Republic of the Philippines

ZAMBOANGA PENINSULA POLYTECHNIC STATE UNIVERSITY

Region IX, Zamboanga Peninsula
R.T. Lim Blvd., Zamboanga City

LEARNING MODULE
Course Code: TLE 3

Course Description:

INTRODUCTION AND TEACHING COMMON COMPETENCIES IN

AGRI-FISHERY ARTS 1

Date Developed: September 9, Date Revised:

2023

Document No: Issued by:

Prepared by:

NORLYN M. COSING

Visiting Lecturer

Reviewed by:

Recommending Approval:
 Dear Student,

I am Mss. Norlyn M. Cosing, from ZPPSU –TTMM External Program Delivering Unit. I will
be your visiting lecturer for this course, Introduction and Teaching Common
Competencies in AFA 1 (TLE 3). You are entitled to use this module as we go thoroughly
with this course during the First Semester, S.Y. 2023- 2024. For your queries and other
related concerns, you can reach me through the following: 1) mobile numbers
(09655963362 (Globe), 2) email (cosingnorlynm@[Link]), and 4) Zoom or Google
meetings (as scheduled).

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Information

NAME OF STUDENT

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Father‘s Name and contact number

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Home Address:
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ALL ABOUT ME Student’s

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 VISION MISSION INSTITUTIONAL CORE VALUES
OUTCOMES
A world-class Produce globally Love of God; Social
polytechnic competent human Develop and sustain Responsibility;
university capital and research the cultures of Commitment/
innovations for innovation, Dedication to the
quality lives. collaboration, Service; and
responsiveness and Accountability
excellence

INTRODUCTION
Welcome to Zamboanga Peninsula Polytechnic State University, the premier
higher education institution in Zamboanga Peninsula, one of the Centers of
Development in Teacher Education Institutions in the country and an ISO
accredited institution as recognized by the Commission on Higher Education. It is
our pride and honor, that you choose ZPPSU as your school of choice.

This module has been prepared to guide you in your learning journey with the
use of the Guided and Self-directed learning activities prescribed to finish your
course. Each module includes reading materials that have been chosen to help
you understand the ideas and concepts introduced by the module.

For this semester, your class in Introduction and Teaching Common

Competencies in AFA 1 (TLE 3) introduces the concepts of new literacies in the
21st century as an evolving special phenomenon and shared cultural practices
across learning areas. The 21st century literacies shall include globalization and
multi-cultural literacy; social literacy; media literacy; financial literacy;
cyber/digital literacy; eco-literacy; and arts and creative literacy. Field-based
interdisciplinary explorations and other teaching strategies shall be used in this
course. Exercises and assessment of learning activities are provided to test your
comprehension and apply the concepts that you have learned from this module.
After accomplishing all modules, you are expected to do the following:

1. Apply the rootedness of education in philosophical, socio-cultural, historical,

psychological and political contexts.

2. Demonstrate mastery of subject matter/discipline.

3. Facilitate learning using a wide range of teaching methodologies and delivery

modes appropriate to specific learners and their environments.

4. Apply skills in the development and utilization of ICT to promote quality,

relevant and sustainable educational practices. 5. Demonstrate variety of
thinking skills in planning, monitoring, assessing and reporting learning
processes and outcomes.

6. Practice professional and ethical teaching standards sensitive to local, national

and global realities.

7. Pursue lifelong learning for personal and professional growth through varied
experiential and field-based opportunities.

HOW TO USE THIS MODULE?

This is a self-study module particularly designed to help you study with little or
no intervention from your teacher. Please follow very carefully the instructions
on how to use this module so you can fully benefit from it.

• The lessons on this module are logically organized. Every lesson is connected
to the next and necessary for a better understanding of the next topic. Hence,
please do not skip a page. Read every page of this module and do every task
that is asked of you.

• Read the Table of Contents so that you will have a good grasp of the entire
course. Having an overview of what you are about to study will help you see the
interrelationships of the concepts or knowledge that you are about to learn.

• Every lesson or unit begins with the learning objectives. The objectives are the
target skills or knowledge that you must be able to gain or perform after
studying the entire lesson/unit.

• Take the post test, activity or practice exercise given at the end of the lesson
or unit. Do this only when you have thoroughly read the entire lesson or unit.
When answering every activity, test or exercise, please answer them honestly
without looking at the answer key. They answer key is given to you for you to
check your own progress and monitor your own understanding of the lesson. The
knowledge you will gain depends on how much effort and honesty you put into
your work.

• Please pay attention to the Study Schedule on page iii. This will guide you and
make sure that you don’t lag behind. Lagging behind will result to cramming and
eventually affects your understanding of the lesson.

• Know what it takes to pass the course. Please refer to the Evaluation and
Grading System on page v.

• If you encounter difficult words which are not found in the Glossary page of this
module, take some time to locate the meaning of these words in a dictionary.
You will fully understand your lesson if you exert extra effort in understanding it.
There is no room for laziness and complacency. College students are expected to
be independent learners.
• If there is anything in the lesson which you need clarifications on, do not
hesitate to contact your instructor or professor at the appropriate time.

• You will be evaluated by your instructor or professor to check how much

knowledge and skills you have gained. The result of this evaluation will form a
big chunk of your grade. So please do well and do not waste time.

• Lastly, you are the learner; hence, you do the module on your own. Your family
members and friends at home will support you but the activities must be done by
you. As ZPPSUian’s you must always be guided by our core values, Love of God;
Social Responsibility; Commitment/ Dedication to the Service; and
Accountability.

SUGGESTED STUDY SCHEDULE

Week Topic Activities

Preliminary Activities

Week 1 1. Reading of General Read and understand

Guidelines and
Instructions Follow directions
2. Pre - Assessment Raise questions for
3. Self - Assessment clarification Answer
4. Reflective Assessment assessment

Submit assessment

MODULE 1 Introduction to Agriculture

Week 2-3  Define the meaning Interactive discussion

of agriculture and
develop student’s Sharing and recitation
sense of awareness
Small group activities
about the
importance of
agriculture.
 Discuss briefly the
history of Philippine
agriculture and
green revolution.
 Cite examples of the
changes as to the
improvements of
agriculture in the
Philippine in terms of
economic production
performance.

MODULE 2 Components of Agri-fishery Arts

Week 4-5  Discuss the social and Interactive discussion
cultural significance of Agri- Sharing and recitation
fishery arts: Agriculture and Small group activities
fisheries have been an
integral part of human
society and culture for
thousands of years, and
agri-fishery arts play a
significant role in shaping
communities and traditions.
 Provide an overview of the
field and its importance: the
objective of introducing
agri-fishery arts is to
provide an overview of the
field, its importance, and its
relevance to the society.

MODULE 3 Challenges and Opportunities in Agri-fishery Arts

Week 6-7  Identify the impacts of Interactive discussion

climate change on agri Sharing and recitation
fishery arts: climate change Small group activities
poses a significant
challenge to agriculture and
fisheries, and an objective
of exploring the topic is to
identify the impacts of
climate change on agri-
fishery arts.
 Examine the impact of
emerging technologies on
agri-fishery arts: technology
is rapidly transforming the
agriculture and fisheries,
and an objective of
exploring the topic is to
examine the impact of
emerging technologies on
agri-fishery arts.

MIDTERM EXAMINATION

MODULE 4 Teaching Competencies for Agri-fishery Arts Education

Week 9-10  Understand the importance Interactive discussion

of curriculum development Sharing and recitation
in agri-fishery arts Small group activities
education and demonstrate
an ability to design a
comprehensive course of
 study that aligns with
learning objectives and
promotes student learning
and success.
 Demonstrate an ability to
create effective lesson plans
for agri-fishery arts
education that incorporate
various teaching strategies
and techniques that
enhance student
engagement and promote
critical thinking.
 Identify and apply
appropriate pedagogical
approaches for agri-fishery
arts education, including
real-life situations, hands-on
experiences, and the use of
technology, to promote
student engagement,
collaboration, and critical
thinking.

MODULE 5 Teaching Aids and Instructional Materials in Agri-

fishery Arts

Week 11-12  Plan and execute relevant Interactive discussion

field trips and experiential Sharing and recitation
learning activities that are Small group activities
aligned with Agri-fishery
arts education goals and
objectives.
 Demonstrate an
understanding of various
multimedia resources such
as videos, images, and
interactive simulations that
can be used in Agri-fishery
arts education and create
effective strategies to
incorporate them into
teaching.
 Understand the significance
of using various teaching
aids and instructional
materials in Agri-fishery arts
education to improve
student learning and
engagement.

MODULE 6 Communication and Interpersonal Skills in Agri-fishery

 Arts Education

Week 13-14  Understand the significance Interactive discussion

of effective communication Sharing and recitation
in Agri-fishery Arts Small group activities
education and demonstrate
an ability to communicate
effectively with students,
colleagues, and
stakeholders, using various
methods and techniques.
 Establish and maintain
rapport with students and
demonstrate an
understanding of the factors
that contribute to building
positive relationships in the
classroom, such as active
listening, empathy, and
mutual respect.

