ABSTRACT
Low productivity in agriculture is one of the major causes of poverty, food insecurity, and malnutrition in developing countries, where agriculture is the driving force for broadbased economic growth. By the year 2020, the world population will exceed 7.5 billion. Nearly 1.2 billion people live in a state of absolute poverty [Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), 1999; Pinstrup-Andersen and Cohen, 2000]. The availability of land for food production is decreasing over time, and such a decrease is expected to be much greater in the developing than in the developed countries. Mexico, Eucador, Nigeria, and Ethiopia had a per-capita cropland availability of 0.25 ha in 1990 compared to 0.10 ha in Egypt, Kenya, Bangladesh, Vietnam, and China. By 2025, per-capita cropland availability will be below 0.10 ha in countries such as Peru, Tanzania, Pakistan, Indonesia, and Philippines (Myers, 1999). Such a decrease in availability of cropland will have major implications for food security. The fate of small farm families in the short term will depend on precision agriculture, which involves the use of right inputs at the right time. Therefore, accelerated public investments are needed to facilitate agricultural growth through high-yielding varieties resistant to biotic and abiotic stresses, environmentally friendly production technology, availability of reasonably priced inputs, dissemination of information, improved infrastructure and markets, primary education, and health care. These investments need to be supported by good governance and an environment friendly policy for sustainable management of natural resources.
