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Rural development and sustainable livelihood

Healthy crops and enhanced seeds contribute to increased productivity and this, in turn, supports the viability of farms. In emerging economies, farm viability often equates with achieving food self-sufficiency. Safeguarding the crop yield also results in more income generation and thus improves the rural livelihood as farmers are able to buy goods they otherwise couldn’t afford. With regard to some crop health problems, the loss of food security and family income can be due to just one single insect or fungus that causes total crop loss – the rice brown plant hopper or the potato blight are just two known examples. Through our technologies we contribute many potential solutions, but our real impact is much broader because our capacity-building activities enhance the overall knowledge of farmers and thus enable them to help themselves in the longer term.

Challenges
Measuring the impacts of our technologies on rural development and livelihood is a difficult task, due to the constantly changing socio-economic environments, but it remains something we wish to help achieve. We are, therefore, cooperating in a multi-stakeholder initiative called the International Assessment of Agricultural Science and Technology for Development and aiming to provide the necessary yardsticks.

[ last update: Wednesday, May 28, 2008 ]