FINALS

Week 15 Complete all necessary requirements

EVALUATION
To pass the course, you must:

1. Read all course readings and answer the pre-assessment quizzes, self-
assessment activities and reflection questions.
2. Answer the print-based discussion activities
3. Submit three assignments and three graded quizzes for midterm and finals
4. Submit the final project (Portfolio)
5. Take the Mid Term and Finals

Evaluative Assessment Activities

A. Quizzes and Examination Instruction:

The three graded quizzes and examinations which are embedded in your
module must be answered guided by the given evaluation tool. I will call
you, if you need help or assistance for purposes of further validation and
verification.

B. Assignment and Projects Instruction:

There will be three assignments that will comprise the final project for this
course. The evaluation tools to these assignments are provided in this
module.

➢ Assignment #1. Technology Evaluation Tool

➢ Assignment #2. Sample OBE Curriculum Plan
➢ Assignment#3. Project Plan ➢ Assignment#4. Lesson Plan
➢ Assignment#5. Draft a Relevant School Policy
➢ Assignment#6. Instructional Material Plan
➢ Assignment#7. Research Survey on Media Literacy
➢ Assignment#8. Budget Plan
➢ Assignment#9. Digital Tool
➢ Assignment#10. Environmental Activity Plan
➢ Assignment#11. Creative Artwork

GRADING SYSTEM
NO. CRITERIA PERCENTAGE (%)

1. COGNITIVE 60

2. PSYCHOMOTOR

3. AFFICTIVE

Total 100%
 TABLE OF CONTENTS
Introduction..................................................................................................i
Study Guide ............................................................................................... ii
Study Schedule.......................................................................................... iii
Evaluation .................................................................................................iv
Grading System...........................................................................................v

1. Module 1 –Introduction to Agriculture………………………………….......……… 1

Module 2 - Components of Agri-fishery Arts……………………………………….. 12
Module 3 –Challenges and Opportunities in Agri-fishery Arts…...............……. 21
Module 4 - Teaching Competencies for Agri-fishery Arts Education…...........… 33
Module 5 - Teaching Aids and Instructional Materials in Agri-fishery Arts .….... 42
Module 6- Communication and Interpersonal Skills in Agri-fishery Arts
Education………………………………………………….. 53
Rubrics for Process/Performance/Product Based Assessment…….......... 121
References ……………………………………………..................…………………
123
Introduction to Agriculture
Agriculture is the practice of cultivating plants and livestock in order to provide
facilities the human beings. In the rise of the sedentary human lifestyle
agriculture was the key development. The cultivation of plant and food grains
began years ago in order to provide food to the city population. Agriculture is
the main need for the people to live in the society. Agriculture is the main
source of livelihood, it provides a source for the people to earn. Most of the
population in the rural areas is dependent on agriculture as their main source
of income.

Agriculture contributes significantly to a country’s GDP that is the Gross

Domestic Production of a country. By the passing of time, there are a number
of revolutions that take place in order to improve agriculture throughout the
world or a country. If we talk about agriculture, India has witnessed a number
of revolutions, that is, the green revolution, yellow revolution, blue revolution,
agriculture. Agriculture affects the biodiversity of a country depending upon
agricultural activities.

The major agricultural products can be widely grouped into categories of food
grains, fibers and raw materials.

Foodgrains included the grains or cereals that have been used for eating.
Fiber crops are completely Commercial, they can not be eaten and are
completely grown for making money. Raw materials are that category of crops
that are completely grown for use as raw materials in industries in order to
prepare other items.

This article provided to help you to learn the topic of agriculture about the
history of farming, Commercial farming, primitive farming, its characteristics,
types of Commercial Farming, intensive subsidence character, and so on.
This will help you to get a clear view of agriculture. Let's have a look at it.

History of Agriculture
The development of agriculture enables human civilization to grow rapidly.
This agriculture that was started by hunting and gathering has now reached
the stage of cultivation and industrial form of agriculture also.

The earliest food crop grown was rice which was followed by Moong, soya,
azuki beans, etc. Sheep were domesticated in Mesopotamia first, cattle were
domesticated in the areas of modern turkey, pig production emerged in
Europe, East Asia, and South Asia. There are many hypotheses that are
explained by the scholars for agriculture.
Irrigations, crop cultivation, and fertilizers were the advanced form of
agriculture that was developed in the 17th century. Modern agriculture has
raised or encountered issues such as water pollution, biofeedback, genetically
modified organisms, farm subsidies leading to alternative approaches such as
that of organic movements.

In the rise of sedentary human civilization agriculture is the key development.

Farming of domestic species provided food surpluses that prompted people to
live in cities. The history began some thousands of years ago. Pigs, sheep,
and cattle were domesticated over 10000 years ago. Plants were cultivated
independently in 11 regions of the world. Industrial agriculture based on a
large scale in the 20th century came and dominated agriculture output. An
estimated number of around 2 billion people still depend on subsistence
agriculture.

The major agricultural products are broadly grouped into foods, fibres, fuels,
and raw materials. Over one-third of the world’s workers are employed in
agriculture and after that to the service sector.

Commercial Farming
Commercial farming is when farmers grow crops or rear animals for economic
activity. Commercial farming needs to be practised on a large scale with more
efficiency. The goal of the farmer is to earn profits from farming, hence the
production and area of production need to be on a larger scale. This practice
is also known as agribusiness and is intensively taken up and practised. It has
also opened its doors for a lucrative business venture.

Due to the large production in commercial farming and despite its major
benefits, it is a bit worrisome as it includes lots of fertilisers, pesticides, weed
killers, and other sorts of chemicals.

Crops in this type of agriculture are completely grown in order to provide the
farmers with the benefit of money. These crops are not for you to consume but
only for the sale.

Here are Some of the Characteristics of Commercial Agriculture:

 Large scale production
 It is capital intensive
 It uses high yielding varieties
 It is produced mainly for sale purpose
 Heavy machinery and human labour is used
 Traditionally practised all year round.

Types of Commercial Farming include the Following:

  Dairy farming
 Grain farming
 Plantation farming
 Livestock ranching
 Mixed crop and livestock farming
 Fruit farming

Primitive Farming
Primitive farming or also known as simple subsistence farming (farming for the
farm-family only) is the oldest form of agriculture and is still prevalent in some
areas of the world. Primitive farming enabled people to take a step further on
the economic ladder by learning the art of domesticating plants. In this type of
farming, farmers grow crops for themselves and their families. The growing of
crops is only limited.

Its Characteristics Include the Following:

 Sites of farming are selected by experienced elders.
 Hill slopes are preferred because of proper drainage
 Forests are cleared by fire, as ashes add to the fertility of the soil
 This is also called slash and burn agriculture.
 The cultivated patches are usually very small
 Primitive tools are used in cultivation such as stick and hoe

Intensive Subsistence Agriculture

Intensive subsistence agriculture term is used to describe the type of
agriculture which is characterised by high output per unit of land and low
output per worker.

Although its nature has changed and is no longer subsistence. These are
more sophisticated than primitive agriculture and are also known as monsoon
type of agriculture

Its Characteristics Include the Following:

 Very smallholdings
 Farming is very intensive
 It requires much hand labour
 It uses animal and plant manures
 The dominance of padi and other food crops

Following are the Types of Subsistence Farming:

Shifting Cultivation: In this method, farmers clear the cultivated land and
burn it afterwards. The ashes produced thereafter increase soil fertility. This
method is known by different names in different regions. It is further practiced
in South America and Southeast Asia. This method is not fit as by exhausting
the quality of the soil of one place and then moving to another place for doing
the same is not a solution.

Nomadic Herding: It involves herders and farmers traveling from place to

place with their group of animals. The herders also provide wool, meat, hide,
and dairy products from the livestock. This type of farming is very common in
places like Rajasthan, Jammu, and Kashmir. Animals herd here are sheep,
goats, camel, and yak

It is quite the opposite of primitive farming. Farmers practice this on wider

areas of land, they use modern machinery and add chemical fertilizers for the
betterment of crop production.

Whereas in primitive agriculture, all the age-old agricultural practices are done
by using the age-old method by which agriculture was done in the past. In the
primitive type of agriculture also there is a waste of energy and sources up to
some extent without getting a good quality of the crops we were looking for.

References:
[Link]

The Importance of Agricultural Sector

Date: July 21, 2020 By Farmridge Booking Categories: Farming General Tags: agricultural
sector, agriculture, back to farming, balik sakahan, Dark
Chocolates, farming, farmridge, fertilizer, fresh, Natural, Organic No comments
Have you ever asked yourself why it is important to support farming or the
agricultural sector as a whole? In this age of technology, have you ever told your
child about farming? Or where does the food he eats came from?

By definition, farming is the process of working the ground, planting seeds, and
growing fruits, vegetables, and edible plants. You can also identify raising animals
for milk or meat as farming. Interestingly, farming is also the term used to describe
the work of people whose jobs are in or related to the agricultural sector.

In 2018, the share of agriculture in the Philippines’ gross domestic product or GDP
was 9.28 percent, while the industry and services sector contributed approximately
30.75 percent and 59.97 percent, respectively. What do you get from these
statistics? Well, it only shows that agriculture is one of the main sources of national
income of the Philippines.

Aside from the contribution of agriculture to the country’s national revenue, there are
a number of reasons why it is important to the development and sustainability of a
country and its economy.
First, agriculture is a source of livelihood. Many people depend on farming and on
the production of essential food crops to earn a living. Imagine the percentage of
farmers and other people involved in activities related to forestry, dairy, fruit
cultivation, poultry, etc. Not to mention their families. The numbers will surely give
you enough reason to consider agriculture as one of the most important sectors of
an economy.

