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Green revolution technologies and a vigorous smallholder sector have seen Asian agriculture make giant strides in the last five decades. But agricultural transition has not been uniform across Asia and the future of smallholder agriculture faces several challenges arising from a range of socio-economic, demographic, structural and institutional factors that could adversely affect its sustainability. This paper critically reviews the divergent experiences of agricultural transformation in five Asian countries Bangladesh, India, South Korea, Thailand and Vietnam from a comparative perspective and points to the need for evolving new perspectives and policies towards sustainable and non-disruptive transformation of smallholder agriculture in Asia.
This paper draws from the study Understanding the Next Agricultural Transition in Asia that was carried out by the authors at the Asian Institute of Technology, Bangkok, with financial support from the Rockefeller Foundation. The usual disclaimers apply. P K Viswanathan (pkviswam@gmail.com) is at the Gujarat Institute of Development Research. Gopal B Thapa (gopal@ait.ac.th), Jayant K Routray (routray@ait.ac.th) and Mokbul M Ahmad (morshed@ait.asia) are with the Asian Institute of Technology, Bangkok, Thailand.
Economic & Political Weekly EPW
reen revolution (GR) technologies backed by a vigorous smallholder sector has seen Asian agriculture under going a major transformation in the last five decades. Smallholders in Asia are a huge chunk, accounting for nearly 87% of the farms with an operational size below 2 hectares in the world (out of a total 525 million farms) (Oksana 2005). The larg est concentration of smallholdings in Asia is in China, India, Indonesia, Bangladesh and Vietnam (Chand et al 2011). Thanks to the GR and the smallholder sector, most countries have achieved tremendous growth in agriculture and selfsufficiency in the production of basic staples and other food crops. The significance of the Asian smallholder sector is that it produces 80% of the food consumed in the developing world and feeds onethird of the global population (FAO 2011). However, agricultural transition in Asia brings out a major con tradiction. While a handful of countries, particularly Japan and South Korea, have achieved rapid rural transformation and be come advanced industrial economies, a majority of the countries, especially in south and southeast Asia, still remain predominantly agrarian though there has been a perceptible decline in the share of agriculture in their national gross domestic product (GDP) (World Bank 2009). This contradiction apart, a large body of the empirical literature currently shares the concern that the future of smallholder agriculture in Asia faces several challenges arising from a range of socioeconomic, demographic, structural and in stitutional factors that could adversely affect its sustainability. The challenges include (a) the shrinking size of farms; (b) distress induced ruralurban migration that has led to an increasing number of women and old people in agriculture; (c) persistent technological and institutional constraints; (d) climate change and its adverse impacts; and (e) the emergence of genetically modified (GM) crops and problems to do with their adoption. All these have serious implications for food security and sustainable livelihoods in the smallholder sector of most Asian countries. The dynamics of rural transformation and the challenges con fronting Asian agriculture make it a fascinating subject, one that merits a critical assessment of its major trajectories of growth and transformation from both the historic and contemporary perspectives. Such an assessment is justified as there are very few regional studies that try to understand the complexities of agri cultural transformation and their longterm implications for the smallholder sector in Asia. Further, the rapid changes that have taken place in the socioeconomic and demographic aspects of smallholder livelihoods call for a detailed review, especially given the emerging global development scenario.
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Against this backdrop, this paper critically reviews the diver gent experiences of agricultural transformation in five Asian countries Bangladesh, India, South Korea, Thailand and Viet nam from a comparative perspective. A careful scrutiny of agri cultural transformation in these countries enables one to under stand the underlying contradictions in farm production struc tures, changing agrarian and labour relations and the challenges to food security and sustainable livelihoods. These five countries best represent the south and southeast Asian region with their distinct trajectories of rural transformation. While South Korea (hereafter Korea) exhibits growth and transformation driven by rapid industrialisation and urbanisation, Thailand presents a dynamic agriculture sector in the postreform and postcrisis periods. India and Bangladesh have almost similar stories of agrarian transformation and face the same challenges, while Vietnam has achieved transformation with aggressive reform policies in its postDoi Moi (renovation) era. The rest of the paper is organised into four sections. Section 1 criti cally reviews the important trajectories of agricultural transformation in the five countries and Section 2 examines the main drivers and outcomes of agricultural transformation. Section 3 outlines the major challenges confronting smallholder agriculture in the larger Asian context. Section 4 concludes the paper by highlighting the need for evolving new perspectives and policies towards sustainable and non disruptive transformation of smallholder agriculture in Asia.
