Reducing food poverty by increasing agricultural sustainability in developing countries

We examined the extent to which farmers have improved food production in recent years with low cost, locally available and environmentally sensitive practices and technologies. We analysed by survey during 1999-2000 208 projects in 52 developing countries, in which 8.98 million farmers have adopted these practices and technologies on 28.92 million hectares, representing 3.0% of the 960 million hectares of arable and permanent crops in Africa, Asia and Latin America. We found improvements in food production occurring through one or more of four mechanisms: (i) intensification of a single component of farm system; (ii) addition of a new productive element to a farm system; (iii) better use of water and land, so increasing cropping intensity; (iv) improvements in per hectare yields of staples through introduction of new regenerative elements into farm systems and new locally appropriate crop varieties and animal breeds. The 89 projects with reliable yield data show an average per project increase in per hectare food production of 93%. The weighted average increases across these projects were 37% per farm and 48% per hectare. In the 80 projects with small (<5 ha) farms where cereals were the main staples, the 4.42 million farms on 3.58 million hectares increased household food production by 1.71 t per year. We report on the practices and technologies that have led to these increases: increased water use efficiency, improvements to soil health and fertility, and pest control with minimal or zero-pesticide use. This research reveals promising advances in the adoption of practices and technologies that are likely to be more sustainable, with substantial benefits for the rural poor. With further explicit support, particularly through national policy reforms and better markets, these improvements in food security could spread to much larger numbers of farmers and rural people in the coming decades. (C) 2002 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.