PDF file: Annual Report 2002/2003 - Scottish Crop Research Institute

Director’s Report
minimum input systems including ultra-low-volume
sprayers with specially formulated low-environmentalimpact
synthetic pesticides, biological control systems
including trapping systems and introduction or boosting
numbers of predators, modified rotations, mixed
cultivar planting, and careful agronomy. ICM systems
have lessened but by no means eliminated the
need globally for synthetic pesticides, and many have
observed that since the introduction of pesticides
there has been a rise globally in life spans and the
quality of life.
Economic and social disruption in the 20 th century –
two World Wars, smaller wars and conflicts, the Great
Depression of the 1930s, shorter periods of economic
depression, the Cold War, the Great Leap Forward
and Cultural Revolution in China, and the collectivist
policies of the former Soviet Union – greatly affected
global agriculture. Both World Wars provided major
fillips to the introduction of scientific agriculture, as
did industrialisation and the demands posed by massive
population growth. Worldwide, in the first part
of the 20 th century, there was a phase of setting up
research institutes (such as the Scottish Plant Breeding
Station in 1921, the predecessor of SCRI), colleges,
university departments, agencies, and government
departments. Periods of economic depression were
associated with protectionist policies, as in the 1930s,
with tariffs and non-tariff measures such as the
‘milling ration’ in which home-grown material had to
be used in the grist. After World War II, scientific
advances in agriculture and the storage and processing
of food, all reinforced by the establishment of various
UN agencies, the CGIAR system, the EU, and aid
programmes such as the US Marshall Plan, have
enabled the stage to be reached of low commodity
prices, commodity surpluses, formation of large-scale
farm enterprises, and a lessening of the role of the
family farm unit, although it still remains the dominant
global unit of agricultural and horticultural production.
The Green Revolution arose out of
US-funded aid programmes to develop new strains of
wheat and rice that produced high yields with adequate
supplies of water, fertilisers and pesticide treatments.
There are certain characteristics of agriculture that
affect and justify public and private investments in its
science as well as in the production of agricultural
commodities. (a) As a nation’s economy expands and
evolves, the relative importance and cost of agriculture
declines; as incomes increase a smaller fraction of the
total resources of the country are required to produce
the necessary amount of food for its total population,
and rural populations can become economically vulnerable.
(b) Most of the populations of poor countries
are reliant on agriculture for survival. Agriculture is
still the source of livelihood for around 50% of the
world’s population, but in the MDCs, the figure is
much less, despite the fact that agriculture was central
to their gaining strong economic positions. (c) The
global economy is dependent on international trade in
agricultural and food products, and the existence of
agricultural surpluses. Few politicians can disregard
the social upheaval caused by food shortages. (d)
Rural populations have provided the urban workforces
needed for economic expansion, people released as a
result of improvements in agricultural efficiency. (e)
About 10% of Earth’s land area is deemed to be
arable, about 25% is down to permanent meadows
and pastures, and the rest is forested or non-agricultural.
With mechanisation, fertilisers, pesticides,
improved cultivars, and good agronomy, it has been
possible through increased yields to restrict agricultural
intrusion into natural habitats despite burgeoning
population growth mainly in the LDCs. (f) For farmers
and agricultural workers, incomes tend to be
unstable and lower than in most other sectors of the
economy; farming is constrained by having to predict
market demands; agricultural commodities have a low
responsiveness to changes in prices; surpluses can soon
be produced; erratic effects arise from poor weather,
outbreaks of pests and diseases; competition is fierce;
and farmers and farm workers rarely benefit from the
value-added rewards further up the food chain.
Government intervention to maintain incomes has
been a feature in both LDCs and MDCs, and comes
mainly in the form of direct payments, production
quotas, import quotas, import levies (tariffs), and
export subsidies, as well as through indirect support
measures including veterinary and phytosanitary controls,
diversification and development grants, and
public-sector-supported R&D. Other factors come to
bear on incomes, however, such as the level of general
economic growth, competition for educated labour in
a technologically challenging age, and access to competition-relevant
intellectual property and specific
markets. Yet government intervention in agriculture
and horticulture has been regarded as a suppressor of
the economy. (g) With the exception of collective
farming in Communist and like economies, agriculture
and agricultural land are essentially in private
hands, but there has been a marked trend of transfer
from the family farm unit (rented, owned outright, or
mortgaged) to large-scale specialist farming run as a
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