Definition of Agricultural Development
Agricultural
development is a multi-sectional activity that support and promote positive
change in the rural and urban areas. However, the main objectives of
agricultural development are the improvement of material and social welfare of
the people.
Agriculture
plays a key role in food security and economic development. However, most of
the world’s population in rural areas depends directly or indirectly on
agriculture for their livelihoods. Yet as the world’s population increases and
migration to towns and cities intensifies, so the proportion of people not
producing food will grow.
Agricultural
development is a multi-sectional activity that support and promote positive change
in the rural and urban areas. However, the main objectives of agricultural
development are the improvement of material and social welfare of the people.
Therefore,
agricultural development is seen as synonymous with rural development, the two
terms are different but intrinsically related. Agricultural development is a
part of rural development; rural areas cannot develop without its agriculture
being developed because about 90% of the rural dwellers are engaged in
agricultural practices as their major source of income.
Therefore,
agricultural development is seen as synonymous with rural development, the two
terms are different but intrinsically related. Agricultural development is a
part of rural development; rural areas cannot develop without its agriculture
being developed because about 90% of the rural dwellers are engaged in
agricultural practices as their major source of income.
Nigeria as a country seeks to become a leading economy in Africa and a major player in the world‘s economic and political affairs of which their 20-20-20 plan is their guideline.
To become a developed nation, Nigeria needs to speed up its
economic growth by focusing on vital economic sectors like education, energy,
agriculture and manufacturing. At this point in Nigeria‘s development, the best
approach is to focus on the agricultural sector. By focusing on agricultural
development, Nigeria can speed up its economic growth in the coming decade.
Agricultural
development can also address gender disparities. In Sub-Saharan Africa and
South Asia, women are vital contributors to farm work, but because they have
less access to improved seeds, better techniques and technologies, and markets,
yields on their plots are typically 20 to 40 percent lower than on plots farmed
by men. Addressing this gap can help households become more productive and
reduce malnutrition within poor families. Economic growth is seen as a long
term rises in the capacity to supply increasingly diverse economic goods to its
population.
It
also entails a sustainable rise in national output with a manifestation of
economic growth. Therefore, the role of agriculture in transforming both the
social and economic framework of an economy cannot be over-emphasized. It has
been the source of gainful employment from which the nation can feed its
teeming population, providing the nation‘s industries with local raw materials
and as a reliable source of government revenue.
A
full developed economy, especially in agricultural sector, means an increase in
the production of export crops with an improvement in the quantity and grades
of such export crops. However, for a country to industrialize, agricultural
output will be said to have acquired growth if agriculture can supply enough
materials to agro-allied industries.
In
the light of this, Reynolds in Research opined that agricultural development
can promote economic development of underdeveloped countries in four different
ways:
i.
By increasing the supply of food available for domestic consumption and release
labour needed for industrial employment.
ii.
By enlarging the size of the domestic market for the manufacturing sector.
iii.
By increasing the supply of domestic saving.
iv.
By providing foreign exchange earned by the agricultural exports.
Therefore,
creating a sustainable agricultural development path means improving the
quality of life in rural areas, ensuring enough food for present and future
generations and generating sufficient income for farmers.
Supporting
sustainable agricultural development also involves ensuring and maintaining
productive capacity for the future and increasing productivity without damaging
the environment or jeopardizing natural resources.
In
addition, it requires respect for and recognition of local knowledge and local
management of natural resources, and efforts to promote the capabilities of
current generations without compromising the prospects of future ones.
Consequently,
economic and environmental sustainability, adequate farmer’s income, productive
capacity for the future, improved food security and social sustainability are
important elements of developing countries agricultural development.
Thus,
when farmers grow more food and earn more income, they are able to feed their families,
send their children to school, provide for their family‘s health, and invest in
their farms and this makes their communities economically stronger and more
stable for agricultural development.
The main aim of agricultural development is the improvement of material and social welfare of the people.
Therefore, it is often seen as integrated approach to
improving the environment and wellbeing of the people of the community.