Another important role of agriculture is the provision of food supply and the
assurance of food security. Stable agriculture means food security. A country doesn’t
need to depend on imports or rely on other countries for food if it has a stable
agricultural sector if it produces its own crops and staple food to feed the population.

In addition, agriculture is the source of raw materials for major industries. It is also an
aid in international trade because the major items for exports usually came from the
agricultural sector.

Lastly, agriculture also provides employment opportunities. Aside from the farmers,
there are construction projects that support agriculture such as irrigation schemes
and drainage systems that provide larger employment opportunities.

Those are just some of the reasons why do we need to give agriculture the
importance it deserves. It plays a critical role in every developing country’s and
human’s life.

References:
[Link]

Agricultural Revolution
The Agricultural Revolution was the unprecedented increase in agricultural
production in Britain due to increases in labor and land productivity between the mid-
17th and late 19th centuries. Agricultural output grew faster than the population over
the century to 1770 and thereafter productivity remained among the highest in the
world. This increase in the food supply contributed to the rapid growth of population
in England and Wales, from 5.5 million in 1700 to over 9 million by 1801, although
domestic production gave way to food imports in the 19th century as population
more than tripled to over 32 million. The rise in productivity accelerated the decline of
the agricultural share of the labor force, adding to the urban workforce on which
industrialization depended. The Agricultural Revolution has therefore been cited as a
cause of the Industrial Revolution. However, historians also continue to dispute
whether the developments leading to the unprecedented agricultural growth can be
seen as “a revolution,” since the growth was, in fact, a result of a series of significant
changes over a her long period of time. Consequently, the question of when exactly
such a revolution took place and of what it consisted remains open.
Crop Rotation

One of the most important innovations of the Agricultural Revolution was the
development of the Norfolk four-course rotation, which greatly increased crop and
livestock yields by improving soil fertility and reducing fallow.

Crop rotation is the practice of growing a series of dissimilar types of crops in the
same area in sequential seasons to help restore plant nutrients and mitigate the
build-up of pathogens and pests that often occurs when one plant species is
continuously cropped. Rotation can also improve soil structure and fertility by
alternating deep-rooted and shallow-rooted plants. The Norfolk System, as it is now
known, rotates crops so that different crops are planted with the result that different
kinds and quantities of nutrients are taken from the soil as the plants grow. An
important feature of the Norfolk four-field system was that it used labor at times when
demand was not at peak levels. Planting cover crops such as turnips and clover was
not permitted under the common field system because they interfered with access to
the fields and other people’s livestock could graze the turnips.

During the Middle Ages, the open field system initially used a two-field crop rotation
system where one field was left fallow or turned into pasture for a time to try to
recover some of its plant nutrients. Later, a three-year three-field crop rotation
routine was employed, with a different crop in each of two fields, e.g. oats, rye,
wheat, and barley with the second field growing a legume like peas or beans, and
the third field fallow. Usually from 10–30% of the arable land in a three-crop rotation
system is fallow. Each field was rotated into a different crop nearly every year. Over
the following two centuries, the regular planting of legumes such as peas and beans
in the fields that were previously fallow slowly restored the fertility of some croplands.
The planting of legumes helped to increase plant growth in the empty field due to the
bacteria on legume roots’ ability to fix nitrogen from the air into the soil in a form that
plants could use. Other crops that were occasionally grown were flax and members
of the mustard family. The practice of convertible husbandry, or the alternation of a
field between pasture and grain, introduced pasture into the [Link]
nitrogen builds up slowly over time in pasture, plowing pasture and planting grains
resulted in high yields for a few years. A big disadvantage of convertible husbandry,
however, was the hard work that had to be put into breaking up pastures and
difficulty in establishing them.

It was the farmers in Flanders (in parts of France and current-day Belgium) that
discovered a still more effective four-field crop rotation system, using turnips and
clover (a legume) as forage crops to replace the three-year crop rotation fallow year.
The four-field rotation system allowed farmers to restore soil fertility and restore
some of the plant nutrients removed with the crops. Turnips first show up in the
probate records in England as early as 1638 but were not widely used until about
1750. Fallow land was about 20% of the arable area in England in 1700 before
turnips and clover were extensively grown. Guano and nitrates from South America
were introduced in the mid-19th century and fallow steadily declined to reach only
about 4% in 1900. Ideally, wheat, barley, turnips, and clover would be planted in that
order in each field in successive years. The turnips helped keep the weeds down
and were an excellent forage crop—ruminant animals could eat their tops and roots
through a large part of the summer and winters. There was no need to let the soil lie
fallow as clover would add nitrates (nitrogen-containing salts) back to the soil. The
clover made excellent pasture and hay fields as well as green manure when it was
plowed under after one or two years. The addition of clover and turnips allowed more
animals to be kept through the winter, which in turn produced more milk, cheese,
meat, and manure, which maintained soil fertility.

Charles ‘Turnip’ Townshend, agriculturalist who was a great enthusiast of four-field crop rotation and the
cultivation of turnips. Townshend is often mentioned, together with Jethro Tull, Robert Bakewell, and
others, as a major figure in England’s Agricultural Revolution, contributing to adoption of agricultural
practices that supported the increase in Britain’s population between 1700 and 1850.

Other Practices
In the mid-18th century, two British agriculturalists, Robert Bakewell and Thomas
Coke, introduced selective breeding as a scientific practice (mating together two
animals with particularly desirable characteristics) and using inbreeding (the mating
of close relatives) to stabilize certain qualities in order to reduce genetic diversity.
Arguably, Bakewell’s most important breeding program was with sheep. Using native
stock, he was able to quickly select for large, yet fine-boned sheep with long,
lustrous wool. Bakewell was also the first to breed cattle to be used primarily for
beef. Previously, cattle were first and foremost kept for pulling plows as oxen or for
dairy uses, with beef from surplus males as an additional bonus. As more and more
farmers followed Bakewell’s lead, farm animals increased dramatically in size and
quality.
Certain practices that contributed to a more productive use of land intensified, for
example converting some pasture land into arable land and recovering fen land and
some pastures. It is estimated that the amount of arable land in Britain grew by 10-
30% through these land conversions. Other developments came from Flanders and
and the Netherlands, where due to the large and dense population, farmers were
forced to take maximum advantage of every bit of usable land. The region became a
pioneer in canal building, soil restoration and maintenance, soil drainage, and land
reclamation technology. Dutch experts like Cornelius Vermuyden brought some of
this technology to Britain. Finally, water-meadows were utilized in the late 16th to the
20th centuries and allowed earlier pasturing of livestock after they were wintered on
hay. This increased livestock yields, giving more hides, meat, milk, and manure as
well as better hay crops.

Attributions

 New Agricultural Practices

o “Common
land.” [Link] Wikipedia CC BY-
SA 3.0.
o “British Agricultural
Revolution.” [Link]
tion. Wikipedia CC BY-SA 3.0.
o “Charles Townshend, 2nd Viscount
Townshend.” [Link]
_Viscount_Townshend. Wikipedia CC BY-SA 3.0.
o “Crop
rotation.” [Link] Wikipedia CC
BY-SA 3.0.
o “Industrial
Revolution.” [Link] Wikip
edia CC BY-SA 3.0.
o “Charles_Townshend_2nd_Viscount_Townshend_by_Sir_Godfrey_Knell
er_Bt_2.jpg.” [Link]
File:Charles_Townshend,_2nd_Viscount_Townshend_by_Sir_Godfr
ey_Kneller,_Bt_(2).jpg. Wikimedia Commons Public domain.

Agricultural Revolution: Mechanization

The mechanization and rationalization of agriculture was a key factor of the
Agricultural Revolution. New tools were invented and old ones perfected to improve
the efficiency of various agricultural operations.

The basic plough with coulter, ploughshare, and moldboard remained in use for a
millennium. Major changes in design did not become common until the Age of
Enlightenment, when there was rapid progress. The Dutch acquired the iron tipped,
curved moldboard, adjustable depth plough from the Chinese in the early 17th
century. It had the ability to be pulled by one or two oxen compared to the six or
eight needed by the heavy-wheeled northern European plough. The Dutch plough
was brought to Britain by Dutch contractors hired to drain East Anglian fens and
Somerset moors. The plough was extremely successful on wet, boggy soil, but soon
was used on ordinary land. In 1730, Joseph Foljambe in Rotherham, England, used
new shapes as the basis for the Rotherham plough, which also covered the
moldboard with iron. Unlike the heavy plough, the Rotherham (or Rotherham swing)
plough consisted entirely of the coulter, moldboard, and handles. By the 1760s
Foljambe was making large numbers of these ploughs in a factory outside of
Rotherham, using standard patterns with interchangeable parts. The plough was
easy for a blacksmith to make and by the end of the 18th century it was being made
in rural foundries. By 1770, it was the cheapest and best plough available. It spread
to Scotland, America, and France. It may have been the first plough to be widely built
in factories and the first to be commercially successful.

In 1789 Robert Ransome, an iron founder in Ipswich, started casting ploughshares in

a disused malting at St. Margaret’s Ditches. As a result of a mishap in his foundry, a
broken mold caused molten metal to come into contact with cold metal, making the
metal surface extremely hard — chilled casting — which he advertised as “self
sharpening” ploughs and received patents for his discovery. In 1789, Ransomes,
Sims & Jefferies was producing 86 plough models for different soils.

