Agricultural diversification definition
Agricultural diversification means: transforming agriculture from major cereal (rice/ wheat) dominated cropping systems to more diversified systems, especially by promoting secondary crop production; or to integrate agricultural production with marketing or processing. Agricultural diversification has various positive impacts on development, including poverty alleviation, risk mitigation and enhanced sustainability. Among the avenues that lead to diversified agriculture, technological development represents one of the most important measurements. However, most of the Governments in the developing Asian region face financial difficulties and investment in R&D activities is very limited. While 22 high-income countries accounted for 44 per cent of global public agricultural R&D spending in 2000, 117 developing countries accounted for the remaining 56 per cent (ISNAR, 2005). This highlights the difficulty developing countries have in meeting all their technological development needs with their limited financial and human resources. Therefore, prioritization of R&D activities is important to foster technological development effectively. The study was conducted as part of a research project: “Identification of Pulling Factors for Enhancing the Sustainable Development of Diverse Agriculture in Selected Asian Countries (AGRIDIV)”, coordinated by ESCAP and CAPSA (Centre for Alleviation of Poverty through Secondary Crops’ Development in Asia and the Pacific). Eight countries (Bangladesh, India, Indonesia, Lao People’s Democratic Republic, Myanmar, Sri Lanka, Thailand and Viet Nam) participated in the project.
Examples of Agricultural diversification in a sentence
Agricultural diversification in Western Australia has resulted in the development of one of two situations: The appearance of a ‘new crop’ in a traditional farming area, where that crop is threatened by the agricultural chemical usage of the district.