Prospects of shrubs in rainfed regiions of southern peninsular India

Abstract

The importance of rainfed agriculture varies regionally but produces most food for poor communities in developing countries. In subSaharan Africa more than 95% of the farmed land is rainfed, while the corresponding figure for Latin America is almost 90%, for South Asia about 60%, for East Asia 65% and for the Near East and North Africa 75% (FAOSTAT, 2005). Most countries in the world depend primarily on rainfed agriculture for their grain food. Despite large strides made in improving productivity and environmental conditions in many developing countries, a great number of poor families in Africa and Asia still face poverty, hunger, food insecurity and malnutrition where rainfed agriculture is the main agricultural activity. These problems are exacerbated by adverse biophysical growing conditions and the poor socioeconomic infrastructure in many areas in the semi-arid tropics (SAT). The SAT is the home to 38% of the developing countries’ poor, 75% of whom live in rural areas. Over 45% of the world’s hungry and more than 70% of its malnourished children live in the SAT. Even with growing urbanization, globalization and better governance in Africa and Asia, hunger, poverty and vulnerability of livelihoods to natural © CAB International 2009. Rainfed Agriculture: Unlocking the Potential (eds S.P. Wani et al.) 1 and other disasters will continue to be greatest in the rural SAT. These challenges are complicated by climatic variability, the risk of climate change, population growth, health pandemics (AIDS, malaria), degrading natural resource base, poor infrastructure and changing patterns of demand and production (Ryan and Spencer, 2001). The majority of poor in developing countries live in rural areas; their livelihoods depend on agriculture and overexploitation of the natural resource base, pushing them into a downward spiral of poverty. The importance of rainfed sources of food weighs disproportionately on women, given that approximately 70% of the world’s poor are women (WHO, 2000). Agriculture plays a key role for economic development (World Bank, 2005) and poverty reduction (Irz and Roe, 2000), with evidence indicating that every 1% increase in agricultural yields translates to a 0.6–1.2% decrease in the percentage of absolute poor (Thirtle et al., 2002). On average for sub-Saharan Africa, agriculture accounts for 35% of gross domestic product (GDP) and employs 70% of the population (World Bank, 2000), while more than 95% of the agricultural area is rainfed (FAOSTAT, 2005), as elaborated in Box 1.1. Agriculture will continue to be the backbone of economies in Africa and South Asia in the foreseeable future. As most of the SAT poor are farmers and landless labourers, strategies for reducing poverty, hunger and malnutrition should be driven primarily by the needs of the rural poor, and should aim to build and diversify their livelihood sources. Substantial gains in land, water and labour productivity as well as better management of natural resources are essential to reverse the downward spiral of poverty and environmental degradation. Apart from the problems of equity, poverty and sustainability – and hence, the need for greater investment in SAT areas – studies have shown that research and development (R&D) investments in less-favoured semi-arid environments could provide high marginal payoffs in terms of generating new sources of economic growth. Renewed effort and innovative R&D strategies are needed to address these challenges, such as integrated natural resource management (INRM), which has been evolving within the 15 international agricultural research centres (IARC) of the Consultative Group for International Agricultural Research (CGIAR). The basic role of the 15 IARCs is to develop innovations for improving agricultural productivity and natural resource management (NRM) for addressing the problems of poverty, food insecurity and environmental degradation in developing countries. This effort has generated multiple and sizeable benefits (welfare, equity, environmental) (Kassam et al., 2004). But much remains to be done in subSaharan Africa and less-favoured areas of South Asia.