Sciences au Sud n°30 - May-July 2005
July 2005
Reducing the gulf in agriculture
The global-scale gulf in agriculture is manifest at many levels : between countries of the South and industrialized ones of the Northern Hemisphere, between emerging and less advanced countries, between the large industrial and commercial agriculture and food firms and small family concerns. CIRAD researchers, in discussions held at the Dakar Agriculture Forum in February 2005, tackled the question of what kind of prospects «modernization » offers for helping to reduce this gap. They concluded that the only way of reforming agricultural policy today is to implement a full set of essential measures and that debate must develop on what is called the «modernization » of the private farming sector. The private sector itself, through its organizations, will have to take up this issue. The question will undoubtedly involve solving divisions between the large-scale concerns and small-scale producers, who often do not associate themselves with the idea of the private sector. North-South research will moreover have to be more proactive in response to public policy innovation, in particular by means of sustained supportive partnership schemes, extended to less advanced countries.