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innovative practices in farming. Farmers were quickly able to uti lise technologies developed at international agriculture research centres such as the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) in the Philippines, the International Maize and Wheat Research Centre (CIMMYT) in Mexico and the AVRDC: The World Vegetable Centre in Taiwan (Kaosaard and Rerkasem 2000: 45; Chand 2010). A closer look at the policies as well as technological and insti tutional interventions in the five countries reveals some striking
Table 1: Trends in Production of Foodgrains (1961 to 2009)
Period Bangladesh India Korea Vietnam Thailand
Average annual production (million tonnes) 1961-75 16.27 100.85 1976-90 1991-2009 22.80 36.17 156.57 228.46
Average annual simple growth in food production (%)* 1961-75 2.54 (0.24) 3.18 (2.80) 2.57 (0.16) 1976-90 1991-2009 1961-75 1976-90 1991-2008 2.57 (0.61) 3.21 (1.25) 247 (-2.59) 232 (0.39) 252 (4.12) 3.24 (4.77) 0.38 (-0.07) 1.49 (3.12) -0.44 (-0.04) 192 (0.86) 212 (1.86) 226 (-0.41)
1.15 (0.12) 4.58 (0.44) 4.62 (0.65) 1.71 (0.50) 4.22 (1.29) 2.90 (0.75)
Average annual per capita food production (kg)* 249 (-0.20) 244 (-2.47) 405 (0.98) 228 (-4.89) 257 (5.99) 432 (1.80) 156 (-2.25) 415 (11.48) 468 (7.50)
which were considered essential for alleviating poverty and set ting right the socioeconomic disruptions caused by the Korean War (195053). While pursuing such policies, Korea heavily taxed its agriculture sector by maintaining low grain prices (using PL 480 imports from the US) during the 1950s and 1960s (Kim and Lee 2010). However, there was a reversal in this policy in the 1970s and Korea began subsidising agriculture to achieve selfsufficiency (FAORAP 2006). To support its large number of small and poor farmers, productivityenhancing policies and infrastructure improvement programmes were implemented, which included enlarging farms, improving drainage and developing water re sources. Korean agriculture greatly changed after the late 1980s when import barriers were removed under strong international pressure, forcing it to be sensitive to changing global markets. Since joining the World Trade Organisation (WTO) in 1995, Korea has made efforts to further strengthen its agricultural sector while sticking to its WTO commitments. Korea has also intro duced direct payment programmes, though this is not in full con formity with the Green Box measures of the Agreement on Agri culture (AoA) (Kim and Lee 2003; Song 2006).
* Figures in parentheses indicate linear trends growth rates. Source: Estimated from FAOSTAT (www.faostat.org).