Read:15 Top Importance of Agriculture in Developing Countries
The Theories and Models of Agricultural Development
The
first step in the process of agricultural development is to abandon the view of
agriculture in pre-modern or traditional societies as essential static.
However,
the problem of agricultural development is not that of transforming a static
agricultural sector into a modern dynamic sector, but of accelerating the rate
of growth of agricultural output and productivity consistent with the growth of
other sectors of a modernizing economy.
Therefore,
any attempt to embrace a meaningful perspective on the process of agricultural
development must abandon the view of agriculture in pre-modern or traditional
society as essential static.
Hence,
a theory of agricultural development should provide insights into the dynamics
of agricultural growth, either into the changing sources of growth, in
economies ranging from those in which output is growing at a rate of 1.0% or
less to those in which agricultural output is growing at an annual rate of 4.0%
or more.
There
are about five (5) general models in the literature on agricultural
development:
1. The
conservation model
2. The
urban-industrial impact model
3. The
diffusion model
4. The
high-pay off input model
5. The
frontier model
1. The Conservation Model
The
conservation model of agricultural development evolved from the advances in
crop and livestock husbandry associated with the English agricultural
revolution and the concepts of soil exhaustion suggested by the early German
soil scientists. It was reinforced by the concept in the English classical
school of economics of diminishing returns to labour and capital applied to
land and labour.
The conservation model emphasized the
evolution of a sequence of increasingly complex land- and labour-intensive
cropping systems, the production and use of organic manures, and
labour-intensive capital formation in the form of physical facilities to more
effectively utilize land and water resources.
2. The Urban-Industrial
Impact Model
The
conservation model stands in sharp contrast to models in which geographic
differences in the level and rate of economic development are primarily
associated with urban-industrial development. Initially, the urban-industrial
impact model was formulated (by von Thunen) to explain geographic variations in
the intensity of farming systems and in the productivity of labour in an
industrializing society.
Later
it was extended by T. W. Schultz to explain the more effective performance of
the factor and product markets linking the agricultural and non-agricultural
sectors in regions characterized by rapid urban-industrial development.
The
model has been tested extensively in the United States but has received only
limited attention in the less developed world.
Read: History of Agricultural Development Policies in Nigeria
3. The Diffusion Model
The
diffusion of better husbandry practices was a major source of productivity
growth even in pre-modern societies. The diffusion approach to agricultural
development rests on the empirical observation of substantial differences in
land and labour productivity among farmers and regions. The route to
agricultural development, in this view, is through more effective dissemination
of technical knowledge and a narrowing of the dispersion of productivity among
farmers and among regions.
The
diffusion model of agricultural development has provided the major intellectual
foundation for much of the research and extension efforts in farm management
and production economics since the emergence, in the last half of the
nineteenth century, of agricultural economics as a separate sub-discipline
linking the agricultural sciences and economics.
The
developments that led to the establishment of active programmes of farm
management research and extension occurred at a time when experiment-station
research was making only a modest contribution to agricultural productivity
growth.
A
further contribution to the effective diffusion of known technology was
provided by the research of rural sociologists on the diffusion process. Models
were developed emphasizing the relationship between diffusion rates and the
personality characteristics and educational accomplishments of farm operators.
The
insights into the dynamics of the diffusion process, when coupled with the
observation of wide agricultural productivity gaps among developed and less
developed countries and a presumption of inefficient resource allocation among
"irrational tradition-bound" peasants, produced an extension bias in
the choice of agricultural development strategy during the 1950s. The
limitations of the diffusion model as a foundation for the design of
agricultural development policies became increasingly apparent as technical assistance
and community development programmes, based explicitly or implicitly on the
diffusion model, failed to generate either rapid modernization of traditional
farms or rapid growth in agricultural output.
4. The High Payoff Input Model
The
inadequacy of policies based on the conservation, urban-industrial impact, and
diffusion models led, in the 1960s, to a new perspective that the key to
transforming a traditional agricultural sector into a productive source of
economic growth is investment designed to make modern high payoff inputs
available to farmers in poor countries. Peasants, in traditional agricultural
systems, were viewed as rational, efficient resource allocators.
