Agricultural Transition In Asia

Over the past few decades, some countries in Asia have been more successful than others in addressing poverty and malnutrition. The key question is what policies, strategies, legislation and institutional arrangements have led to a transformed agricultural sector, effectively contributing to poverty alleviation and addressing malnutrition. The great majority of national policymakers within and outside the Asia-Pacific region are keen to understand the causes of agricultural development and transformation in successful countries in Asia. A large number of studies have been conducted and some of them link specific public policies and interventions to successful agricultural transformation. However, there seems to be lack of focus on the policy, legislative and institutional environments that have enabled or impeded agricultural transformation in Asia. National policymakers are likely to benefit significantly from adequate and convincing information on successful and relevant experiences in successful transformation. Countries are interested in what their neighbours and peers have done, and why some have achieved impressive results. The main purpose of this study is to take stock of public sector experiences in facilitating and enabling agricultural transformation in selected countries in Asia. The study focuses on key public sector interventions, in particular policies, legislation and institutional innovations, because these areas have so far not been adequately researched.

Over the past few decades, the agricultural sector of Southeast Asia has experienced robust growth and undergone a structural transformation albeit differentially across the countries in the region. The main aims of this paper are to understand the process of transformation and sources of growth in agriculture in the broader context of economy-wide changes in domestic and international markets, and to suggest technological, institutional and policy measures for faster, efficient and sustainable growth. Our findings show faster growth in agriculture in comparatively low-income countries, with technological change, area expansion and diversification being the main drivers. On the other hand, agricultural growth in high-income countries has been relatively slow, and driven by price increases, mainly of the export-oriented commercial crops, such as oil-palm, rubber and coconut; and also, by area expansion. In view of the fixed supply of land and high volatility in global food prices, area and price driven growth is unlikely to sustain in the long-run. For efficient, sustainable and inclusive growth, the recourse has to be with exploiting potential of (i) existing and frontier technologies, by investing more in agricultural research and extension systems, and (ii) diversification of production portfolio towards higher-value food commodities by strengthening institutions that link farmers to remunerative markets; and investing in post-harvest infrastructure for food processing.

This book extends current research on the political economy of modern China, with particular regard to agricultural development and its role in economic transition. It uses Neoclassical principles to re-interpret agricultural growth and technological change under complex market institutions with empirical studies on China and selected East Asian economies. The text also questions how technological advances in China contribute to the Great Divergence debate. Through a comparative analysis of agricultural technical changes in the planting of rice paddies in Japan, Taiwan and China, Du finds that different market institutions and structures have given rise to considerable diversity of agricultural change between different economies in terms of the nature, timing and duration of technological transition. Such diversification has, in turn, affected the trajectories of agricultural and wider economic growth. Here, Du reflects on the nature of contemporary Chinese economic development and extends observations on agricultural transition to the entirety of Asia, finding that the nature, timing, and time-span of agriculture technology transitions have varied considerably across different economies.

Despite the importance of Southeast Asia (SEA) region in the world for economy and agriculture, and despite reported evidence of the modernization of various aspects of the agricultural sector, the information has not been compiled in ways that provides more representative insights of the regions, as well as chronological, dynamic perspectives across different aspects of the overall agricultural developments. This report partly fills this knowledge gap by summarizing the key characteristics in SEA region of the agricultural development, as well as changes in related outcomes, such as nutrition, natural resource endowments, and the labor movement into non-farm economies. In doing so, the report gathers secondary cross-country data on key aspects of the agricultural modernization and diversification. Overall, the SEA region has seen a relatively fast movement of labor out of the agricultural sector into non-farm sectors including trade, restaurants and hotel industries in the last few decades, leading to higher labor productivity growth than land productivity growth. Despite the important roles of trade, the agricultural production within the region and in each country continues to account for important sources of food and nutrition. The modern production technologies and inputs have spread constantly within the region, but with considerable time lags across countries. The growth of vegetable oils and aquaculture production have been considerable, and contrast with South Asia (SA)where similar patterns have been observed for vegetables and milk production. The public sector has played important roles in agricultural research and development (R&D)on genetic improvements, and infrastructure development, while keeping the nominal assistance to the sector through market interventions to a relatively modest level, which has been accompanied by the significant growth of the private-sector participation in the provisions of inputs, services and agricultural finance. The agricultural modernization in SEA region has, however, been also associated with some negative outcomes, including continued degradation of natural resources like water and forest areas in which SEA has been relatively rich historically, and gradual increases in certain types of malnutrition including overweight and diabetes.

More than the Soil focuses on the social, cultural, economic and technological processes that have transformed rural areas of Southeast Asia. The underlying premise is that rural lives and livelihoods in this region have undergone fundamental change. No longer can we assume that rural livelihoods are founded on agriculture; nor can we assume that people envisage their futures in terms of farming. The inter-penetration of the rural and urban, and the degree to which rural people migrate between rural and urban areas, and shift from agriculture to non-agriculture, raises fundamental questions about how we conceptualise the rural Southeast Asia and the households to be found there.

This book presents an extensive account of the green revolution's effect on the performance of Asian agriculture over the past two decades, as well as the second-generation problems that the green revolution is now experiencing.