Rural Livelihood

The National Agro-Food policy has incorporated strategies that are in line with the nutritional aspects of the food system. The programs implemented under the policy include increased food production through optimization and sustainable land, development and upgrading agriculture infrastructure and increase the quality and safety of food by expanding the compliance of standard. Efforts have also been taken to strengthen human capital and to ensure sufficient skill labor force in the agricultural sector. This includes the use of modern technology and mechanization to reduce the dependency of manpower. The government also provides sector-based incentives to encourage the private sector to invest in the agriculture and agro-based industry.

Throughout time, humans have pushed forward in every aspect in life in order to improve their living standards, wealth and most importantly the agricultural sector which is the base of every human race. Food is the basic requirement for any individual to stay alive and healthy. In an article by Tamsin McMahon, she states that over the past 60 years, the world population has grown from 2.5 billion to 7 billion while world hunger dropped from 40% down to 15% (McMahon T., July 2012). This shows that our agricultural advances through technology have helped control world hunger and decrease it by more than half, but this is a short-term solution if we want to consider the future generations that depend on our current actions toward the three main pillars of agriculture which are: Health and nutrition, Economy and sustainability all while considering the local small farms and corporate farms.

Production and Productivity Trends Labor productivity. Up until the 1970s, the Philippines’ agricultural performance, in terms of both agricultural Gross Value Added (GVA) and agricultural exports, compared well with its neighbors and other Asian countries (Figure 3a). But by the 1980s and 1990s, the country had lagged behind most of the countries in the region (Figures 3b and 3c). This came as agricultural output growth had slowed down dramatically through the decades (Figure 4). Moreover, the sector’s growth had been rather erratic in the 1990s, especially with the periodic occurrence of the El Niño phenomenon that had appreciable impact on weather patterns and, consequently, agricultural performance. Table 1 shows the average annual growth in GVA of major agricultural commodities since 1960. What is clear from the table is that growth rates of all commodities, except for livestock and poultry, have been slowing down over time. Furthermore, growth rates have been below the population growth rate, implying that production has not been able to keep up with increasing population. Erratic and decelerating growth over the past two decades is a major concern, as agriculture continues to employ a large

India is the second most populated country in the world with an approximate 1.3 billion people, and boasts an exponentially growing middle income consumer. Currently, the middle class numbers are around 50 million people, but by the year 2025 this is expected to expand dramatically to around 583 million people, 41% of the Indian population (“Next Big

In the 21st century Agricultural field is faces with many challenges such as: an increase in food production due to global population

India is the fastest growing economy, yet it home for 1/3rd of the world’s poor1. Post liberalisation in 1991, India has registered a tremendous growth in its economy. But along with this rapid growth, there has been a significant increase in the inequalities in the distribution of wealth and income. Though cities have grown rapidly, the growth in rural areas have been rather slow or stagnant.

Bangladesh is an agriculture based developing country in the world. It has many agricultural products which help to develop economy. Such as, Jute is one of the most important exporting goods which are agricultural product and Bangladesh earns a lot of foreign currency from this goods as well as this agricultural sector. From the beginning of this country, Bangladesh was dependent on agriculture sector for development. This agriculture sector has huge contribution to development of this country.in previous time, this contribute rate was higher in previous time. But now days, this rate is decreasing constantly specially from the fiscal year 2005-2006. Though the total amount of agricultural contribution is increasing but the rate of this contribution is decreasing. There have some types of causes such as manmade causes, natural causes and technological causes which are helping to reduce this agricultural growth rate. It is positive sign that the government of Bangladesh take some initiative like subsidize the farmers and other thighs to boost this rate. Sometimes these steps are working on special sectors but all over situation are not good enough.

Growth in the agricultural sector has been driven by increased production of major food crops such as maize, sorghum and cassava, but the sector’s performance remains below potential. In turn, the services and industrial sectors have shown strong growth. The nascent banking sector and expanding telecommunications sector are key drivers behind services growth, while construction, electricity generation, manufacturing and mining are salient sub-sectors in industrial activity. Looking ahead, the banking and telecommunication sectors will continue to support services growth, while increased electricity generation capacity will benefit the expansion of the manufacturing

In 1960s, famine and poverty in Asian countries especially India, and China were reduced in rapid rate owing to increase in staple crops production and famine was completely eradicated in late 20th century (Devereux, 2009). The wheat and rice yield tripled to more than 6tonnes/hectare since 1960s and thereby, eradicated famine by achieving food self-sufficiency (Basu and Scholten, 2012). Moreover, for every 1% increase in yield/hectare more than six million poor people living within <$1 per day were uplifted from poverty (Thirtle et al., 2003).The increase in staple crops productivity were the outcome of the adoption of technologies such as high yielding varieties (HYV), fertilizers, irrigation, and mechanization (Pingali, 1997). The increase in crop yield by the adoption of those technology packages was called as Green Revolution (Hazell, 2013).

There is growing realization among marketers about the enormous untapped potential of India’s rural markets. The Indian rural market with its vast size and demand base offers great opportunities to companies. In India, there are 6,42000 villages . While agriculture used to be the major source of income in rural areas, over the past 10-12 years, the dominance of agriculture has been rapidly declining. The contribution of agriculture to India’s GDP was less than 20% in 2008-09. There is a sizeable population of self-employed persons in the hinterland and quite a few of them are into services such as repair and maintenance of motors and pump sets, televisions and other electrical

This section discusses the approaches used in augmenting the conventional household income accounts with incomes from CF, how these incomes do influence rural poverty and level of income inequality.

Agricultural industry is one of the most important industries of Uzbekistan. Agriculture sector employs 28% of Uzbekistan 's labor force and generates 24% of its GDP (Uzreport, 2006). Therefore further development of agricultural industry in Uzbekistan is crucial for Uzbek nation. According to UNDP within the next 20 years, the world will gain another 1.4 billion people. Representing a 25-percent increase in global population, most of these people will live in the expanding urban centers of developing countries and will add greatly to the world’s demand for food. Demand for food products will increase. Meeting these increased food demands will be opportunity for the world’s agricultural producers as well as for Uzbek

This section deals with literatures under the following themes: Definition of rural non-farm activities, determinants of rural non-farm activities, challenges of rural non-farm activities and the contribution of rural non-farm activities to poverty reduction.

“India lives in her villages”, a maxim attributed to Mahatma Gandhi, rings true when we see rural India retaining its old domination of the national population and economy in its 627000 villages, even after six decades of a development model that cherishes urbanization and industrialization. Close to 69% of Indians—743 million people or 138 million households—live in rural areas, generating 56% of the national income. With urban markets showing signs of saturation, companies are getting increasingly excited about the

4. 2009 RVHS Year 5 End of Year Exams Paper CSQ1: Challenges of the Agricultural Sector