They
remained poor because, in most poor countries, there were only limited technical
and economic opportunities to which they could respond.
The
new, high payoff inputs, as identified by Schultz, can be classified into three
categories:
(a)
The capacity of public and private sector research institutions to produce new
technical knowledge; (b) The capacity of the industrial sector to develop,
produce, and market new technical inputs
(c)
The capacity of farmers to acquire new knowledge and use new inputs
effectively.
The
enthusiasm with which the high payoff input model has been accepted and
translated into an economic doctrine has been due in substantial part to the
success of efforts to develop new high-productivity grain varieties suitable
for the tropics.
New high-yielding wheat and corn varieties were developed in Mexico, beginning in the 1950s, and new high-yielding rice varieties in the Philippines in the 1960s. These varieties were highly responsive to industrial inputs, such as fertilizer and other chemicals, and to more effective soil and water management.
The high returns associated with the adoption of the new varieties
and the associated technical inputs and management practices have led to rapid
diffusion of the new varieties among farmers in several countries in Asia,
Africa, and Latin America.
The
impact on farm production and income has been sufficiently dramatic to be
heralded as a "green revolution." The significance of the high payoff
input model is that policies based on the model appear capable of generating a
sufficiently high rate of agricultural growth to provide a basis for overall
economic development consistent with modern population and income growth
requirements.
As
interpreted generally, the model is sufficiently inclusive to embrace the
central concepts of the conservation, urban-industrial impact, and diffusion
models of agricultural development.
The
unique implications of the model for agricultural development policy are the
emphasis placed on accelerating the process of development and propagation of
new inputs or techniques through public investment in scientific research and
education. The high payoff input model, as developed by Schultz, remains
incomplete as a theory of agricultural development, however.
Typically,
education and research are public goods not traded through the market place.
The mechanism by which resources are allocated among education, research, and
other alternative public and private sector economic activities is not fully
incorporated into the Schultz model.
The
model does treat investment in research as the source of new high-payoff
techniques. It does not explain how economic conditions induce the development
and adaption of an efficient set of technologies for a particular society. Nor
does it attempt to specify the processes by which factor and product price
relationships induce investment in research in a particular direction.
5. The Frontier Model
The history expansion of the area cultivated or grazed in the western countries has represented the main way of increasing agricultural production.
However, the
most dramatic example in western history was the opening up or creation of the
new continents - North and South America and Australia - to European settlement
during the 18th and 19th centuries.
These countries of the new continents became increasingly important sources of food and agricultural raw materials for the metropolitan countries of the Western Europe.
In earlier times, similar processes had proceeded, though at a less
dramatic pace, in the peasant and village economies of Europe, Asia and Africa.
Intensification
of land use in existing villages was followed by pioneer settlement, the
establishment of new villages and the opening up of forest or jungle were a
series of successive change from Neolithic forest fallow to system of shifting
cultivation on bush and grass land fallowed first by short-fallow systems and
in recent years by annual cropping. As regard to the above, where soil
conditions were favorable, as in the great river basins and plains, the new
villages gradually intensified their systems of cultivation.
While
where soil resources were poor, as in many of the hill and upland areas, new
areas were opened up to shifting cultivation or to nomadic grazing. As a result
of rapid population growth, the model did not last; the limits to the frontier
model were quickly reached.
Crop
yields were typically low- measured in terms of output per unit of seed rather
than per unit of crop area. Output per hectare and per man hour tended to
decline - except in the Delta areas such as in Egypt and South Asia, and the
wet rice area of East Asia.
In
some areas, the result was to worsen the wretched conditions of the peasantry
while there are relatively few remaining areas of the world where development
along the lines of the frontier model will represent an efficient source of
growth during the last quarter of the 20th century.
The
1960s saw the closing of the frontier‖ in most areas of South East Asia, in
Latin America and Africa, the opening up of new lands awaits the development of
technologies for all control of pests and diseases (such as the Tse-tse fly in
Africa) or for the relation and maintenance of productivity of problem soil.
Read: Problems of Agriculture in Developing Countries
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