AGRICULTURE IN A DYNAMIC WORLD - Science for Agriculture and Rural Development in Low-income Countries - page 4

reports; International Assessment of Agricultural Science and Technology for
Development (IAASTD)). In retrospect, we may conclude that Wageningen
scientists substantially contributed to the scientific challenges expressed during 'The
Future of the Land' conference (Fresco et al. 1994).
Though considerable progress has been made in research, capacity building and
policy-oriented activities, the efforts have often been fragmentary. Separate projects
have led to insufficient attention for synthesizing results to further support policy
formulation and evaluation. Fragmentation also prevented full exploitation of the
potential to contribute to public debates on rural development and sustainable
agriculture and the role that agricultural knowledge, science and technology can play
in furthering sustainable development in the South.
In this topic, we draw lessons from past projects to contribute to future thinking
about issues such as poverty alleviation, increasing food security and natural
resources conservation. Our conclusions stress the strategic role of agriculture in
development processes. This can be more specifically defined in terms of three
different roles of agriculture:

Provide a stable basis for changing livelihoods (e.g. facilitating the gradual
transition out of agriculture into other sectors of the economy);

•

Provide sufficient affordable food of the quality needed to sustain a growing
world population; and

•

Deliver essential environmental services. •

The relative significance of these three functions is, of necessity, location-specific.
These three roles are neither mutually exclusive, nor necessarily in conflict with
each other. They do, however, make it essential that the dominant role of agriculture
in specific settings is identified, so that research can be tailored accordingly.
We start by placing the changing role of agriculture in a Historical perspective .
Ensuring the production of sufficient food to meet the needs of a growing population
has long been the focus of agricultural research and in Food security we acknow-
ledge this as a continuing and major concern, while drawing attention to the
increasing role of food quality to respond to the increasing consumer influence. At
the same time, however, increasing agricultural production often has had serious
environmental repercussions. As we show in Agriculture and environment , the
production decisions made by rural households affect both the environment and the
way natural resources are managed. As such, they play a significant role in
determining the extent to which policy objectives can be achieved. Decisions taken
at household level not only determine actual levels of agricultural production (food
security objectives), they also affect the long-term quality of local natural resources
and their capacity to support production (sustainability objectives).
The majority of the world's poor live in the rural areas of developing countries.
Rural households are, therefore, a major target group in poverty reduction policies.
As we make clear in Rural livelihoods , non-farm activities are an essential part of
community and household activities and livelihoods. We conclude that analysing
and interpreting the interactions between farm and non-farm activities is a particularly