James Small further advanced the design. Using mathematical methods, he

experimented with various designs until he arrived at a shape cast from a single
piece of iron, an improvement on the Scots plough of James Anderson of Hermiston.
A single-piece cast iron plough was also developed and patented by Charles
Newbold in the United States. This was again improved on by Jethro Wood, a
blacksmith of Scipio, New York, who made a three-part Scots Plough that allowed a
broken piece to be replaced.

The seed drill was introduced from China, where it was invented in the 2nd century
BCE, to Italy in the mid-16th century. First attributed to Camillo Torello, it
was patented by the Venetian Senate in 1566. A seed drill was described in detail by
Tadeo Cavalina of Bologna in 1602. In England, it was further refined by Jethro Tull
in 1701. Before the introduction of the seed drill, the common practice was to plant
seeds by broadcasting (evenly throwing) them across the ground by hand on the
prepared soil and then lightly harrowing the soil to cover the seed. Seeds left on top
of the ground were eaten by birds, insects, and mice. There was no control over
spacing and seeds were planted too close together and too far apart. Alternately
seeds could be laboriously planted one by one using a hoe and/or a shovel. Cutting
down on wasted seed was important because the yield of seeds harvested to seeds
planted at that time was around four or [Link]’s drill was a mechanical seeder that
sowed efficiently at the correct depth and spacing and then covered the seed so that
it could grow. However, seed drills of this and successive types were both expensive
and unreliable, as well as fragile. They would not come into widespread use in
Europe until the mid-19th century. Early drills were small enough to be pulled by a
single horse, and many of these remained in use into the 1930s.
Jethro Tull’s seed drill (Horse-hoeing husbandry, 4th edition, 1762.

In his 1731 publication, Tull described how the motivation for developing the seed-
drill arose from conflict with his servants. He struggled to enforce his new methods
upon them, in part because they resisted the threat to their position as laborers and
skill with the plough. He also invented machinery for the purpose of carrying out his
system of drill husbandry, about 1733. His first invention was a drill-plough to sow
wheat and turnip seed in drills, three rows at a time.

A threshing machine or thresher is a piece of farm equipment that threshes grain:

removes the seeds from the stalks and husks by beating the plant to make the seeds
fall out. Before such machines were developed, threshing was done by hand with
flails and was very laborious and time-consuming, taking about one-quarter of
agricultural labor by the 18th century. Mechanization of this process removed a
substantial amount of drudgery from farm labor. The first threshing machine was
invented circa 1786 by the Scottish engineer Andrew Meikle and the subsequent
adoption of such machines was one of the earlier examples of the mechanization of
agriculture.
Attributions

 New Agricultural Tools

o “Plough.” [Link] Wikipedia CC BY-SA
3.0.
o `
o “Jethro Tull
(agriculturist).” [Link]
). Wikipedia CC BY-SA 3.0.
o “British Agricultural
Revolution.” [Link]
tion. Wikipedia CC BY-SA 3.0.
o “Seed drill .” [Link] Wikipedia CC
BY-SA 3.0.
o “Threshing
machine.” [Link] Wikipedi
a CC BY-SA 3.0.
o “Jethro_Tull_seed_drill_1762.png.” [Link]
wiki/File:Jethro_Tull_seed_drill_(1762).png. Wikimedia
Commons Public domain.

Background: Common Land

Common land is owned collectively by a number of persons, or by one person with
others holding certain traditional rights, such as to allow their livestock to graze upon
it, to collect firewood, or to cut turf for fuel. A person who has a right in or over
common land jointly with others is called a commoner. Originally in medieval
England, the common was an integral part of the manor and thus part of the
estate held by the lord of the manor under a feudal grant from the Crown or a
superior peer, who in turn held his land from the Crown, which owned all land. This
manorial system, founded on feudalism, granted rights of land use to different
classes. These would be appurtenant rights, meaning the ownership of rights
belonged to tenancies of particular plots of land held within a manor. A commoner
would be the person who for the time being occupied a particular plot of land. Some
rights of common were said to be in gross, or unconnected with tenure of land. This
was more usual in regions where commons were extensive, such as in the high
ground of Northern England or on the Fens, but also included many village
greens across England and Wales.

Enclosure
Most of the medieval common land of England was lost due to enclosure. In English
social and economic history, enclosure or inclosure was the process that ended
traditional rights such as mowing meadows for hay or grazing livestock on common
land formerly held in the open field system. Once enclosed, these uses of the land
became restricted to the owner and the land cased to be for the use of commoners.
In England and Wales, the term is also used for the process that ended the ancient
system of arable farming in open fields. Under enclosure, such land was fenced
(enclosed) and deeded or entitled to one or more owners. The process of enclosure
became a widespread feature of the English agricultural landscape during the 16th
century. By the 19th century, unenclosed commons were largely restricted to large
areas of rough pasture in mountainous places and relatively small residual parcels of
land in the lowlands.

Enclosure could be accomplished by buying the ground rights and all common rights
to accomplish exclusive rights of use, which increased the value of the land. The
other method was by passing laws causing or forcing enclosure, such as
parliamentary enclosure. The latter process of enclosure was sometimes
accompanied by force, resistance, and bloodshed, and remains among the most
controversial areas of agricultural and economic history in England.

Implementation Of The Acts

The more productive enclosed farms meant that fewer farmers were needed to work
the same land, leaving many villagers without land and grazing rights. Many moved
to the cities in search of work in the emerging factories of the Industrial Revolution.
Others settled in the English colonies. English Poor Laws were enacted to help these
newly poor. Some practices of enclosure were denounced by the Church and
legislation was drawn up against it. However, the large, enclosed fields were needed
for the gains in agricultural productivity from the 16th to 18th centuries. This
controversy led to a series of government acts, culminating in the General Enclosure
Act of 1801, which sanctioned large-scale land reform.

The Act of 1801 was one of many parliamentary enclosures that consolidated strips
in the open fields into more compact units and enclosed much of the remaining
pasture commons or wastes. Parliamentary enclosures usually provided commoners
with some other land in compensation for the loss of common rights, although often
of poor quality and limited extent. They were also used for the division and
privatization of common “wastes” (in the original sense of uninhabited places), such
as fens, marshes, heathland, downland, and moors. Voluntary enclosure was also
frequent at that time.
Conjectural map of a medieval English manor. The part allocated to “common pasture” is shown in the
north-east section, shaded green. William R. Shepherd, Historical Atlas, New York, Henry Holt and
Company, 1923.

After 1529, the problem of untended farmland disappeared with the rising population.
There was a desire for more arable land along with antagonism toward the tenant-
graziers with their flocks and herds. Increased demand along with a scarcity of
tillable land caused rents to rise dramatically in the 1520s to mid-century. There were
popular efforts to remove old enclosures and much legislation of the 1530s and
1540s concerns this shift. Angry tenants impatient to reclaim pastures for tillage were
illegally destroying enclosures.

Consequences
The primary benefits to large land holders came from increased value of their own
land, not from expropriation. Smaller holders could sell their land to larger ones for a
higher price post enclosure. Protests against parliamentary enclosures continued,
sometimes also in Parliament, frequently in the villages affected, and sometimes as
organized mass revolts. Enclosed land was twice as valuable, a price that could be
sustained by its higher productivity. While many villagers received plots in the newly
enclosed manor, for small landholders this compensation was not always enough to
offset the costs of enclosure and fencing. Many historians believe that enclosure was
an important factor in the reduction of small landholders in England as compared to
the Continent, although others believe that this process began earlier.
 Enclosure faced a great deal of popular resistance because of its effects on the
household economies of smallholders and landless laborers. Common rights had
included not just the right of cattle or sheep grazing, but also the grazing of geese,
foraging for pigs, gleaning, berrying, and fuel gathering. During the period of
parliamentary enclosures, employment in agriculture did not fall, but failed to keep
pace with the growing population. Consequently, large numbers of people left rural
areas to move into the cities where they became laborers in the Industrial
Revolution.

Enclosure is considered one of the causes of the British Agricultural Revolution.

Enclosed land was under control of the farmer, who was free to adopt better farming
practices. There was widespread agreement in contemporary accounts that profit
making opportunities were better with enclosed land. Following enclosure, crop
yields and livestock output increased while at the same time productivity increased
enough to create a surplus of labor. The increased labor supply is considered one of
the factors facilitating the Industrial Revolution.

Attributions

 The Enclosure Act

o “History of
agriculture.” [Link] Wiki
pedia CC BY-SA 3.0.
o “Common
land.” [Link] Wikipedia CC BY-
SA 3.0.
o “British Agricultural
Revolution.” [Link]
tion. Wikipedia CC BY-SA 3.0.
o “Enclosure.” [Link] Wikipedia CC
BY-SA 3.0.
o “Industrial
Revolution.” [Link] Wikip
edia CC BY-SA 3.0.
o “Inclosure
Acts.” [Link] Wikipedia CC BY-
SA 3.0.
o “300px-Plan_mediaeval_manor.jpg.” [Link]
wiki/File:Plan_mediaeval_manor.jpg. Wikimedia Commons Public
domain.

