area sown under Bt cotton. The other view holds that seed price interventions have little impact on the adoption rates rather these interventions may adversely affect firms’ incentives to innovate. Which of the two views characterize adoption of Bt cotton in India?