and associated AKST and provide an important counterbal­ance to the rights accorded to formal plant breeders under PVP and patents.

3.4      Trade and Technology Options
Pesticides and genetic engineering provide examples of tech­nology options in agriculture that largely exemplify a flow of trade from developed to developing countries. On the other hand, fisheries, aquaculture and forest products are examples of technology options being implemented in de­veloping countries and of the products being traded from developing to developed countries.

3.4.1      Composition of output and relationship to technology development
The rice market in Asia is less dominated by imports than it was two decades ago. Asia accounted for two-thirds of the global rice demand in 1970s, but this has come down to a third in the late-1990s (Tabor et al, 2002). This is due to the regional spread of HYV-rice, which has increased domestic production in most Asian countries, but has substantially reduced rice diversity.
     The growth of the sugar industry in the developed coun­tries, due to the development of technology to extract sugar from corn and beet, propped up by substantial subsidies, has  almost eliminated Asia developing countries' possi­bilities of exporting sugar. With Asia as a whole being a labor-abundant region, it could be expected that compara­tive advantage in international trade would lie in the pro­duction of labor-using products, like vegetables, fruits and flowers, as against the less labor-using products, like cere­als. Calculations for Bangladesh showed that the Domestic Resource Cost (DRC, i.e., the cost of all inputs, includ­ing land, labor, capital, used in production) in vegetables is only about 10% of the export rice, as against 60% for aromatic rice and more than unity for other rice. At the same time, in import price terms the DRC of other rice is also around 60 to 70%. Thus, while development of rice is beneficial in import substitution terms, it is not beneficial in export terms. Thus Bangladesh and most other Asian econo­mies with similarly abundant labor have turned to export of vegetables, fruits and flowers. The production of these "new export crops" has grown across most countries of Asia.
     It, however, is not only the more abundant and cheaper labor in ESAP developing countries that is the factor en­abling Asia to undertake export production of fruits, flow­ers and vegetables. It is also depends on the advances in transport  (containerization), packaging and communica­tion technology (ICTs). The extent to which it is profitable to shift perishable agricultural commodities long distances depends on transport costs. As fuel prices rise, which they will by all indications, small differences in production costs might be neutralized by higher transport costs. Thus, while making use of the international trade possibilities currently available, countries may also find it necessary to consider alternatives in the event that fuel prices and transport costs rise substantially. The growth of demand in some agricul­tural commodities, however, has triggered some changes in technology or the widespread adoption of some technolo­gies. This has been the case, for instance, in both fish and

forest products. In fish there has been a shift from capture fisheries to culture fisheries. In 2002, Asia accounted for above 90% of the quantity and 70% of the value of aqua-culture, both freshwater and marine (FAO, 2004b). This is a technology whose widespread adoption was induced by the shortages resulting from over-harvesting of wild fish.
     Similarly, in the case of wood products and Non-Timber Forest Products (NTFP) there has been an initial depletion of natural stocks and then a shift to plantation of valuable species. Asia in 2005 accounted for more than 50% of plan­tation forests in the world (FAO, 2006). In a number of NTFP too collection from the wild has been replaced by culture or plantation as wild stocks have been depleted. A well-known example is that of orchids. Initially collected from the wild and with the growth of demand, subject to depletion, tissue culture has now replaced such collection in most countries and regions. Regions like Northeast India, however, still continue collection rather than tissue culture.
     High prices of timber have stimulated the development of substitutes for wood in different uses, some using artifi­cial substances, like plastic, other fast-growing species, like bamboo and still others, former waste material, like the trunks of aged rubber trees.
     A broad conclusion can be drawn from these experi­ences. Initially increasing trade (both international and na­tional) in agricultural commodities that are collected from the wild, led to over-exploitation of natural resources. But this has been followed by changes in both technology (aqua-culture, plantation) and management systems (community-managed, or individual household-based in the place of open access systems) and the development of substitutes. There are positive examples of learning and technology development and systems of culture that have reduced pressure on natural stocks. They have also created new problems of waste man­agement, environmental change, biodiversity conservation and increasing social inequality (Table 3-4).

3.4.2     Pesticides
At the most basic level, pesticides are intended to kill organ­isms; they include herbicides, insecticides and fungicides, as well as algicides, insect and animal repellents, antimicrobial and cleaning products, wood and material preservatives and insect and rodent traps. Besides harming target insects, weeds and fungi, pesticides also affect wildlife and human health. Some have immediate lethal effects including death, some cause acute illness at even minute levels of exposure and others have been found to cause chronic (long-term) health and environmental harm.
     Today,  organochlorine  pesticides,  organophosphorus pesticides, pyrethroids, herbicides such as 2,4-D, glyphosate and paraquat, and fungicides are commonly used. With in­creasing evidence of negative effects, efforts have been un­dertaken to ban or restrict some pesticides, but in general, their use in developing countries is still widespread.
     National and global concerns over food security drove the intensification of agricultural production in the South, epitomized by the Green Revolution and the adoption of synthetic  chemical  pesticides.   Pesticide  reliance   became widespread across much of Asia and Latin America, where the Green Revolution had been widely embraced (Rosset et al., 2000).