Abstract:

Agricultural research can be viewed as a means of increasing the social returns to agricultural production activities within windows of opportunity presented by a natural environment that varies in both time and space. Within these windows, the choice of agricultural production system is dominated by the nature of markets for agricultural inputs and outputs and by considerations of infrastructure, demography, and culture. While it is true that some extremely capital intensive production systems can create their own artificial environments, e.g., glasshouse production of high value horticultural products, these are of marginal importance in the vast majority of developing countries. The quality of land, the quantity and timing of radiation and water resources, and the effects of natural hazards such as frost, flood, and typhoon remain, as farmers worldwide will testify, the most fundamental of the 1 binding constraints to agricultural production. Agricultural research seeks both to improve the productivity of agricultural inputs within these boundaries and, often with great success, to shift the constraining,boundaries by altering the abiotic (environmental) adaptability ranges of plants and animals, or by limiting the impact of biotic (e.g., pest and disease) constraints that are themselves often confined to specific environmental domains. Increasingly, agricultural research is also called upon to address issues arising from the externality consequences of agricultural production, in particular to develop technologies that minimise environmental degradation.