Proceedings of the International Symposium on Systems Approaches for Agricultural Development, 2-6 December 1991, Bangkok, Thailand

For nearly a century, scientific advances have fueled progress in U.S. agriculture to enable American producers to deliver safe and abundant food domestically and provide a trade surplus in bulk and high-value agricultural commodities and foods. Today, the U.S. food and agricultural enterprise faces formidable challenges that will test its long-term sustainability, competitiveness, and resilience. On its current path, future productivity in the U.S. agricultural system is likely to come with trade-offs. The success of agriculture is tied to natural systems, and these systems are showing signs of stress, even more so with the change in climate. More than a third of the food produced is unconsumed, an unacceptable loss of food and nutrients at a time of heightened global food demand. Increased food animal production to meet greater demand will generate more greenhouse gas emissions and excess animal waste. The U.S. food supply is generally secure, but is not immune to the costly and deadly shocks of continuing outbreaks of food-borne illness or to the constant threat of pests and pathogens to crops, livestock, and poultry. U.S. farmers and producers are at the front lines and will need more tools to manage the pressures they face. Science Breakthroughs to Advance Food and Agricultural Research by 2030 identifies innovative, emerging scientific advances for making the U.S. food and agricultural system more efficient, resilient, and sustainable. This report explores the availability of relatively new scientific developments across all disciplines that could accelerate progress toward these goals. It identifies the most promising scientific breakthroughs that could have the greatest positive impact on food and agriculture, and that are possible to achieve in the next decade (by 2030).

The symposium In the next decades, agriculture will have to cope with an ever-increasing demand for food and raw basic materials on the one hand, and with the necessity to use resources without further degrading or exhausting the environment on the other hand, and all this within a dynamic framework of social and economic conditions. Intensification, sustainability, optimizing scarce resources, and climate change are among the key issues. Organized thinking about future farming requires forecasting of consequences of alternative ways to farm and to develop agriculture. The complexity of the problems calls for a systematic approach in which many disciplines are integrated. Systems thinking and systems simulation are therefore indispensable tools for such endeavours. About 150 scientists and senior research leaders participated in the symposium 'Systems Approaches for Agricultural Development' (SAAD) at the Asian Institute of Technology (AIT), Bangkok, Thailand, in December 1991. The symposium had the following objectives: - to review the status of systems research and modeling in agriculture, with special reference to evaluating their efficacy and efficiency in achieving research goals, and to their application in developing countries; - to promote international cooperation in modeling, and increase awareness of systems research and simulation. The symposium consisted of plenary sessions with reviews of major areas in systems approaches in agriculture, plus presentations in two concurrent sessions on technical topics of systems research. Subjects of studies were from tropical and temperate countries.

Agricultural Systems, Second Edition, is a comprehensive text for developing sustainable farming systems. It presents a synthetic overview of the emerging area of agroecology applications to transforming farming systems and supporting rural innovation, with particular emphasis on how research can be harnessed for sustainable agriculture. The inclusion of research theory and examples using the principles of cropping system design allows students to gain a unique understanding of the technical, biological, ecological, economic and sociological aspects of farming systems science for rural livelihoods. This book explores topics such as: re-inventing farming systems; principles and practice of agroecology; agricultural change and low-input technology; ecologically-based nutrient management; participatory breeding for developing improved and relevant crops; participatory livestock research for development; gender and agrarian inequality at the local scale; the nature of agricultural innovation; and outreach to support rural innovation. The extensive coverage of subjects is complemented with integrated references and a companion website, making this book essential reading for courses in international agricultural systems and management, sustainable agricultural management, and cropping systems. This book will be a valuable resource for students of agricultural science, environmental engineering, and rural planning; researchers and scientists in agricultural development agencies; and practitioners of agricultural development in government extension programs, development agencies, and NGOs. - Provides students with an enhanced understanding of how research can be harnessed for sustainable agriculture - Incorporates social, biological, chemical, and geographical aspects important to agroecology - Addresses social and development issues related to farming systems

An innovation system can be defined as a network of organizations, enterprises, and individuals demanding and supplying knowledge and bringing it into a social and economic use. This book's primary aim, therefore, is to focus on the largely unexplored operational aspects of the innvoation systems concept and to explore its potential for agriculture. 'Enhancing Agricultural Innovation' evaluates real-world innovation systems and assesses the usefulness of the concept in guiding investments to support knowledge-intensive, sustainable agricultural development. A typology of innovation systems is developed; strategies to guide investments for strengthening innovation capacity are drawn up; and concrete interventions options defined. In its conclusions, the book emphasizes the importance of mechanisms for collaboration and interaction. Intermediary organizations, innovation councils, farmer organizations, and other means to strengthen collaboration are central to creating the exchange of knowledge and perspectives that will convert knowledge into valuable new social and economic products and services.

The first premise of this book is that farmers need access to options for improving their situation. In agricultural terms, these options might be manage ment alternatives or different crops to grow, that can stabilize or increase household income, that reduce soil degradation and dependence on off-farm inputs, or that exploit local market opportunities. Farmers need a facilitating environment, in which affordable credit is available if needed, in which policies are conducive to judicious management of natural resources, and in which costs and prices of production are stable. Another key ingredient of this facilitating environment is information: an understanding of which options are viable, how these operate at the farm level, and what their impact may be on the things that farmers perceive as being important. The second premise is that systems analysis and simulation have an impor tant role to play in fostering this understanding of options, traditional field experimentation being time-consuming and costly. This book summarizes the activities of the International Benchmark Sites Network for Agrotechnology Transfer (IBSNAT) project, an international initiative funded by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID). IBSNAT was an attempt to demonstrate the effectiveness of understanding options through systems analysis and simulation for the ultimate benefit of farm households in the tropics and subtropics. The idea for the book was first suggested at one of the last IBSNAT group meetings held at the University of Hawaii in 1993.