variations. Bangladesh and India chose a deliberate strategy of intensive agriculture. Bangladesh, which now has one of the most mechanised and labourintensive agricultural sectors in south Asia (Biggs and Justice 2011), experienced significant changes, particularly in rice cultivation with the widespread adoption of modern rice varieties, mechanisation of tilling and intensive use of inputs. These changes enabled it to achieve food security to a large extent, though at the cost of a diminution of its genetic resources (Asaduzzaman 2010). Through the GR, India eradicated famines and persistent food shortages and attained food selfsufficiency in a short span of 10 to 15 years (Chand 2010). Thailands agriculture underwent significant developments in the years following the First National Economic and Social Deve lopment Plan in 1961. Substantial investments were made in infrastructure, technology, irrigation, research and extension, besides establishing rural credit support and institutional sys tems for facilitating market incentives and trade flows. The adop tion of GR technologies, including high yielding variety (HYV) seeds, significantly boosted the production of irrigated rice in the central plains and maize in the rainfed uplands (Phrek 2010). Vietnam initiated economic reforms (Doi Moi) in 1986 with the goal of creating a socialistoriented market economy. The major reform in the agricultural sector was Resolution No 10 of the Politburo (1988), which abolished the collective farming sys tem and allocated land to individual households on a longterm basis. The price reforms of 1989 liberalised all conventional price controls, including interest and foreign exchange rates. The new exchange rate policy dramatically altered the income of farm households by giving them full control over production and free access to markets. The reforms also greatly contributed to improving the terms of trade in favour of agriculture (Chung and Dang 2010). In sharp contrast, development policies in Korea were guided by rapid growth through industrial expansion and urbanisation,
Economic & Political Weekly EPW
Spectacular growth in the production of wheat and rice made India almost selfsufficient in foodgrains in less than a decade of the GR (Chand 2010). Vietnam attained food selfsufficiency by 1989 and has been a leading rice exporter ever since. Korea wit nessed a deceleration and even negative growth in food produc tion during the entire period. Average annual per capita food pro duction in Korea declined from 249 kg during 196175 to 228 kg during 197690 and further to 156 kg during 19912008, mainly due to policies that favoured the conversion of land under staple crops (paddy and barley) to highvalue crops (vegetables and fruits) (Lee and Kim 2010). Though Bangladesh experienced a drop in per capita food production from 247 kg (196175) to 232 kg (197690), the situation improved with an increase to 252 kg dur ing 19912008. Though Indias trend growth rates show a signifi cant growth in food production, the growth in percapita food production was negative (0.41%) during 19912008, indicating worsening food availability.
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Much of the contribution to the growth in food production came from a single crop, rice, which also was the major benefac tor of the GR in all the countries, except India. The contribution of rice to total food production was as high as 96% in Korea, 95% in Bangladesh, 89% in Vietnam and 88% in Thailand. In India, rice contributed only 56% to total foodgrains production, followed by wheat at 30%. The yield impact of GR technologies was quite sig nificant in the case of rice. Among the five countries, Korea achieved the highest yield levels of 4.0 to 4.8 tonnes per ha over 1961 to 2008. In Vietnam, the rice yield varied between 1.92 and 4.8 tonnes per ha and in Bangladesh, it varied from 1.68 to 3.71 tonnes per ha during the same period. India (1.48 to 3.1 tonnes per ha) and Thailand (1.78 to 2.82 tonnes per ha) had relatively lower levels of rice productivity. Besides benefiting from the GR, the five countries also made healthy investments in R&D, infrastructure development and ex tension programmes to increase the production of commercial crops for exports. Vietnam and India were growing tropical cash crops such as rubber, tea and coffee even earlier to boost export earnings and the GR period coincided with the dynamic growth of commercial agriculture in these countries. Nevertheless, the promotion of cash crops did not result in largescale diversifica tion of agriculture in Bangladesh and Vietnam with food crops (mainly rice and wheat) continuing to dominate the gross cropped area in these countries (86% and 72%, respectively). But India, Korea and Thailand were more successful in crop diversi fication and the area under nonfood/commercial crops was about 44% to 47% of the gross cropped area in 2007. Apart from Bangladesh, the growth in commercial agriculture enabled the other countries to gain significantly from increased exports over a period of time, as Table 2 (p 43) shows (see also Figure 1).
Figure 1: Trends in Agricultural Exports of Major Asian Countries
28,000 24,000 Exports ($ million) 20,000 16,000 12,000 8,000 4,000 0 1991 Korea 1993 1995 1997 1999 2001 2003 2005 2007 2009 India Vietnam Thailand
1.3 Structural Changes and Contraction of Agriculture Sector A closer look at the sectoral composition of GDP is appropriate to see if the structural transformation in the five countries resulted in a progressive shift from agriculture to other sectors. Broad trends suggest that the economies witnessed a phenomenal increase in the value of agricultural GDP, though with a drastic fall in the relative share of the agricultural sector in GDP (Table 3).