Animal husbandry
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From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

For the dice game, see Animal Husbandry (game).

Cattle feedlot in Colorado, United States

Animal husbandry is the branch of agriculture concerned with animals that are
raised for meat, fibre, milk, or other products. It includes day-to-day care, selective
breeding, and the raising of livestock. Husbandry has a long history, starting with
the Neolithic Revolution when animals were first domesticated, from around 13,000
BC onwards, predating farming of the first crops. By the time of early civilisations
such as ancient Egypt, cattle, sheep, goats, and pigs were being raised on farms.
Major changes took place in the Columbian exchange, when Old World livestock
were brought to the New World, and then in the British Agricultural Revolution of the
18th century, when livestock breeds like the Dishley Longhorn cattle and Lincoln
Longwool sheep were rapidly improved by agriculturalists, such as Robert Bakewell,
to yield more meat, milk, and wool. A wide range of other species, such
as horse, water buffalo, llama, rabbit, and guinea pig, are used as livestock in some
parts of the world. Insect farming, as well as aquaculture of fish, molluscs,
and crustaceans, is widespread. Modern animal husbandry relies on production
systems adapted to the type of land available. Subsistence farming is being
superseded by intensive animal farming in the more developed parts of the world,
where, for example, beef cattle are kept in high-density feedlots, and thousands
of chickens may be raised in broiler houses or batteries. On poorer soil, such as in
uplands, animals are often kept more extensively and may be allowed to roam
widely, foraging for themselves.
Most livestock are herbivores, except for pigs and chickens which
are omnivores. Ruminants like cattle and sheep are adapted to feed on grass; they
can forage outdoors or may be fed entirely or in part on rations richer in energy and
protein, such as pelleted cereals. Pigs and poultry cannot digest the cellulose in
forage and require other high-protein foods.

Etymology[edit]
The verb to husband, meaning "to manage carefully," derives from an older meaning
of husband, which in the 14th century referred to the ownership and care of a
household or farm, but today means the "control or judicious use of resources," and
in agriculture, the cultivation of plants or animals.[1] Farmers and ranchers who raise
livestock are considered to practice animal husbandry.

History[edit]
Further information: History of agriculture
Birth of husbandry[edit]
Main articles: Neolithic Revolution and Domestication of animals

The domestication of ruminants, like these fat-tailed

sheep in Afghanistan, provided nomads across the Middle East and central Asia with
a reliable source of food.
The domestication of livestock was driven by the need to have food on hand when
hunting was unproductive. The desirable characteristics of a domestic animal are
that it should be useful to the domesticator, should be able to thrive in his or her
company, should breed freely, and be easy to tend.[2] Domestication was not a single
event, but a process repeated at various periods in different places. Sheep and
goats were the animals that accompanied the nomads in the Middle East, while
cattle and pigs were associated with more settled communities.[3] The first wild animal
to be domesticated was the dog. Half-wild dogs, perhaps starting with young
individuals, may have been tolerated as scavengers and killers of vermin, and being
naturally pack hunters, were predisposed to become part of the human pack and join
in the hunt. Prey animals, sheep, goats, pigs and cattle, were progressively
domesticated early in the history of agriculture.[3] Pigs were domesticated in the Near
East between 8,500 and 8000 BC,[4] sheep and goats in or near the Fertile
Crescent about 8,500 BC,[5] and cattle from wild aurochs in the areas of modern
Turkey and Pakistan around 8,500 BC.[6] A cow was a great advantage to a villager
as she produced more milk than her calf needed, and her strength could be put to
use as a working animal, pulling a plough to increase production of crops, and
drawing a sledge, and later a cart, to bring the produce home from the field. Draught
animals were first used about 4,000 BC in the Middle East, increasing agricultural
production immeasurably.[3]
In southern Asia, the elephant was domesticated by 6,000 BC.[7] Fossilised chicken
bones dated to 5040 BC have been found in northeastern China, far from where their
wild ancestors lived in the jungles of tropical Asia, but archaeologists believe that the
original purpose of domestication was for the sport of cockfighting.[8] Meanwhile, in
South America, the llama and the alpaca had been domesticated, probably before
3,000 BC, as beasts of burden and for their wool. Neither was strong enough to pull
a plough which limited the development of agriculture in the New World.[3] Horses
occur naturally on the steppes of Central Asia and their domestication began around
3,000 BC in the Black Sea and Caspian Sea region. Although horses were originally
seen as a source of meat, their use as pack animals and for riding followed. Around
the same time, the wild ass was being tamed in Egypt. Camels were domesticated
soon after this,[9] with the Bactrian camel in Mongolia and the Arabian
camel becoming beasts of burden. By 1000 BC, caravans of Arabian camels were
linking India with Mesopotamia and the Mediterranean.[3]
Ancient civilisations[edit]

Milking cattle in ancient Egypt

In ancient Egypt, cattle were the most important livestock, and sheep, goats, and
pigs were also kept; poultry including ducks, geese, and pigeons were captured in
nets and bred on farms, where they were force-fed with dough to fatten them. [10] The
Nile provided a plentiful source of fish. Honey bees were domesticated from at least
the Old Kingdom, providing both honey and wax.[11] In ancient Rome, all the livestock
known in ancient Egypt were available. In addition, rabbits were domesticated for
food by the first century BC. To help flush them out from their burrows,
the polecat was domesticated as the ferret, its use described by Pliny the Elder.[12]
Medieval husbandry[edit

Shepherd with sheep in woven hurdle pen. Medieval

France. 15th century, Bodleian Library, MS Douce 195
In northern Europe, agriculture including animal husbandry went into decline when
the Roman empire collapsed. Some aspects such as the herding of animals
continued throughout the period. By the 11th century, the economy had recovered
and the countryside was again productive.[13] The Domesday Book recorded every
parcel of land and every animal in England: "there was not one single hide, nor a
yard of land, nay, moreover ... not even an ox, nor a cow, nor a swine was there left,
that was not set down in [the king's] writ."[14] For example, the
royal manor of Earley in Berkshire, one of thousands of villages recorded in the
book, had in 1086 "2 fisheries worth [paying tax of] 7s and 6d [each year] and 20
acres of meadow [for livestock]. Woodland for [feeding] 70 pigs."[15] The
improvements of animal husbandry in the medieval period in Europe went hand in
hand with other developments. Improvements to the plough allowed the soil to be
tilled to a greater depth. Horses took over from oxen as the main providers of
traction, new ideas on crop rotation were developed and the growing of crops for
winter fodder gained ground.[16] Peas, beans and vetches became common; they
increased soil fertility through nitrogen fixation, allowing more livestock to be kept. [17]
Columbian exchange[edit]
Main article: Columbian exchange
Exploration and colonisation of North and South America resulted in the introduction
into Europe of such crops as maize, potatoes, sweet potatoes and manioc, while the
principal Old World livestock – cattle, horses, sheep and goats – were introduced
into the New World for the first time along with wheat, barley, rice and turnips. [18]
Agricultural Revolution[edit]
Main article: British Agricultural Revolution

The Lincoln Longwool breed was improved by Robert

Bakewell in the 18th century.
Selective breeding for desired traits was established as a scientific practice
by Robert Bakewell during the British Agricultural Revolution in the 18th century.
One of his most important breeding programs was with sheep. Using native stock, he
was able to quickly select for large, yet fine-boned sheep, with long, lustrous wool.
The Lincoln Longwool was improved by Bakewell and in turn the Lincoln was used to
develop the subsequent breed, named the New (or Dishley) Leicester. It
was hornless and had a square, meaty body with straight top lines.[19] These sheep
were exported widely and have contributed to numerous modern breeds. Under his
influence, English farmers began to breed cattle for use primarily as beef. Long-
horned heifers were crossed with the Westmoreland bull to create the Dishley
Longhorn.[20]
The semi-natural, unfertilised pastures formed by traditional agricultural methods in
Europe were managed by grazing and mowing. As the ecological impact of this land
management strategy is similar to the impact of such natural disturbances as
a wildfire, this agricultural system shares many beneficial characteristics with a
natural habitat, including the promotion of biodiversity. This strategy is declining in
Europe today due to the intensification of agriculture. The mechanized and chemical
methods used are causing biodiversity to decline.[21]
Practices[edit]
Further information: Livestock
Systems[edit]
Further information: Agriculture § Livestock production systems, and Intensive
animal farming

Herdwick sheep in an extensive hill

farming system, Lake District, England
Traditionally, animal husbandry was part of the subsistence farmer's way of life,
producing not only the food needed by the family but also the fuel, fertiliser, clothing,
transport and draught power. Killing the animal for food was a secondary
consideration, and wherever possible its products such as wool, eggs, milk and
blood (by the Maasai) were harvested while the animal was still alive.[22] In the
traditional system of transhumance, people and livestock moved seasonally between
fixed summer and winter pastures; in montane regions the summer pasture was up
in the mountains, the winter pasture in the valleys.[23]
Animals can be kept extensively or intensively. Extensive systems involve animals
roaming at will, or under the supervision of a herdsman, often for their protection
from predators. Ranching in the Western United States involves large herds of cattle
grazing widely over public and private lands.[24] Similar cattle stations are found in
South America, Australia and other places with large areas of land and low rainfall.
Ranching systems have been used for sheep, deer, ostrich, emu, llama and alpaca.
[25]

