Agricultural development and modernization in South Asia

Abstract

Agriculture, natural resources, and the nutrition landscape in South Asia (SA) are unique. As in other Asian regions, SA's agriculture is largely smallholder based and continues to employ a large share of the workforce, compared with Latin America. Compared with Africa south of the Sahara (SSA), agricultural modernization and intensification in SA have progressed more substantially. However, compared with East Asia (that is, Northeast and Southeast Asia), the speed of agricultural transformation has remained slower in terms of the exit of labor from farming, despite comparable intensification levels. The region is still home to almost 300 million of the poor, a majority of whom live in rural areas, engaging in agriculture. SA is also one of the regions with the scarcest natural resource endowments per capita, including water resources.1 Finally, the multiple burden of malnutrition persists, as the region remains one of the largest contributors to global undernutrition, while simultaneously overnutrition continues to emerge (Meenaksh 2016). Therefore, in SA, understanding the evolution and implications of agricultural development is important particularly in the context of agricultural transformation, natural resource management, poverty, and food/nutrition security improvement.Research in the agricultural economics field has shed important light on various aspects of agricultural development patterns in the last few decades in the region, ranging from productivity growth, changes in resource endowments, intensification/modernization, urbanization and nutritional transition, and their drivers as well as inhibitors. The contribution of this chapter is to provide, through the review of productivity growth patterns and seminal papers in the literature, narratives of how these aspects may be interconnected in terms of their collective implications for the challenges and opportunities of future agricultural development in SA.1 Renewable internal freshwater per capita in SA is greater than that of only the Middle East and North Africa and is a fraction of the resources of East Asia and the Pacific, SSA, or Latin America (World Bank 2018).Chapter 4 TAbLE 4.1 Estimates of land and labor productivity and endowments in agriculture, South Asian countries, 1960s-2010s Country 1960s 1970s 1980s 1990s 2000s 2010sLabor productivity (Y/L

Agricultural, Economic, and Human Development: Joint Research Contributions of Japan and International Food Policy Research Institute

“…Furthermore, in a recent book edited by Otsuka & Fan (2021) aimed at updating Hayami & Ruttan (1985), IFPRI-JR highlighted issues for global agricultural development that have emerged in the last few decades. Specifically, Yamauchi et al (2021) and Takeshima et al (2021) synthesized recent trends and issues for Northeast/ Southeast Asia and South Asia, respectively, focusing especially on changes in factor endowment-induced innovation, modernization of agrifood systems, as well as growing linkages with the rural nonfarm sector.…”