Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
85
(a) Mean = 40%
90
8
70
60
5
40
3
20
10
0
(b) Mean = 62%
60
50
40
30
20
10
0
78
77
73
50
67
47
45
45
40
36
52 51 52
48
48
33
46
27
(c) Mean = 57%
(d) Mean = 64%
80
70
60
50
40
30
20
10
0
90
8
70
6
50
4
30
2
10
0
82
78
68
67
76
63
61
61
58
63
66
57
62 62
64
64
53
61
49
24
FIGURE 3.2
Yield attributed to fertilizer: (a) N and P from 1930 to 2000, in the Oklahoma
State University Magruder plots; (b) N, P, and K from 1889 to 1998 in the University of
Missouri Sanborn Field plots; (c) N, P, K, and lime from 1955 to 2000 in the University of
Illinois Morrow plots; and (d) N with adequate P and K vs. P and K alone from 1852 to 1995
(years between 1921 and 1969 excluded because part of the experiment was fallowed each
year for weed control) in the Broadbalk experiment at Rothamsted, England. (From Stewart,
W.M., D.W. Dibb, A.E. Johnston, and T.J. Symth,
Agron. J.
,
97, 1, 2005.)
In many developing regions, including most countries in SSA and South Asia
with its significant landless population, most of the rural poor are smallholder farm-
ers. The productivity of these farms is usually very low with large yield gaps, thereby
creating opportunities to increase food production (Nin-Pratt et al. 2011; Pinstrup-
Andersen, 2013) and to allow smallholders to move from subsistence to commercial
agriculture.
To make the transition to commercially oriented intensified agriculture, millions
of smallholder farmers must have increased access to inputs and improved tech-
nologies, linkages to markets, and information and knowledge on management tech-
niques that improve their production efficiency (Winterbottom et al. 2013). Against
this backdrop, these smallholders as an important part of the world's agricultural sys-
tems face additional and enormous challenges (land degradation, land use pressures,
climatic uncertainties, access to land and water, etc.) to increasing production while
reducing the negative environmental impacts of agriculture on the natural resource
base. This chapter discusses food demand trends and production requirements in
the context of smallholder farmers and the technological tools, particularly mineral
fertilizers, needed for them to move from subsistence to commercial agriculture.