In the uplands of the United Kingdom, sheep are turned out on the fells in spring and
graze the abundant mountain grasses untended, being brought to lower altitudes late
in the year, with supplementary feeding being provided in winter.[26] In rural
locations, pigs and poultry can obtain much of their nutrition from scavenging, and in
African communities, hens may live for months without being fed, and still produce
one or two eggs a week.[22]

Pigs in an intensive system, Midwestern United

States
At the other extreme, in the more developed parts of the world, animals are often
intensively managed; dairy cows may be kept in zero-grazing conditions with all their
forage brought to them; beef cattle may be kept in high density feedlots;[27] pigs may
be housed in climate-controlled buildings and never go outdoors;[28] poultry may be
reared in barns and kept in cages as laying birds under lighting-controlled conditions.
In between these two extremes are semi-intensive, often family-run farms where
livestock graze outside for much of the year, silage or hay is made to cover the times
of year when the grass stops growing, and fertiliser, feed, and other inputs are
brought onto the farm from outside.[29]
Feeding[edit]
Main article: Animal feed

Cattle around an outdoor feeder

Animals used as livestock are predominantly herbivorous, the main exceptions being
the pig and the chicken which are omnivorous. The herbivores can be divided into
"concentrate selectors" which selectively feed on seeds, fruits and highly nutritious
young foliage, "grazers" which mainly feed on grass, and "intermediate feeders"
which choose their diet from the whole range of available plant material. Cattle,
sheep, goats, deer and antelopes are ruminants; they digest food in two steps,
chewing and swallowing in the normal way, and then regurgitating the semidigested
cud to chew it again and thus extract the maximum possible food value.[30] The dietary
needs of these animals is mostly met by eating grass. Grasses grow from the base
of the leaf-blade, enabling it to thrive even when heavily grazed or cut.[31]
In many climates grass growth is seasonal, for example in the temperate summer or
tropical rainy season, so some areas of the crop are set aside to be cut and
preserved, either as hay (dried grass), or as silage (fermented grass).[32] Other forage
crops are also grown and many of these, as well as crop residues, can be ensiled to
fill the gap in the nutritional needs of livestock in the lean season.[33]

Cattle feed pellets of pressed linseed

Extensively reared animals may subsist entirely on forage, but more intensively kept
livestock will require energy and protein-rich foods in addition. Energy is mainly
derived from cereals and cereal by-products, fats and oils and sugar-rich foods,
while protein may come from fish or meat meal, milk products, legumes and other
plant foods, often the by-products of vegetable oil extraction.[34] Pigs and poultry are
non-ruminants and unable to digest the cellulose in grass and other forages, so they
are fed entirely on cereals and other high-energy foodstuffs. The ingredients for the
animals' rations can be grown on the farm or can be bought, in the form of pelleted
or cubed, compound foodstuffs specially formulated for the different classes of
livestock, their growth stages and their specific nutritional requirements. Vitamins
and minerals are added to balance the diet.[35] Farmed fish are usually fed pelleted
food.[35]
Breeding[edit]
Main article: Animal breeding
The breeding of farm animals seldom occurs spontaneously but is managed by
farmers with a view to encouraging traits seen as desirable. These include
hardiness, fertility, docility, mothering abilities, fast growth rates, low feed
consumption per unit of growth, better body proportions, higher yields, and better
fibre qualities. Undesirable traits such as health defects and aggressiveness are
selected against.[36][37]
Selective breeding has been responsible for large increases in productivity. For
example, in 2007, a typical broiler chicken at eight weeks old was 4.8 times as heavy
as a bird of similar age in 1957,[36] while in the thirty years to 2007, the average milk
yield of a dairy cow in the United States nearly doubled.[36]
Animal health[edit]
Further information: Veterinary medicine

Vaccinating a goat, Niger

Good husbandry, proper feeding, and hygiene are the main contributors to animal
health on the farm, bringing economic benefits through maximised production.
When, despite these precautions, animals still become sick, they are treated
with veterinary medicines, by the farmer and the veterinarian. In the European
Union, when farmers treat their own animals, they are required to follow the
guidelines for treatment and to record the treatments given.[38] Animals are
susceptible to a number of diseases and conditions that may affect their health.
Some, like classical swine fever[39] and scrapie[40] are specific to one type of stock,
while others, like foot-and-mouth disease affect all cloven-hoofed animals.[41] Animals
living under intensive conditions are prone to internal and external parasites;
increasing numbers of sea lice are affecting farmed salmon in Scotland.[42] Reducing
the parasite burdens of livestock results in increased productivity and profitability. [43]
Where the condition is serious, governments impose regulations on import and
export, on the movement of stock, quarantine restrictions and the reporting of
suspected cases. Vaccines are available against certain diseases, and antibiotics
are widely used where appropriate. At one time, antibiotics were routinely added to
certain compound foodstuffs to promote growth, but this practice is now frowned on
in many countries because of the risk that it may lead to antimicrobial resistance in
livestock and in humans.[44]

Familiar livestock: ink and watercolour drawing of a

farmyard with cow, horse, pigs, and chickens, 1869
Governments are concerned with zoonoses, diseases that humans may acquire from
animals. Wild animal populations may harbour diseases that can affect domestic
animals which may acquire them as a result of insufficient biosecurity. An outbreak
of Nipah virus in Malaysia in 1999 was traced back to pigs becoming ill after contact
with fruit-eating flying foxes, their faeces and urine. The pigs in turn passed the
infection to humans.[45] Avian flu H5N1 is present in wild bird populations and can be
carried large distances by migrating birds. This virus is easily transmissible to
domestic poultry, and to humans living in close proximity with them. Other infectious
diseases affecting wild animals, farm animals and humans
include rabies, leptospirosis, brucellosis, tuberculosis and trichinosis.[46]
Range of species[edit]
Main articles: Livestock § Types, Aquaculture § Species groups, and Entomophagy
There is no single universally agreed definition of which species are livestock. Widely
agreed types of livestock include cattle for beef and dairy, sheep, goats, pigs, and
poultry. Various other species are sometimes considered livestock, such as horses,
[47]
while poultry birds are sometimes excluded. In some parts of the world, livestock
includes species such as buffalo, and the South American camelids, the alpaca and
llama.[48][49][50] Some authorities use much broader definitions to include fish
in aquaculture, micro-livestock such as rabbits and rodents like guinea pigs, as well
as insects from honey bees to crickets raised for human consumption.[51]
 Shearing a Merino sheep for its wool

Products[edit]
Main article: Animal product
Animals are raised for a wide variety of products, principally meat, wool, milk,
and eggs, but also including tallow, isinglass and rennet.[52][53] Animals are also kept
for more specialised purposes, such as to
produce vaccines[54] and antiserum (containing antibodies) for medical use.
[55]
Where fodder or other crops are grown alongside animals, manure can serve as a
fertiliser, returning minerals and organic matter to the soil in a semi-closed organic
system.[56]

Branches[edit]
Dairy[edit]
Main article: Dairy farming

A modern rotary milking parlour, Germany

Although all mammals produce milk to nourish their young, the cow is predominantly
used throughout the world to produce milk and milk products for human
consumption. Other animals used to a lesser extent for this purpose include sheep,
goats, camels, buffaloes, yaks, reindeer, horses and donkeys.[57]
All these animals have been domesticated over the centuries, being bred for such
desirable characteristics as fecundity, productivity, docility and the ability to thrive
under the prevailing conditions. Whereas in the past cattle had multiple functions,
modern dairy cow breeding has resulted in specialised Holstein Friesian-
type animals that produce large quantities of milk economically. Artificial
insemination is widely available to allow farmers to select for the particular traits that
suit their circumstances.[58]
Whereas in the past cows were kept in small herds on family farms, grazing pastures
and being fed hay in winter, nowadays there is a trend towards larger herds, more
intensive systems, the feeding of silage and "zero grazing", a system where grass is
cut and brought to the cow, which is housed year-round.[59]
In many communities, milk production is only part of the purpose of keeping an
animal which may also be used as a beast of burden or to draw a plough, or for the
production of fibre, meat and leather, with the dung being used for fuel or for the
improvement of soil fertility. Sheep and goats may be favoured for dairy production in
climates and conditions that do not suit dairy cows.[57]
Meat[edit]

The Hereford is a hardy breed of beef cattle, now

raised in many countries around the world.
Main articles: Meat industry, Cattle, Sheep farming, Pig farming, and Cuniculture
Meat, mainly from farmed animals, is a major source of dietary protein and essential
nutrients around the world, averaging about 8% of man's energy intake.[60] The actual
types eaten depend on local preferences, availability, cost and other factors, with
cattle, sheep, pigs and goats being the main species involved. Cattle generally
produce a single offspring annually which takes more than a year to mature; sheep
and goats often have twins and these are ready for slaughter in less than a year;
pigs are more prolific, producing more than one litter of up to about 11[61] piglets each
year.[62] Horses, donkeys, deer, buffalo, llamas, alpacas, guanacos and vicunas are
farmed for meat in various regions. Some desirable traits of animals raised for meat
include fecundity, hardiness, fast growth rate, ease of management and high food
conversion efficiency. About half of the world's meat is produced from animals
grazing on open ranges or on enclosed pastures, the other half being produced
intensively in various factory-farming systems; these are mostly cows, pigs or
poultry, and often reared indoors, typically at high densities.[63]
Poultry[edit]

