Agriculture%20at%20a%20Crossroads_Global%20Report%20(English)

28 | IAASTD Global Report
cash, and may come from both on-farm and off-farm sources.
Gross national income per capita averaged US$1,502 in
developing countries in 2004, or about US$4 per day (World
Bank, 2006c); half the people in developing countries live on
less that US$2 per day, and 19% live on less than US$1 per
day (World Bank, 2006c). By contrast, income per capita
in high-income countries averaged US$32,112 in 2004, or
about US$88 per day. Generally, there is a strong correlation
between the average income per capita and the share
agriculture takes in GDP. The lower this share is, the higher
the income (see Figure 1-13).
A simple measure of economic well-being can be derived
by comparing an individual’s or household’s income
over a given period of time with their needs or wants over
that same period of time. The disadvantage of such a simple
measure is that it could indicate that a household was welloff
at present even if it was increasing its income in the short
term by depleting its resources in a way that is unsustainable
over the long term. Thus a more complete measure of economic
well-being requires knowledge about the resources
from which an individual or household derives its income.
Resources. Control of resources shapes income-generating
opportunities, and determines how resilient households are
when incomes fluctuate in response to changing economic
conditions or natural disasters. Resources can be grouped
in various ways, e.g., natural, human and social capital and
wealth (or man-made capital) (Serageldin, 1996). Wealth
can be further divided into physical and financial forms
(Chambers and Conway, 1991). Access to different forms
of capital varies widely across and within regions, affecting
the choices that households make in combining resources
in their diverse livelihood strategies, and also affecting the
types of AKST investments that are most relevant in any
particular context.
An important aspect of resources is the discussion of
labor productivity versus land productivity. These are often
Figure 1-13. World distribution of GDP per capita and percentage of population working in
agriculture (Average of years 1990-2002). Source: Based on Hurni et al., 1996, with data from World
Bank, 2006c; ILO, 2007.
compared to show the differences between the achievements
of formal AKST versus local knowledge. The value of production
in industrialized countries is much higher than in
developing countries (Wood et al., 2000), simply because
the energy balance is hardly taken into account when comparing
mechanized with manual agricultural systems. It is
noteworthy, however, that there are groups of countries
where labor productivity made particular progress (probably
through mechanization), while others made most progress
in land productivity, and sub-Saharan countries had only
little advances over the past 30 years, although with probably
the best energy balance (Byerlee et al., 2005). Latin
America has the highest levels of labor productivity in the
developing world, followed by the Middle East and North
Africa, and transition economies. South-East Asia and sub-
Saharan Africa have considerably lower labor productivity
levels although, in terms of growth, China is leading (ILO,
2004; see Figure 1-14).
Education. Reported gross primary school enrolment rates
are near universal in developing countries already, but completion
rates are lower, and more than 100 million children
of primary school age remain out of school. Gross enrolment
rates drop to 61% for secondary education and 17%
for tertiary education (World Bank, 2006c). Primary and
secondary education are near-universal in high-income
countries, and drop to 67% for tertiary education. Adult
literacy rates in developing countries are 86 and 74% for
men and women, respectively (World Bank, 2006c).
Research. Expenditures for public agricultural research and
development (R&D) averaged 0.5% of agricultural GDP in
high-income countries (Pardey et al., 2006), which in view
of the high disparity between the GDPs themselves must be
seen as a potentially greatly underrated difference. Moreover,
about five times as many scientific and technical journal
articles were published by authors from high-income