The technological challenges facing agriculture are daunting. Yields will have to increase massively if future generations are to be adequately fed. Land and water are getting increasingly scarce, so productivity growth is needed to satisfy future demand for agricultural commodities and food. Sustainability requires that resources be used sparingly, and technology is called upon to help. Markets require that farmers innovate on a constant basis to stay competitive, and climate change will call for unprecedented backstopping in terms of science and technology to enable growers to adapt.

 

In principle, the great advances of recent years in biological and information sciences bode well. But agricultural research in many developing countries is underfunded, particularly in Africa. Research management and product development capability are weak (it usually takes years for new varieties that have been released to find their way to farmers' fields), and users – farmers – tend not to be consulted when research priorities are set. The public and the private sector tend to work in isolation when, arguably, they could bring complementary skills and resources to the task. Innovation systems need to be re-thought, and knowledge and product transfer to (small) farmers through market mechanisms and extension services need to be established or in many instances, where they exist, improved.

 

In this section, some of these challenges are addressed, in particular crop improvement R&D, Marker-Assisted Breeding (MAB), the scope and limitations of transgenic products and techniques, and public-private partnerships in agricultural research.

 

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