Battery hens, Brazil

Main article: Poultry farming
Poultry, kept for their eggs and for their meat, include chickens, turkeys, geese and
ducks. The great majority of laying birds used for egg production are chickens.
Methods for keeping layers range from free-range systems, where the birds can
roam as they will but are housed at night for their own protection, through semi-
intensive systems where they are housed in barns and have perches, litter and some
freedom of movement, to intensive systems where they are kept in cages.
The battery cages are arranged in long rows in multiple tiers, with external feeders,
drinkers, and egg collection facilities. This is the most labour saving and economical
method of egg production but has been criticised on animal welfare grounds as the
birds are unable to exhibit their normal behaviours.[64]
In the developed world, the majority of the poultry reared for meat is raised indoors in
big sheds, with automated equipment under environmentally controlled conditions.
Chickens raised in this way are known as broilers, and genetic improvements have
meant that they can be grown to slaughter weight within six or seven weeks of
hatching. Newly hatched chicks are restricted to a small area and given
supplementary heating. Litter on the floor absorbs the droppings and the area
occupied is expanded as they grow. Feed and water is supplied automatically and
the lighting is controlled. The birds may be harvested on several occasions or the
whole shed may be cleared at one time.[65]
A similar rearing system is usually used for turkeys, which are less hardy than
chickens, but they take longer to grow and are often moved on to separate fattening
units to finish.[66] Ducks are particularly popular in Asia and Australia and can be killed
at seven weeks under commercial conditions.[67]
Aquaculture[edit]

Freshwater fish farming, France

Main article: Aquaculture
Aquaculture has been defined as "the farming of aquatic organisms including fish,
molluscs, crustaceans and aquatic plants and implies some form of intervention in
the rearing process to enhance production, such as regular stocking, feeding,
protection from predators, etc. Farming also implies individual or corporate
ownership of the stock being cultivated."[68] In practice it can take place in the sea or
in freshwater, and be extensive or intensive. Whole bays, lakes or ponds may be
devoted to aquaculture, or the farmed animal may be retained in cages
(fish), artificial reefs, racks or strings (shellfish). Fish and prawns can be cultivated
in rice paddies, either arriving naturally or being introduced, and both crops can be
harvested together.[69]
Fish hatcheries provide larval and juvenile fish, crustaceans and shellfish, for use in
aquaculture systems. When large enough these are transferred to growing-on tanks
and sold to fish farms to reach harvest size. Some species that are commonly raised
in hatcheries include shrimps, prawns, salmon, tilapia, oysters and scallops. Similar
facilities can be used to raise species with conservation needs to be released into
the wild, or game fish for restocking waterways. Important aspects of husbandry at
these early stages include selection of breeding stock, control of water quality and
nutrition. In the wild, there is a massive amount of mortality at the nursery stage;
farmers seek to minimise this while at the same time maximising growth rates.[70]
Insects[edit]

Crickets being raised for human consumption,

Thailand
Further information: Beekeeping, Entomophagy, Insect farming, and Sericulture
Bees have been kept in hives since at least the First Dynasty of Egypt, five thousand
years ago,[71] and man had been harvesting honey from the wild long before that.
Fixed comb hives are used in many parts of the world and are made from any locally
available material.[72] In more advanced economies, where modern strains of
domestic bee have been selected for docility and productiveness, various designs of
hive are used which enable the combs to be removed for processing and extraction
of honey. Quite apart from the honey and wax they produce, honey bees are
important pollinators of crops and wild plants, and in many places hives are
transported around the countryside to assist in pollination.[73]
Sericulture, the rearing of silkworms, was first adopted by the Chinese during
the Shang dynasty.[74] The only species farmed commercially is the
domesticated silkmoth. When it spins its cocoon, each larva produces an
exceedingly long, slender thread of silk. The larvae feed on mulberry leaves and in
Europe, only one generation is normally raised each year as this is a deciduous tree.
In China, Korea and Japan however, two generations are normal, and in the tropics,
multiple generations are expected. Most production of silk occurs in the Far East,
with a synthetic diet being used to rear the silkworms in Japan.[75]
Insects form part of the human diet in many cultures.[76] In Thailand, crickets are
farmed for this purpose in the north of the country, and palm weevil larvae in the
south. The crickets are kept in pens, boxes or drawers and fed on commercial
pelleted poultry food, while the palm weevil larvae live on cabbage palm and sago
palm trees, which limits their production to areas where these trees grow.[77] Another
delicacy of this region is the bamboo caterpillar, and the best rearing and harvesting
techniques in semi-natural habitats are being studied.[77]

Effects[edit]
Environmental impact[edit]
Main articles: Environmental impact of livestock and Environmental impact of meat
production
 Livestock production requires large areas of land.
Animal husbandry has a significant impact on the world environment. Both
production and consumption of animal products have increased rapidly. Over the
past 50 years, meat production has trebled, whereas the production of dairy products
doubled and that of eggs almost increased fourfold.[78] Meanwhile, meat consumption
has also nearly doubled worldwide. Within that increased overall consumption of
meat, developing countries had a surge in meat consumption particularly in the
portion of monogastric livestock.[79] Being a part of the animal–industrial complex,
animal agriculture is the primary driver of climate change, ocean acidification,
biodiversity loss, and of the crossing of almost every other planetary boundary, in
addition to killing more than 60 billion non-human land animals annually.[80] It is
responsible for somewhere between 20 and 33% of the fresh water usage in the
world,[81] and livestock, and the production of feed for them, occupy about a third of
the Earth's ice-free land.[82] Livestock production is a contributing factor in
species extinction, desertification,[83] and habitat destruction.[84] Animal agriculture
contributes to species extinction in various ways and is the primary driver of
the Holocene extinction.[85][86][87][88][89] It is estimated that 70% of the agricultural land and
30% of the total land surface of the Earth is involved either directly or indirectly in
animal agriculture.[90] Habitat is destroyed by clearing forests and converting land to
grow feed crops and for animal grazing, while predators and herbivores are
frequently targeted and hunted because of a perceived threat to livestock profits; for
example, animal husbandry is responsible for up to 91% of the deforestation in the
Amazon region.[91] In addition, livestock produce greenhouse gases. Cows produce
some 570 million cubic metres of methane per day,[92] that accounts for 35 to 40% of
the overall methane emissions of the planet.[93] Further, livestock production is
responsible for 65% of all human-related emissions of nitrous oxide.[93][94][60]
As a result, ways of mitigating animal husbandry's environmental impact are being
studied. Strategies include using biogas from manure,[95] genetic selection,[96]
[97]
immunization, rumen defaunation, outcompetition of methanogenic archaea
with acetogens,[98] introduction of methanotrophic bacteria into the rumen,[99][100] diet
modification and grazing management, among others.[101][102][103] It has been suggested
that beef products finished in feedlot are less resource intensive than those pastured
beef products.[104] A diet change (with Asparagopsis taxiformis) allowed for a reduction
of up to 99% of methane production in an experimental study with three ruminants. [105]
[106]

Animal welfare[edit]
Main article: Animal welfare
Since the 18th century, people have become increasingly concerned about the
welfare of farm animals. Possible measures of welfare
include longevity, behavior, physiology, reproduction, freedom from disease, and
freedom from immunosuppression. Standards and laws for animal welfare have
been created worldwide, broadly in line with the most widely held position in the
western world, a form of utilitarianism: that it is morally acceptable for humans to use
non-human animals, provided that no unnecessary suffering is caused, and that the
benefits to humans outweigh the costs to the livestock. An opposing view is
that animals have rights, should not be regarded as property, are not necessary to
use, and should never be used by humans.[107][108][109][110][111] Live export of animals has
risen to meet increased global demand for livestock such as in the Middle East.
Animal rights activists have objected to long-distance transport of animals; one result
was the banning of live exports from New Zealand in 2003.[112]
David Nibert, professor of sociology at Wittenberg University, posits that, based on
contemporary scholarship by ethologists and biologists about the sentience and
intelligence of other animals, "we can assume that, for the most part, the other
animals' experience of capture, enslavement, use, and slaying was one of suffering
and violence." Much of this involved direct physical violence, but also structural
violence as their systemic oppression and enslavement "resulted in their inability to
meet their basic needs, the loss of self-determination, and the loss of opportunity to
live in a natural way." He says that the remains of domesticated animals from
thousands of years ago found during archeological excavations revealed numerous
bone pathologies, which provide evidence of extreme suffering:
Excavations from 8500 BCE revealed bone deformities in enslaved goats and cows
and provided "some indication of stress, presumably due to the conditions in which
these early domestic animals were kept." Remains of sheep and goats from the early
Bronze Age show a marked decrease in bone thickness, reflecting calcium
deficiencies "resulting from the combined effects of poor nutrition and intensive
milking."[113]

In culture[edit]
Opening of the budget; – or – John Bull giving his breeches to save his bacon [note

by James Gillray (d. 1815)

1]