Table 3: Trends in Agricultural GDP and the Sectoral Composition of GDP (1980 to 2010)
Bangladesh India Korea Thailand Vietnam
16,899
8,344
8,994
9,974 (32.4) 94,445 (17.5) 26,236 (55.2) 13,183 (58.0) 5,186 (-42.3)
2000-08 12,213 (22.4) 146,735 (55.4) 25,844 (-1.5) 18,184 (37.9) 11,029 (112.7) Agriculture value added (%) 1980-89 31.6 32.0 13.4 17.4 41.6 1990-99 2000-10 % change 27.1 21.0 -33.5 27.6 19.5 -39.1 6.6 3.5 -73.9 39.5 41.4 37.1 -6.1 47.1 52.0 59.4 26.1 10.4 10.5 -39.7 32.5 40.0 43.5 33.8 50.1 49.6 46.0 -8.2 30.2 21.8 -47.6 25.9 29.3 39.7 53.3 32.5 40.5 38.5 18.5
Manufacturing value added (%) 1980-89 21.2 26.0 1990-99 2000-10 % change 24.1 27.2 28.3 26.5 27.7 6.5 42.0 45.9 52.8 25.7
Services value added (%) 1980-89 47.2 1990-99 2000-10 % change 48.8 51.8 9.7
Figures in parentheses indicate the percentage change between periods. Source: World Bank, World Development Indicators, 2010 (compiled).
Thailand had the highest gains between 200406 and 200708 with its agricultural exports jumping from $13,126 million to $20,716 million. In relative terms, Indias agricultural exports in creased by 82%, followed by Vietnam (69%), Thailand (58%), Bangladesh (40%) and Korea (28%) during the period 200409. With the exception of Vietnam, the other four countries experi enced a drop in exports between 199597 and 19982000 due to the 1997 financial crisis. By and large, it may be observed that trade liberalisation policies adopted by these countries significantly helped them diversify exports through improved market access and increased engagement in free trade agreements (FTAs).1 However, much of the increase in exports came from the non food crop sector. All five countries, especially Bangladesh and Korea, experienced a decline in exports of food and food products, with an unfavourable balance of trade in the food sector.
Indias agricultural GDP increased from $80,351 million (198589) to $94,445 million (199099) and further to $1,46,735 million in the last decade (200008). The period 19962000 witnessed a significant reduction in agricultural GDP in Thailand and Korea due to the Asian financial crisis. Notably, all countries (except Korea) experienced a significant rise in agricultural GDP in the last decade with the maximum growth realised by Vietnam (113%), followed by India (55%), Thailand (38%) and Bangladesh (22%). Despite the significant increase in the value of agricultural GDP and the rise in agricultural exports, the relative importance of agriculture declined in all countries, which was clearly an indica tion of sectoral transformation (Table 3). The decline in the share of agricultural GDP was more pronounced in Korea (74%) and Vietnam (48%). In Korea, the share of agricultural GDP declined from 13.4% (1980s) to 3.6% (2000s). If this trend continues, Korea may soon join Japan and the US, where the share of agri culture in the national GDP is hardly 2%. Thailand also experi enced a decline in the share of agriculture from 17.4% to 10.2%. The pattern of sectoral transformation looks somewhat different across the five countries. For instance, the services sector grew dynamically in all the countries except Vietnam, where manufac turing growth was more pronounced.
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the performance of the agricultural sector and agrarian rela tions. By and large, these changes may be broadly described as (a) demographic pressure and the fragmentation of holdings; (b) migration and its effects on agriculture and farm families; (c) the feminisation of agriculture and an ageing farm popula tion; and (d) a changing technological paradigm. We briefly examine how these factors have influenced the process of agri cultural transformation in the five countries.
