HISTORICAL CONTEXT OF AGRICULTURAL DEVELOPMENT - Science for Agriculture and Rural Development in Low-income Countries - page 16

countries, and developing countries declaring themselves able to do so, should

provide, on a lasting basis, duty-free and quota-free access for exports from least-
developed countries by 2008.

The Millennium Development Goals

The MDGs set by world leaders at the Millennium Summit in September 2000
represent an ambitious agenda for reducing poverty and improving lives. The eight
MDGs - that include halving extreme poverty to halting the spread of HIV/AIDS
and providing universal primary education, all by the target date of 2015 - form a
blueprint agreed to by all the world's countries and all the world's leading
development institutions. They have galvanized unprecedented efforts to meet the
needs of the world's poorest. First , the MDGs are people-centred, time-bound and
measurable. Second , they are based on a global partnership, stressing the responsi-
bilities of developing countries for getting their own house in order, and of
developed countries for supporting those efforts. Third , they have unprecedented
political support, embraced at the highest levels by developed and developing
countries, civil society and major development institutions alike. Fourth , they are
attainable.

SOCIETAL REACTIONS

Following WWII, the major societal concern in the developed world was restoration
of the food production (capacity), partly in response to the devastating effects of the
war, partly in response to the rapid population increase, associated with technological
developments in medicine. As indicated above, government policies were directed
towards increasing agricultural production through technological innovation, strongly
supported by public expenditure in agricultural research and development, which
resulted in rapid intensification of agricultural production. Societal concerns with
respect to the negative aspects of this agricultural intensification, based on increasing
use of agro-chemicals, did not come to the fore until the early 1960s.

Silent Spring (Rachel Carson 1962)

In Silent Spring , Carson meticulously described how DDT 4 entered the food chain
and accumulated in the fatty tissues of animals, including human beings, and caused
cancer and genetic damage. A single application on a crop, she wrote, killed insects
for weeks and months, and not only the targeted insects but countless more, and
remained toxic in the environment even after it was diluted by rainwater. Carson
concluded that DDT and other pesticides had irrevocably harmed bird and animal
populations and had contaminated the entire world food supply.
The most important legacy of Silent Spring was a new public awareness that
nature was vulnerable to human intervention, i.e., at times, technological progress
4 Dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane is a pesticide once widely used to control insects in
agriculture and insects that carry diseases such as malaria.