Farmers now require considerable technological and economic skills to manage increasingly complex cropping systems. High yields are possible only in years of greater than average rainfall. In low rainfall years, the focus of management must be to minimize costs, perhaps even not to plant at all. Cropping is no longer a matter of applying established cropping sequences but tactically adjusting crop and management to likely seasonal and economic conditions. Nitrogen fertilization is a good case in point. The objective is to gain yield benefit in years of high potential and avoid low yield in years of low rainfall. This requires a response to weather forecasts in crops, measurement of soil water and nitrogen at sowing, and crop nitrogen content at responsive points during the growing season. Measurements and their analysis are the keys to success in crop choice, crop condition, weed and pest incidence, and the likely success of management.
2.2.3.3 Emerging trends on biofuel production
Biofuels are an important energy source in ESAP, mostly from crop residue, wastelands and wood from forests. The countries with evident pressure on forests are India, Nepal and Thailand. The agricultural and natural resource base of all countries faces a potentially much greater pressure to produce liquid biofuel. The driving forces are worldwide: energy security, climate change, and export to the many industrial countries that set mandatory goals for biofuel use. Within ESAP, India has set a mandatory minimum 5% etha-nol in nine states; Thailand has tax incentives to encourage production. Australia, a low-cost sugar producer second only to Brazil, established a cane ethanol market in 2001 to overcome financial hardship among producers. The annual target is to produce 350 million liters by 2010 from a base of 30 million liters in 2001.
Modern technology is best suited to producing ethanol from sugar or starch crops or biodiesel from oilseed crops. Target crops for ethanol in ESAP are sugarcane, cassava, maize, oil palm and coconut, and for biodiesel, jatropha. Ethanol from cellulose, crop residue, biomass crops and trees is possible, but much less efficient for producing energy. Energy efficiency was not high in any case, with output-to-input ratios for ethanol from sugar and starch from mostly < 2; higher, perhaps 4 to 5, only for sugarcane under the production and cultural conditions in Brazil.
At a time when concern is being expressed for the capacity of agriculture to feed an anticipated world population of 9.5 billion, including 6 billion in ESAP, immense additional pressure will be placed on agriculture and forestry. Current technology would require 3.5 tonnes of grain to fuel a motor car with bioethanol for one year—almost seven times the annual grain equivalent needed to provide one person an adequate and balanced diet (Connor and Mínguez, 2006). Put another way, it would take 100 kg of grain to produce the ethanol used to fill a 40-liter tank of a car just once. That caloric content (100 x 4,000 kcal) is equivalent to a survival diet of 2,200 kcal a day for one person for six months.
This simple calculation exposes the enormous increase in agricultural production required if biofuel is to make any significant contribution to private motoring, and the inequality it would engender in developing countries struggling to feed all inhabitants adequately (von Braun and Pachauri, |
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2006). While farmers will benefit from the additional market, even a small portion of the total liquid fuel requirement produced from agriculture will place enormous strain on the environment. Even at this early stage of the biofuel boom, there have been widespread reports attributing higher food prices to the diversion of agricultural production to biofuel production, such as for maize in Mexico. The notion that there are special fuelcrops that are significantly more efficient fixers of solar energy than current crop species and will not compete with food production or will flourish on land unsuited to agriculture, jatropha is an example, is unproven.
When methods are devised to break down the cellulose for fermentation, stubble and biomass crops will also be targets for biofuel. Stubble, however, is important in maintaining soil structure and fertility. While a portion, perhaps 50%, might be removed with the highest-yielding crops, retention is generally required to sustain productivity. Witness the deleterious result of removing stubble for animal fodder and roofing and root crowns for fuel that is practiced in parts of the rice-wheat system. Energy crops will compete with food crops for land and markets. To the small extent they will be able to contribute, they will require high management and, most importantly, large inputs of water and nutrients to maintain productivity.
2.2.4 Application of AKST to livestock production
Millions of rural households in Asia and the Pacific depend on domesticated animals for food, farm power and income. Livestock is important in the economies of many ESAP countries and has particular cultural significance in India. The livestock sector has been shifting from extensive grazing to more commercial production and changing from rural to urban and periurban production.
This pattern is directly related to increased urbanization throughout the region. The rate of urbanization is highest in East and Southeast Asia and less pronounced in other parts of ESAP (Steinfield, 1998). Between 1950 and 2000 the percentage of people in Asia living in urban areas increased from 16 to 38% (UNFPA, 2001). By 2025 the urban population is anticipated to surpass 54%. In Oceania, which includes the Pacific Islands, Australia and New Zealand, the trend was the same, with a prediction that 84% of the population will reside in urban areas by 2025.
These demographic changes have been accompanied by a shift from large ruminants—buffaloes and cows—to mo-nogastric pigs and poultry. The developing countries have had some of the highest growth rates in producing and consuming livestock and meat products. Asia has had some of the highest growth rates in pork and poultry production, with an estimated 150% increase between 1991 and 2003. ESAP also more than doubled its egg production and accounted for about 50% of world production (Steinfield et al., 2006).
2.2.4.1 Livestock production systems
Animal production systems are of three main types: grazing, mixed farming, industrial. Of these, the mixed farming system dominated in ESAP countries. Grazing systems use native grasslands with little or no integration with crops. Mixed farming involves integrating livestock and crops and |