Rethinking Agriculture for New Opportunities 4195 This is discussed by Chambers (1997, especially p47). While rice, wheat and maize have received
the lion’s share of research funding, at least four of the international agricultural research centres
in the CGIAR system have some of these other staple crops as a central part of their mandates.
There are also centres now working on animals, agroforestry and aquaculture, though the centre
on horticulture has yet to become part of the system (for political reasons). The centres responsi-
ble for working on rice (International Rice Research Institute – IRRI) and wheat and maize
(International Centre for the Improvement of Wheat and Maize – CIMMYT) are increasingly
undertaking research that relates these staples to the growing of other crops.
6 As with most generalizations, this has some exceptions. Some perennial crops make heavy demands
on soil nutrients, and others such as pineapples can require heavy agrochemical applications. On
the general value of perennials in cropping systems, see Piper (1994) and Piper and Kulakow
(1994).
7 Managed fallows have been largely ignored in the existing agricultural literature. To remedy this
lack, a South-East Asian regional workshop on intensification of farming systems was held in
Bogor, Indonesia, in June 1997, with over 80 papers prepared for this collaborative effort of
ICRAF, CIIFAD, the International Development Research Centre of Canada and the Ford Foun-
dation. Documentation of these resource management systems, mostly developed by farmers, is
published in Cairns (2000).
8 The German and Dutch words for agriculture, Landbau and Landbouw, are more congenial to a
three-dimensional conception of agriculture as they mean land-building.
9 ‘Mechanization’ as used here refers to tractorization. Other forms of mechanization such as water
pumps can be very valuable for increasing production, but they are not necessarily linked to
monocropping in the way that tractorization is.
10 Those who can afford tractors usually own the best-quality land, making their practice of agricul-
ture appear better.
11 When the labour power available for agricultural production is a constraint in some countries,
this often reflects the fact that the low prices paid for agricultural commodities are keeping rural
wage rates correspondingly low, influenced by urban-biased national policies and/or agricultural
production subsidies in industrialized countries. National policies in developing countries have
generally favoured urban consumers over rural producers, leading to low prices for food. Low
food prices also reflect the extent of poverty, which depresses the purchasing power of the poor
who have need for more food but do not have the means (effective demand) with which to acquire
it. In such situations, low wages and low labour productivity for agriculture do not reflect either
a true equilibrium or an efficient use of resources in terms of meeting human needs.
12 See Steiner (1982). That monocrop yields, being single, are easier to measure has contributed to
the popularity of monocropping as a subject for agricultural research and extension. More effort
is required to assess polycropping precisely. In the 1980s a world census of agriculture by the UN
FAO specifically ignored all crop mixtures, deciding to record crops only as monocultures (Cham-
bers, 1997, p95).
13 This has been seen and documented most dramatically in Indonesia, where an IPM programme
started with FAO assistance showed that rice yields would not decline, and in some instances
increased, when use of chemicals was drastically cut back (more than 50 per cent), and in some
cases terminated where cultural practices were changed. The key was giving farmers effective
hands-on training in agroecosystem management, so that they began to diagnose problems them-
selves and experiment with solutions, developing alternatives to chemical dependence (Oka,
1997). Widespread use of chemicals had increased the problem of pest attacks on rice, inducing
build-up of pesticide resistance in pest populations at the same time that it reduced the popula-
tion of spiders and other ‘beneficials’ that prey on pests.
14 Recent research on rice IPM has found that maintaining the populations of ‘neutral’ insects in rice
paddies, insects that are neither pests nor beneficials, is important. Their presence can sustain the
populations of beneficials when pests have been eliminated, keeping these populations vigorous