almost 13 million inhabitants with an annual addition of 5,00,000 (UNHabitat 2008). In Vietnam, declining employment opportuni ties in agriculture has resulted in both intra and interprovincial migrations. According to 200405 estimates, the total number of migrants in Vietnam was 10.8 million, of whom 62% were intra provincial migrants (Chung and Dang 2010). In Korea, urbanisation has triggered several patterns of migra tion that have had a definite impact on the performance of agri culture. During the 1980s, more than 50% of the total migrations were ruralurban, induced by better living conditions in the cities and educational, medical and cultural opportunities. But rural urban migrations decreased in the 1990s with the absorptive capacities of cities reaching a saturation point. In turn, urban urban migrations increased from 51% during the late 1980s to 74% during the early 2000s, mostly fuelled by a growing demand for labour in the rapidly expanding manufacturing and services sectors. Further, when Korea faced a shortage of labour with about 7,60,000 Koreans immigrating to the US between 1965 and 1995 (Massey 2003), a large part of it was met by importing labour from neighbouring countries (Lee and Kim 2010). Thailand exhibits three major patterns of seasonal labour mi grations the movement of agricultural labourers to work in sugar cane farms; the migration of rice and maize farm workers to Bangkok or other fastgrowing urban centres and industrial loca tions; and crosscountry labour migrations. However, Thailand has the lowest rate of permanent ruralurban migrations among the five countries. Since villages are well connected with urban centres, rural households get opportunities to take part in several nonagricultural activities. Besides, remittances received from family members or relatives working in urban areas or abroad enable rural families to continue living in villages as cultivators (Thaiprasert 2006; Almeida 2006; Phrek 2010). Migration in the Indian states of Punjab and Haryana is some what different from that observed in other countries. These two states, which were the heartlands of the GR, see a huge influx of labourers from neighbouring states for seasonal employment at higher wages. The high rate of agricultural growth achieved under the GR improved the living standards of even small and marginal farmers in these states. So large segments of their farmers have either become farm managers or ceased to work on their farms. This has created employment opportunities for labourers from other states and the situation has reached such a stage that with out outside labour, the agricultural sector in Punjab and Haryana will collapse2 (Chand 2010). However, regions outside the GR belts tell a story of distress migration. Migrations are quite frequent from the drylands in the country, mostly driven by poverty and lack of access to water (Agoramoorthy et al 2009). An interesting paradox of increasing ruralurban migrations is that it has not led to poverty alleviation in these countries. Many of the migrants end up earning little and leading miserable lives in urban areas because they lack education, technical skills and knowledge. Thus, ruralurban migration has only aggravated urban poverty (Rasul et al 2004; Mendola 2008). For instance, in Bangladesh, though rural poverty decreased from 55% to 53% between 1996 and 2004, urban poverty increased by 8% from 29% to 37% (Herrman and David 2009).
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2.3 Feminisation of Agriculture and Ageing Farm Population The feminisation of agriculture has been one of the major aspects of rural transformation in most parts of Asia, though its degree varies across countries. Besides attending to household chores, women make up 60% to 80% of agricultural labourers in Asia and Africa against 40% in Latin America. The increase of women in agriculture is attributed to a variety of factors such as male outmigration, the growing number of womenheaded house holds, the increase in labourintensive cash crops and persistent poverty in rural areas (UNIFEM 2008). Other than Korea, where women in agriculture were hardly 9% of the total working female population (World Bank 2009), it has been on the rise in all the other four countries. In Bangla desh, the number of women in agriculture more than doubled from 3.76 million in 1996 to 7.71 million in 2006 and the share of women agricultural workers increased to almost 68% of the total female workforce (Asaduzzaman 2010). In India, about 33% of cultivators and 47% of agricultural workers were women (Vepa 2005). Further, almost 65% of all women workers and 83% of rural female workers in India were in agriculture (NSSO 200405). Moreover, an estimated 35% of households in India were de facto femaleheaded because of death of the husband, marital break down or male outmigration (Rawal 2008; Agarwal 2010). While the share of women workers in agriculture was about 61% in Viet nam, it was a relatively lower 44% in Thailand (Phrek 2010). The increasing ruralurban migration of youngsters exerts pressure on older people to actively take part in farming opera tions. This trend is seen in most of Asia, particularly in Korea and Thailand. In Korea, the rural population above 65 years increased by almost three times from 3.7% to 10.4% between 1960 and 2008, while Thailand reported a twofold increase from 3.2% to 7.4% during the same period. Besides, the growing rural popula tion in the four countries other than Korea (ranging from 66% to 72%) suggests that larger proportions of the elderly will crowd rural living and agricultural spaces in the years to come. The challenges posed by the increasing number of women and the elderly in agriculture in Asia will be discussed in Section 3. 2.4 Changing Technological Paradigm
