Outlook on Agriculture

Land-use change for human settlement and agricultural purposes, especially pasture establishment, has caused major impacts on the Amazon Basin's environment. Development of strategies for reformation and restoration of already degraded pastures constitutes the main goal of the authors' research work. For some of this work, a homogeneous area of land in terms of soil characteristics was selected at Nova Vida ranch in Rondônia state to conduct a multidisciplinary experiment, which included agronomic, environmental and economic analyses. Since July 2001, the authors have monitored five treatments: control, herbicide, tillage, no-till rice and no-till soybean, arranged in four blocks. Early results on carbon and nitrogen stocks, nitrogen mineralization, trace-gas fluxes, dissolved organic carbon and microbial biomass are briefly presented.

Vegetables are important crops in developing countries, recognized for their nutritional benefits and income generation for smallholder farmers. This paper compares the successful vegetable export system with the much larger but inefficient and low-yielding local vegetable subsector in Kenya and identifies opportunities to address the major technical and marketing constraints faced by the local subsector. The export system could be a useful role model for the development of improved, adapted vegetable varieties, sustainable seed-delivery systems, organized technical assistance and more efficient marketing systems in the local subsector. A productive and efficient local vegetable system is likely to enhance the livelihoods of the poor and economic growth in Kenya.

Limited success in efforts to achieve food security in Sub-Saharan Africa, despite massive inflows of food and financial aid, extensive price- and market-related reforms and revamping of agricultural sectors, has heightened attention on the need for (neglected) basic infrastructures to invigorate the agri-food sector and general economic growth. The importance of a standard system of weights and measures as a fundamental prerequisite for nearly all aspects of an economic system, and food security in particular, is highlighted to inform policy makers and other stakeholders involved in food (in)security in Africa to re-prioritize national budgets and capacity-enhancement and development programmes. Improving the existing crude weights and measures programmes will require important roles not only for national governments, but also for consumers, retailers and wholesalers. Strategies and policy considerations towards improving capacity in agrometrology and achieving food-security goals are assessed.

The protracted outbreak of mad-cow disease, repeated episodes of dioxin and mycotoxin contamination, and the issue of labelling genetically modified foods have severely shaken public confidence in the food supply industry, increasing consumer concerns about the origins of the raw materials used in both animal feed and food products. The need to develop improved techniques to characterize feed and food components has consequently become more urgent, and DNA-based technologies promise to be able to meet these needs. DNA methods can establish the origin of species in meat- and fish-based products and feed ingredients, and are the most reliable analytical approaches for authenticating processed foodstuffs. The identification of ingredients in processed feed and food is mandatory not only to ensure correct labelling and assessment of value, but also to avoid health risks related to the presence of toxic contaminants or pathogenic agents.

The decision-making process of farmers in the Spanish Mediterranean regions was analysed using the function of Multi-Attribute Utility Theory (MAUT). The economic, agronomic and social repercussions resulting from adopting a series of technological and structural improvements were evaluated on farms with citricultural and outdoor horticultural production. The introduction of such measures is necessary to improve competitiveness and favour the sustainability of these farms. The outstanding consequences of these innovations were a more efficient use of irrigation water and an increase in the area of vegetable cultivation when mechanized, which counteracted the overwhelming trend in the area towards citriculture.

There is apprehension that the decoupling of EU income support will result in shortages of livestock for preservation of biodiversity in Swedish semi-natural pastures. However, in a region studied in British Columbia with natural conditions similar to those in central Sweden but with no income support, one-third of the agricultural land is semi-natural pastures and the number of beef cattle has increased. This can be explained by the availability of cheap outdoor wintering of cattle and low opportunity cost of land. The results suggest that the abolition of income support and the tradition of expensive indoor wintering, but maintained environmental allowance for grazing, would result in land use in large parts of Sweden similar to that in the British Columbia region.

Livestock industries in developing countries face numerous constraints that have often hampered the establishment and sustainability of national genetic-improvement programmes. One major inadequacy in a number of programmes previously developed was that livestock owners were not taken into account in decision making and ownership of improvement initiatives. No matter how much effort is put into financial and technological support, the eventual survival of improvement programmes depends on whether the farmers understood and agreed with the objective of the projects. Otherwise, programmes tend to fade away as soon as the development agencies leave. Community ownership of genetic-improvement programmes has been suggested as a potentially sustainable alternative. In this paper, the establishment and sustainability of community-based organizations for the genetic improvement of livestock (CBOGIL) are discussed with reference to some successful community-based genetic-improvement initiatives in different livestock species.