Sustainable and increased food production

Abstract

In the next decades, Asian farmers—particularly rice growers—will collectively face the biggest challenge of their lives in trying to produce enough food for the very rapidly growing world populations dependent on them. For practitioners of the systems approach, primary attention must focus on how to help those farmers meet this challenge. Any narrow scientific or technical approach aimed just at providing productive and sustainable systems will not provide the answer to the complex question of how to make the very fundamental changes which are required. Scientists, particularly those at the international agricultural research centers such as IRRI and its national partners, accordingly must conceive of and carry out their research in a constantly broader framework. They must take into consideration the whole range of human problems that farmers face, problems which will differ substantially from region to region. Achieving real sustainability that not only produces enough food for the present, and protects the key assets for the future (i.e. water and particularly soil), but also does this without disrupting the age-old and usually healthy rhythms of rural life is indeed a mighty challenge. Although the adaptation of systems that scientists design to meet the needs of farmers in the thousands of different ecological and economic circumstances is a formidable challenge at the micro level, there is an even more daunting task still that requires the serious participation of scientists, i.e. devising country-specific strategies for attaining agricultural sustainability. Such strategies must address economic, political, environmental and social conditions and objectives. They can take many forms and be of varying sophistication, but must be based on a realistic analysis of such diverse aspects as trade, science, and demographics. Forming the partnerships that can facilitate the tough political decisions required from national leaders and international supporters must become one of the highest priorities of all those concerned with sustainable increases in food production.