Though GR technologies have enabled many Asian countries to achieve agricultural growth, their benefits have been mostly con fined to specific crops and resourceendowed regions.3 Further, the large adoption of GR technologies resulted in indiscriminate exploitation of land and water resources along with intensive use of chemical fertilisers and pesticides. These trends, called the secondgeneration problems of the GR, have raised several issues related to the growth model based on GR technologies and the future of agricultural sectors in the region (Chand 2010). It was because of this that GM/biotech crops began receiving greater attention in many parts of Asia. It is pointed out that mil lions of large, small and resourcepoor farmers around the world have begun growing GM crops as a result of consistent and substan tial economic, environmental and welfare benefits offered by these crops. The increased adoption of GM food crops, such as biotech rice, is expected to benefit 250 million poor rice households in Asia
(James 2010) thereby helping to mitigate the problems of food insecurity, malnutrition and abject poverty. The five countries show disparate trends in the adoption of GM crops due to various reasons. For instance, Bangladesh is yet to establish R&D and institutional systems for regulating GM tech nology and so far no GM crop has been approved for commercial cultivation (Asaduzzaman 2010). In India, only Bt cotton has had remarkable success in terms of a rapid expansion in area from a mere 50,000 ha in 2002 to more than 9.4 million ha in the last 10 years (Viswanathan and Lalitha 2010; Choudhary and Gaur 2010). India follows a very cautious approach in promoting other GM crops, in particular Bt brinjal, in view of growing environ mental as well as healthrelated concerns (Chand 2010). Thailand has been promoting GM crops such as Bt cotton, Bt corn, roundup ready soybean, Bt maize and GM papaya owing to the vigorous marketing strategies of multinational seed company Monsanto. At the same time, the promotion of the GM crops has been opposed by national (headed by Biothai) and international (Greenpeace Thailand) agencies (Phrek 2010). Vietnam has also been promoting GM crops, mainly rice, cassava, maize and soybean, livestock feed and tilapia, a fish. But wider promotion of GM crops in Vietnam is constrained by policy and regulatory systems (Chung and Dang 2010). Korea promotes GM technology mainly to meet the growing domestic demand for foods and feed and has enacted laws and regulations to enable consumers to make informed choices. As of December 2008, the Korea Food and Drug Administration (KFDA) had approved 54 varieties of GM crops (HaeYeong et al 2010).
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Asia, especially India, Bangladesh and Vietnam. The lack of alter native employment opportunities has made the situation worse. Though all the five countries have been implementing pro grammes to create employment opportunities in the farm and nonfarm sectors and industries and encourage land consolida tion, their achievements have been slow and inadequate. While economic transformation in the west led to more land consolida tion (Chand et al 2011), this has not happened in most of Asia. However, Korea and Vietnam report some progress in consolida tion of farm lands. In general, fragmentation of holdings has pushed up production and farm management costs, thereby jeo pardising the future of farming as a viable pursuit.
1994, 2010; Vepa 2005; Kelkar 2009). In addition, farm technolo gies are often designed to suit the physical abilities of male work ers and female workers lack appropriate technologies. The wage disparity between genders is yet another major issue.5 The increasing presence of the elderly in farming operations is also a major challenge. In Korea, the increase of farmers and farm labourers more than 60 years old has reportedly affected growth of the agricultural sector with it showing symptoms of growth fa tigue (Kim and Lee 2003). India and Bangladesh also report high work participation rates (55%) among those more than 60 years old in rural areas (Rajan 2009). A high proportion of elderly males (42%) and females (41%) are economically active in the Red River Delta in Vietnam (Friedman et al 2003). Microlevel evidence from Thailand indicates that almost 40% of the elderly work in agricul ture (Darawuthimaprakorn and Punpuing 2010).
