Organic agriculture can reduce fossil fuel dependence through reductions in petrol-based inputs. This may not hold true if organic inputs and products are transported over great distance, but this is an unlikely scenario in most of this region, particularly for small-scale farmers. Calculations on comparative energy use in OECD countries indicate that en­ergy consumption on organic farms is 64% that of conven­tional farms (Haas and Kolke, 1994; Lampkin, 1997), while other research in Iran and Switzerland puts this figure as low as 30-50% (Zarea et al., 2000). In a three-year comparative study on organic and conventional strawberry production in China, 98% of the energy inputs in the organic systems were from renewable sources such as animal manure and biogas, whereas 70% of the energy inputs in the conventional sys­tem were non-renewable sources such as electricity, chemi­cal fertilizers and pesticides (FAO, 2002). In New Zealand, the mean annual energy input was considerably lower un­der organic management systems than under conventional management (Nguyen and Haynes, 1995). While fossil fuel consumption can be substantially reduced in organic sys­tems, these energy savings must often be balanced against productivity reductions (Dalgaard et al., 2001). For organic systems with substantially lower yields than conventional alternatives, enterprise energy efficiency (energy output per unit energy input) can be lower than the efficiency of con­ventional systems (Loges et al., 2006).

5.3.2.2   Challenges Among the biggest obstacles to organic agriculture in the ESAP region are those associated with insufficient quality and quantity of organic inputs and the cost of the organ­ic certification. Shortages of organic soil amendments are common throughout the region (Husain and Raina, 2004), especially where high population pressure, cropping inten­sity, or small land holdings preclude rotations with N-fixing legumes and there are competing uses for animal manures (e.g., for cooking fuel). Some of the most common organ­ic inputs such as cereal stover are of poor quality, having low nutrient concentrations and macronutrient ratios that are not optimal for crops. As organic agriculture does not require the purchase of expensive inputs it becomes more accessible to poor rural women who are unable to obtain credit. However, as organic systems need to be developed over a number of years to reach maximum productive ca­pacity, women's often insecure access to long-term control over land may be a hindrance (FAO, 2002).
     The present scale of organic agriculture in the region is still considered small, partly because development and uptake by farmers have been hampered by a lack of sup­portive government policy in many countries (UNESCAP, 2002). While organic certification paves the way for pro­ducers to take advantage of the growing market demand for organic products, the costs involved work to the disadvan­tage of resource-poor farmers. The weak bargaining power in setting the price for agricultural produce in general, poor farm-to-market support infrastructure and lack of clear policies in the marketing of organic products all contribute to the limited access of poor farmers even to the domestic organic markets. Government policies in promoting organic agriculture therefore need to address these problems to en-

sure that poor rural producers will directly benefit from the socioeconomic potentials of this system. Measures should also be adopted to ensure that the expansion of organic agri­culture cultivation in response to market demands does not sacrifice local food security and the environment.
     Despite its potential and proven benefits, the impetus for private sector research in organic agricultural research has been largely absent for several reasons, including the presumption that organic agriculture is lower-yielding, the relatively low market share of organic products in ESAP countries and the reliance on inexpensive, rather than ex­pensive inputs. It is posited that if funding levels were to in­crease, organic production could be increased substantially, improving the social conditions of the rural poor of Asia, thus going a long way toward meeting development and sustainability goals.

5.3.3     Conventional technologies and practices
Agricultural technologies and practices generated by for­mal institutions and research centers, which might involve combining indigenous knowledge, organic practices and relatively  new  innovations  or  technologies,  are  termed "conventional" or "modern" and have contributed to sub­stantial gains in global agricultural productivity. The best known of these technologies, developed and disseminated in the 1960s and 70s after a decade of food shortages and famines, is known throughout Asia as the Green Revolution and depends almost entirely upon plant breeding to pro­duce high-yielding varieties, mineral fertilizers, irrigation, synthetic pesticides for weed, disease and pest control, ani­mal breed improvement and intensification of feeding and mechanization.
     The Green Revolution led to the introduction of stron­ger-stemmed and higher yielding "modern" varieties of the major cereal crops rice, wheat and maize, fueling an explo­sion in their yields on lowland, intensively irrigated land. Cereal production in Asia more than doubled from about 313 million tonnes in 1970 to about 650 million tonnes in 1995 (IFAD, 2002) and enabled double and triple cropping in areas that previously produced only one or two crops per year (Umetsu et al., 2003; Gupta and Seth, 2007). A great majority of all recent gains in crop yields are attributable to these conventional breeding-induced improvements tar­geting the physiological yield potential of crop plants and their tolerance to biotic and abiotic stresses (Khush, 2005; Reynolds and Borlaug, 2006).
     Other conventional technologies include those of In­tegrated Pest Management (IPM) and Integrated Nutrient Management (INM), which draw substantially upon indig­enous knowledge and organic practices. IPM is an environ­mentally sensitive approach to pest management that relies on a suite of pest management options. INM is a suite of practices designed to integrate the use of organic and inor­ganic sources of crop nutrients, so that agronomic produc­tivity increases in an environmentally sustainable manner, without compromising soil resources. INM relies on a num­ber of factors, including appropriate, balanced nutrient ap­plication, and soil and nutrient conservation practices such as low- and no-till farming, terracing, mulching and green manuring.