IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/fpr/ifprid/709.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Agricultural technology choices for poor farmers in less-favored areas of South and East Asia

Author

Listed:
  • Pender, John

Abstract

"During the past several decades dramatic improvement has occurred in agricultural productivity and livelihoods in South and East Asia, stimulated by the Green Revolution and supported by several other factors. Nevertheless, hundreds of millions of rural people in less-favored environments of this region still live in poverty and received limited benefit from the Green Revolution. To address these problems, alternative technological approaches to the conventional Green Revolution technologies are being advocated to address the problems of poor farmers in less-favored areas of Asia, including low external input and sustainable agricultural approaches, organic agriculture and biotechnology. This paper reviews the literature on agricultural technology options in South and East Asia, drawing conclusions concerning technology strategies to reduce poverty among poor farmers in less-favored areas of this region. Among the main conclusions of the review are the following: 1. There is no technology approach that will work in all of the diverse circumstances of South and East Asia. 2. It is difficult, but not impossible, to identify and promote technologies that will substantially improve the livelihoods of poor people in less-favored areas. 3. Key requirements for technologies to be taken up by farmers and to have a substantial impact on reducing poverty are that the technology is profitable in a relatively short period of time; does not substantially increase risks; and is consistent with farmers' endowments of knowledge, management skill, land, labor, and other assets. 4. New technologies, by themselves, are not sufficient to bring about sustainable rural development and elimination of rural poverty, although they can have a major impact. Effective institutions and a stable and supportive policy environment are also critical. 5. Effective farmers' organizations accountable to poor farmers are a critical need for the success of all technologies in reaching the poor. Such organizations are needed to reduce the costs and improve the effectiveness of technical assistance efforts for all technologies, and are particularly important for technologies that require effective collective action and for increasing smallholders' access to markets for organic and other high value products. 6. Improved methods of technology dissemination are needed to reach poor farmers in less-favored areas. Top down technology transfer approaches that worked well with simple technology packages do not work as well with complex technologies that have to be adapted to local circumstances based on agro-ecological principles and local conditions. These lessons should give pause to advocates one particular technological approach as the solution for poor farmers in less favored environments of Asia and elsewhere. What farmers need are not technology dogmas but options that can work in their context, combining what is useful from different approaches. This requires a pragmatic approach to learning what works well where and why. In pursuit of such pragmatic options for farmers, research and development programs should not ignore the potentials of traditional farming practices or intensive Green Revolution type technologies, which are well suited to farmers' needs in many contexts." - from authors' abstract.

Suggested Citation

  • Pender, John, 2007. "Agricultural technology choices for poor farmers in less-favored areas of South and East Asia," IFPRI discussion papers 709, International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI).
  • Handle: RePEc:fpr:ifprid:709
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.ifpri.org/cdmref/p15738coll2/id/40373/filename/40374.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Veeshan Rayamajhee & Wenmei Guo & Alok K. Bohara, 2021. "The Impact of Climate Change on Rice Production in Nepal," Economics of Disasters and Climate Change, Springer, vol. 5(1), pages 111-134, April.
    2. Shijun Ding & Laura Meriluoto & W. Robert Reed & Daoyun Tao & Haitao Wu, 2010. "The Impact of Agricultural Technology Adoption of Income Inequality in Rural China," Working Papers in Economics 10/41, University of Canterbury, Department of Economics and Finance.
    3. Chitralada Chaiya & Sikandar Sikandar & Pichate Pinthong & Shahab E. Saqib & Niaz Ali, 2023. "The Impact of Formal Agricultural Credit on Farm Productivity and Its Utilization in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Pakistan," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 15(2), pages 1-14, January.
    4. Malek, Mohammad Abdul & Gatzweiler, Franz W. & Von Braun, Joachim, 2017. "Identifying technology innovations for marginalized smallholders-A conceptual approach," Technology in Society, Elsevier, vol. 49(C), pages 48-56.
    5. Malek, Mohammad Abdul & Hossain, Md. Amzad & Saha, Ratnajit & Gatzweiler, Franz W., 2013. "Mapping marginality hotspots and agricultural potentials in Bangladesh," Working Papers 154065, University of Bonn, Center for Development Research (ZEF).

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:fpr:ifprid:709. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/ifprius.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.