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historically enjoyed by these countries in the production and export of agricultural products.
gas emissions, the agricultural sectors in these countries will have to be reoriented through climateresilient farming prac tices. Trends as of 2005 reveal that agricultural methane (CH4) emissions contributed about 76% of the greenhouse gas emis sions in Thailand, 69% in Bangladesh, 67% in Vietnam and 65% in India. Korea is an exception to this, as its level of CH4 emissions is quite low, declining from 38% in 1990 to 31% in 2005 due to a drastic decrease in the area under rice and emission reduction commitments. Second, rice cultivation in these countries ac counts for 30% to 50% of their CH4 emissions, along with emis sions from other farming activities such as manure handling, livestock production, burning of crop residues/biomass, slash and burn practices, and so on (Wreford and Moran 2009; Golub et al 2009). It has also been reported that seasonal methane emissions from rice cultivation were 49 kg/ha in Thailand and 45 kg/ha in India, while it was 367 kg/ha in Korea due to intensive agricultural practices (Malla 2008).
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natural hazards or distressinduced factors, including loss of land caused by urban and industrial expansion. As is evident now, the future strength and dynamism of Asian agriculture will be undermined by the largescale retreat of young people from the farming sector. Given this, there is a need for re visiting this issue to understand local policy responses and inter ventions made by the state and other development agencies to address this issue. In the absence of any such interventions, it needs to be examined what type of incentive structures and profit able farm enterprises would help prevent the largescale exodus of youngsters from agriculture. Alongside, attention has to be paid to the various challenges faced by women and the elderly in farm management. A critical aspect should be the development of gen derspecific and elderlyspecific technological innovations and in stitutional support mechanisms so that their hardships are mini mised and they are adequately rewarded for their contributions. Critical studies are also required to understand the multifunc tional nature of agriculture and its significance in protecting
Notes
1 Indias agricultural exports increased due to di versification of exports as well as consolidation of export markets in the OPEC, the EU, APEC coun tries, the US and the UAE (GOI 2010; European Commission 2007). Thailands gain in exports was facilitated by favourable trade policies with an emphasis on integration within the Asian re gion and increased engagement in FTAs with the ASEAN and the EU (Zamroni 2006). Between 1981 and 2001, the total number of mi grant labourers in Punjab more than doubled from 0.87 million to 1.75 million, with an annual average growth rate of 3.55% (Singh et al 2007). For instance, GR policies in India mostly benefit ed the three major crops of wheat, rice and maize in the IndoGangetic plain, comprising the north western states of Punjab and Haryana and the western part of Uttar Pradesh. An extensive irri gation infrastructure has been developed in these areas (Chand 2010). A report of the National Commission on Farmers (NCF) observes that the lack of title to land makes it difficult for women to access institutional cred it. For example, hardly 5% of women have access to Kisan credit cards. Extension and input supply services also do not reach women at the right time and place (Swaminathan 2005). In Bangladesh, the femalemale wage ratio is 0.75 (Kelkar 2009). Indian states show greater gender wage disparity, in the range 0.51 to 0.81. The few exceptions are in the green revolution tracts of Haryana and Punjab (Vepa 2005). The share of agriculture in official development assistance (ODA) declined sharply from 18% in 1979 to 3.5% in 2004. In the late 1970s and early 1980s, the bulk of agricultural ODA went to Asia as support for the green revolution. It declined dramatically thereafter. This decline in state sup port for agriculture has been attributed to com peting demands from sectors such as health, edu cation, social welfare and industry, and structur al adjustment programmes, which significantly reduced agricultural subsidies and other supports (FAORAP 2009). Despite the growing importance of GM crops, their uptake has been confined to a few crops and countries, mainly due to environmental and bio safety concerns. While GM crops are accepted in the US, Canada, Argentina, China, India, Colum bia and South Africa, several EU countries have not accorded regulatory approval for the commer cial release of many GM crops. Ever since 2006, a serious agrarian crisis has been deepening in large parts of India. By the end of
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smallholders in Asia in the context of neoliberal trade reforms. While little effort is made in Asia to recognise the multiple func tions of agriculture, including the sociocultural roles and the ec osystem services provided by rice production systems, the protec tionist policies being adopted by the EU as well as Japan and Ko rea may provide useful indicators. The time is ripe to establish in what ways GM technology in food and commercial crop production could lead to sustainable livelihoods and increased welfare gains for farmers, especially in regions with poor resource endowments. The need for well founded research on the social effects of GM crops stems from that some parts of India that adopted Bt cotton when it was intro duced in 2001 have been in the throes of an agrarian crisis, even leading to farmers suicides.8 It is also important to consider how public sector R&D institutions of the GR era can be revamped to sustain smallholder dynamism through a GM revolution. This would enable achieving a smooth rural transformation without disruptive consequences.
