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The Need And Prospects For Agrotechnology Transfer

OAR@ICRISAT

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Relation http://oar.icrisat.org/4027/
 
Title The Need And Prospects For Agrotechnology Transfer
 
Creator Swindale, L D
 
Subject Agriculture-Farming, Production, Technology, Economics
 
Description Many people in the world today do not receive
enough food, and the prospects for the future are depressing.
The deficits in staple foods in the developing
countries are likely to be three to four times as
great in 1990 as they are today. There is need for
more intensive use of soils, but there is already
much concern about the deterioration of soils
throug- h excessive and unwise use.
Agricultural research can contribute significantly
to the amelioration of these problems, but because
research costs are high and increasing, efforts are
needed to make agricultural research more efficient.
Many small countries will not have the resources to
make the magnitude of research effort needed to
solve their own problems.
In these dire circumstances, greater efforts need
to be made to transfer agricultural technology from
place to place and country to country. Presently it is
being done mostly by trial and error, but more scientific
approaches are being developed. Models that
simulate biological processes and regression equations
relating crop performance to input and sitefactor
variables have great potential but only limited
success to date, because of the magnitude of environmental
site-factor constraints.
Methods of analogous transfer have much greater
immediate value. They are widely if casually used.
They can be made more useful and more scientific if
they are based upon the stratification of resource
and environmental constraint variables, particularly
of climates and soils.
A methodology for systematic, analogous agrotechnology
transfer now exists in the combination of
soil survey, Soil Taxonomy, the benchmark soils
concept, and the methods of soil survey interpretation.
Some useful scientific proofs have been made
of the transfer methodology over a global soils network,
far exceeding in its geographic coverage the
current possibilities of simulation or statistical methods.
It is easy to see how the number of stations in the
network can be increased through an International
Benchmark Soils Network. The new methodology
opens up the real possibility of technical communication
and cooperation among the developing countries.
It opens up the real possibility of increasing
the efficiency of agronomic research. It opens up the
need for countries to know their soils better and to
strengthen their programs of soil survey interpretation.
It opens up the possibilities for much greater
and more effective use of soils information in the
planning of agricultural development.
An operating network of stations for agrotechnology
transfer will not decrease the need for national
agricultural research, because there is proof that
transfer will not occur in the absence of local research
capacity. Research in developed countries
and in the international agricultural centers assists
the transfer process, but does not replace the need
for national research.
 
Date 1981
 
Type Conference or Workshop Item
PeerReviewed
 
Format application/pdf
 
Language en
 
Rights —
 
Identifier http://oar.icrisat.org/4027/1/CP_038.pdf
Swindale, L D (1981) The Need And Prospects For Agrotechnology Transfer. In: The Benchmark Soils Project Symposium at The International Conference on Soils with Variable Charge, February 16,1981, Massey University, New Zealand.