The disequilibrium of world agriculture has been worsening as manifested by increasing food deficit in developing economies in contrast with increasing surplus in developed economies. Underlying this disequilibrium are policies determined by the three different agricultural problems confronted by countries depending on their different development stages. "Agricultural problem" is defined here as the problem of an overriding concern to policymakers with respect to designing and implementing policies for agriculture as part of policies to promote national economies in their own countries. As such, it may well be called the "basic problem in determining agricultural policies".
Developing countries have traditionally been antagonistic to the introduction of strengthened Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) systems. This is the case in spite of the obvious fact that virtually all Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) market economies have "strong" IPR systems, and that they have full "reciprocity" in recognizing the IPRs of other OECD countries. That is, each OECD country offers "national treatment" to inventors from other OECD countries. Additionally, each of these countries has actually strengthened IPR implementation and scope, primarily through "case law" over recent decades.
The recent years have seen a resurgence of economic growth in Asia. The region's growth of roughly 5% achieved in 2003 came close to the level achieved prior to the East Asian financial crisis in the late 1990s. Remarkably, too, despite this crisis that led most countries in East Asia to either a sharp economic slowdown or a contraction, the past decade had witnessed significant poverty reduction. Between 1990 and 2000, the number of people living on less than a dollar a day fell by about 243 million. Poverty incidence in East Asia declined from 29.46% to 15.6%, while that in South Asia fell from 41.3% to 31.1%. At these rates, the Millennium Development Goal (MDG) of halving by 2015 the proportion of people whose income falls below one dollar a day looks attainable for Asia. Indeed, China, Vietnam, Thailand, and Indonesia have already reached the goal, while the rest, except Sri Lanka, are on target. The prevalence of undernourishment between the late 1980s and late 1990s also declined from 29 to 13% in East and Southeast Asia, and from 38 to 23% in South Asia.
According to conventional wisdom, the ideal form of pro-poor economic development is through investment in agriculturally-led growth. In the early stages of growth, increased production decreases food prices and shifts out the demand for labor. Inasmuch as poor households disproportionately consume food and earn a relatively large share of their income from labor, both mechanisms benefit the poor. Agricultural economists typically recommend a panoply of government interventions to go along with the investments in new technology and infrastructure, including price-supports and stabilization schemes, credit and input subsidies, and crop insurance. The interventionist policy recommendations, however, are based on a variety of misconceptions and misinterpretations about farmer behavior and rural institutions.
Freshwater is a finite resource that is being continuously exploited to meet the requirements of an increasing population. The estimated average available water per capita worldwide decreased from about 40,000 cubic meter (m3) in 1800 to 17,000 m3 in 1950, 12,900 m3 in 1970 and 7,000 m3 in 1997. Although the present availability is still relatively high, it is rapidly decreasing – projected to be only 4,700 m3 by 2025. Moreover, there are large spatial and temporal variations in water availability. In some parts of Asia, water availability is less than the threshold level of 2,000 m3, below which an area is considered water-stressed.
The expansion of the real output of major food and agricultural productions in China ranks as one of the nation's great achievements. Publicly funded agricultural research has been key to the impressive performance (Huang et al. 2003). Expenditures grew rapidly from the early 1960s to the middle 1980s and the number of agricultural researchers increased throughout (Fan and Pardey 1992). The rising research investment resulted in a steady stream of productivityincreasing technology.
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