Development and Energy Policy Lessons from Agricultural Mechanisation in South Asia, ORF Occasional Paper No 19, New Delhi: Observer Research Foundation. Black, R, D Kniveton, R Skeldon, D Coppard, A Murata and K SchmidtVerkerk (2008): Demographics and Climate Change: Future Trends and Their Policy Implications for Migration, T27 Working Paper, Brighton: Development Research Centre, University of Sussex. Chand, Ramesh (2010): Understanding the Next Ag ricultural Transition in the Heartland of Green Revolution in India in Gopal B Thapa, P K Viswa nathan, Jayant K Routray and Mokbul M Ahmad (ed.), Agricultural Transition in Asia: Trajectories and Challenges (Bangkok: Asian Institute of Tech nology), pp 6599. Chand, Ramesh, P A Lakshmi Prasanna and Aruna Singh (2011): Farm Size and Productivity: Under standing the Strengths of Smallholders and Im proving Their Livelihoods, Economic & Political Weekly, 46 (2627), pp 511. Choudhary, Bhagirath and Kadambini Gaur (2010): Bt Cotton in India: A Country Profile, ISAAA Series of Biotech Crop Profiles, Ithaca, NY: International Service for the Acquisition of Agribiotech Appli cations (ISAAA). Chung, Do Kim and Nguyen Viet Dang (2010): Agri cultural Transformation and Policy Responses in Vietnam in Gopal B Thapa, P K Viswanathan, Jayant K Routray and Mokbul M Ahmad (ed.), Agricultural Transition in Asia: Trajectories and Challenges (Bangkok: Asian Institute of Techno logy), pp 14582. Darawuthimaprakorn and Sureeporn Punpuing (2010): Living Arrangements and Elderly De pression: Kanchanaburi DSS Thailand, at http:// paa2010.princeton.edu/ download.aspx? submis sionId=101145, accessed on 7 November 2011. Dogra, Bharat (2007): Landless Farmers Demand a Piece of the Action, IPSNEWS, 30 October, at http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=39846, ac cessed on 3 November 2010. Ellis, F (2005): Small Farms, Livelihood Diversification and RuralUrban Transitions: Strategic Issues in SubSaharan Africa, Paper presented at the Re search Workshop on The Future of Small Farms, Wye College, Kent, 2629 June, at http://www.uea. ac.uk /polopoly_fs/ 1.53421!2005%20future%20 small%20farms.pdf, accessed on 10 November 2011. European Commission (2007): Indias Role in World Agriculture, Monitoring Agritrade Policy (MAP), No 0307, Directorate General for Agri culture and Rural Development, Agricultural Trade Policy Analysis Unit, at http://ec.europa.
2008, there had been more than 1,83,000 suicides by farmers (P Sainath, The Hindu, 12 December 2008), mostly in Maharashtra (72%), Punjab, Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Kerala, Tamil Nadu and Chhattisgarh. A large number of these sui cides occurred in lowrainfall, lowirrigation parts of these states, especially the Bt cotton growing tracts in Maharashtra and Punjab. Stud ies show that compared to other households, sui cideprone households are highly indebted and depend on traders and moneylenders in a big way (Vaidyanathan 2006). For a detailed review of the major causes and outcomes of the agrarian crisis in India, see Reddy and Mishra (2009), Padhi (2009), Barah and Sirohi (2011).
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