Since the 18th century, the farmer John Bull has represented English national
identity, first in John Arbuthnot's political satires, and soon afterwards in cartoons
by James Gillray and others including John Tenniel. He likes food, beer, dogs,
horses, and country sports; he is practical and down to earth, and anti-intellectual.[114]
Farm animals are widespread in books and songs for children; the reality of animal
husbandry is often distorted, softened, or idealized, giving children an almost entirely
fictitious account of farm life. The books often depict happy animals free to roam in
attractive countryside, a picture completely at odds with the realities of the
impersonal, mechanized activities involved in modern intensive farming.[115]
 Dressed pigs in Beatrix Potter's 1913 The Tale of Pigling
Bland
Pigs, for example, appear in several of Beatrix Potter's "little books", as Piglet in A.A.
Milne's Winnie the Pooh stories, and somewhat more darkly (with a hint of animals
going to slaughter) as Babe in Dick King-Smith's The Sheep-Pig, and as Wilbur in E.
B. White's Charlotte's Web.[116] Pigs tend to be "bearers of cheerfulness, good humour
and innocence". Many of these books are completely anthropomorphic, dressing
farm animals in clothes and having them walk on two legs, live in houses, and
perform human activities.[115] The children's song "Old MacDonald Had a Farm"
describes a farmer named MacDonald and the various animals he keeps, celebrating
the noises they each make.[117]
Many urban children experience animal husbandry for the first time at a petting farm;
in Britain, some five million people a year visit a farm of some kind. This presents
some risk of infection, especially if children handle animals and then fail to wash their
hands; a strain of E. coli infected 93 people who had visited a British interactive farm
in an outbreak in 2009.[118] Historic farms such as those in the United States offer
farmstays and "a carefully curated version of farming to those willing to pay for it",
[119]
sometimes giving visitors a romanticised image of a pastoral idyll from an
unspecified time in the pre-industrial past.[119]

See also[edit]
 Animal–industrial complex
 Agribusiness
 Fishery
 Food vs. feed
 Industrial agriculture
 Wildlife farming
 Zootechnics

Notes[edit]
1. ^ Both the name Bull and the reference to bacon indicate the archetypal livestock farmer.

References[edit]
Citations[edit]
 1. ^ Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary (11 ed.). Springfield, MA: Merriam-Webster,
Incorporated. 2004. p. 607. ISBN 0-87779-825-7.
2. ^ Clutton-Brock, Juliet (1999). A Natural History of Domesticated Mammals. Cambridge University
Press. pp. 1–2. ISBN 978-0-521-63495-3.
3. ^ Jump up to:a b c d e "History of the domestication of animals". Historyworld. Retrieved 3
June 2017.
4. ^ Caliebe, Amke; et al. (16 March 2017). "Insights into early pig domestication provided by ancient
DNA analysis". Scientific Reports. 7:
44550. Bibcode:2017NatSR...744550C. doi:10.1038/srep44550. PMC 5353713. PMID 28300151.
5. ^ Orozco-terWengel, Pablo (20 March 2018). "New light shed on the domestication history of
sheep and goats". Cardiff University.
6. ^ McTavish, E.J.; Decker, J.E.; Schnabel, R.D.; Taylor, J.F.; Hillis, D.M. (2013). "New World cattle
show ancestry from multiple independent domestication events". PNAS. National Academy of
Sciences. 110 (15): 1398–
1406. Bibcode:2013PNAS..110E1398M. doi:10.1073/pnas.1303367110. PMC 3625352. PMID 23
530234. Cattle were independently domesticated from the aurochs, a wild bovine species, in the
vicinity of the current countries of Turkey and Pakistan ~10,000 y ago.
7. ^ Gupta, Anil K. in Origin of agriculture and domestication of plants and animals linked to early
Holocene climate amelioration, Current Science, Vol. 87, No. 1, 10 July 2004 59. Indian Academy
of Sciences.
8. ^ Adler, Jerry; Lawler, Andrew (1 June 2012). "How the Chicken Conquered the
World". Smithsonian Magazine. Retrieved 5 June 2017.
9. ^ Sapir-Hen, Lidar; Ben-Yosef, Erez (2013). "The Introduction of Domestic Camels to the
Southern Levant: Evidence from the Aravah Valley" (PDF). Tel Aviv. 40 (2): 277–
85. doi:10.1179/033443513x13753505864089. S2CID 44282748.
10. ^ Manuelian, Peter der (1998). Egypt: The World of the Pharaohs. Cologne: Könemann.
p. 381. ISBN 978-3-89508-913-8.
11. ^ Nicholson, Paul T. (2000). Ancient Egyptian Materials and Technology. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press. p. 409. ISBN 978-0-521-45257-1.
12. ^ Clutton-Brock, Juliet (1981). Domesticated animals from early times. Heinemann.
p. 145. ISBN 9780434139507.
13. ^ O'Connor, Terry (30 September 2014). "Livestock and animal husbandry in early medieval
England" (PDF). Quaternary International. 346: 109–
18. Bibcode:2014QuInt.346..109O. doi:10.1016/[Link].2013.09.019.
14. ^ The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. Translated by Giles, J.A.; Ingram, J. Project Gutenberg. 1996.
15. ^ "Interpreting Domesday". The National Archives. Retrieved 26 May 2017.
16. ^ "The progress of farming in Medieval Europe". History of Agriculture. University of Reading.
Retrieved 28 May 2017.
17. ^ Campbell, Bruce M.S.; Overton, M. (1993). "A New Perspective on Medieval and Early Modern
Agriculture: Six Centuries of Norfolk Farming, c. 1250 – c. 1850". Past and Present. 141: 38–
105. doi:10.1093/past/141.1.38.
18. ^ Crosby, Alfred. "The Columbian Exchange". History Now. The Gilder Lehrman Institute of
American History. Retrieved 28 May 2017.
19. ^ "Robert Bakewell (1725–1795)". BBC History. Retrieved 20 July 2012.
20. ^ "English Longhorn". The Cattle Site. Retrieved 26 May 2017.
21. ^ Pykala, Juha (2000). "Mitigating Human Effects of European Biodiversity Through Traditional
Animal Husbandry". Conservation Biology. 14 (3): 705–12. doi:10.1046/j.1523-
1739.2000.99119.x. S2CID 53393839.
22. ^ Jump up to:a b Webster, John (2013). Animal Husbandry Regained: The Place of Farm Animals
in Sustainable Agriculture. Routledge. pp. 4–10. ISBN 978-1-84971-420-4.
23. ^ Blench, Roger (17 May 2001). 'You can't go home again' – Pastoralism in the new
millennium (PDF). London, UK: Overseas Development Institute. p. 12. Archived from the
original (PDF) on 1 February 2012. Retrieved 4 June 2017.
24. ^ Starrs, Paul F. (2000). Let the Cowboy Ride: Cattle Ranching in the American West. JHU Press.
pp. 1–2. ISBN 978-0-8018-6351-6.
25. ^ Levinson, David; Christensen, Karen (2003). Encyclopedia of Community: From the Village to
the Virtual World. Sage. p. 1139. ISBN 978-0-7619-2598-9.
26. ^ Rebanks, James (2015). The Shepherd's Life. Penguin: Random House. p. 286. ISBN 978-0-
14-197936-6.

Sources[edit]
  Saltini, Antonio. Storia delle scienze agrarie, 4 vols, Bologna 1984–89, ISBN 88-206-2412-5, 88-206-
2413-3, 88-206-2414-1, 88-206-2415-X.
 Clutton Brock, Juliet. The walking larder. Patterns of domestication, pastoralism and predation, Unwin
Hyman, London 1988.
 Clutton Brock, Juliet. Horse power: a history of the horse and donkey in human societies, National
history Museum publications, London 1992.
 Fleming, George; Guzzoni, M. Storia cronologica delle epizoozie dal 1409 av. Cristo sino al 1800, in
Gazzetta medico-veterinaria, I–II, Milano 1871–72.
 Hall, S; Clutton Brock, Juliet. Two hundred years of British farm livestock, Natural History Museum
Publications, London 1988.
 Janick, Jules; Noller, Carl H.; Rhyker, Charles L. The Cycles of Plant and Animal Nutrition, in Food and
Agriculture, Scientific American Books, San Francisco 1976.
 Manger, Louis N. A History of the Life Sciences, M. Dekker, New York, Basel 2002.

Test:
1. What method is called in applied for livestock breeding?
a. Sophisticated
b. Dominated
c. Committed

2. It is strick on animal care, breeding, management, among other things.

a. Crop production
b. Fruit farming
c. Animal husbandry
3. What is the demand product of the world?
a. Milk
b. Animal farming
c. Plant-based food product and animal product
4. What are the controls of animal husbandry?
a. Cultivation, management and production
b. Selling, producing, marketing
c. Planting, weeding, and harvesting

Fishery
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From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Salmon spawn in a salmon fishery within

the Becharof Wilderness in Southwest Alaska.

% of fisheries exploited over time

Fishery can mean either the enterprise of raising or harvesting fish and
other aquatic life;[1] or more commonly, the site where such enterprise takes place
(a.k.a. fishing ground).[2] Commercial fisheries include wild fisheries and fish farms,
both in freshwater waterbodies (about 10% of all catch) and the oceans (about 90%).
About 500 million people worldwide are economically dependent on fisheries. 171
million tonnes of fish were produced in 2016, but overfishing is an increasing
problem — causing declines in some populations.
Because of their economic and social importance, fisheries are governed by
complex fisheries management practices and legal regimes that vary widely across
countries. Historically, fisheries were treated with a "first-come, first-served "
approach, but recent threats by human overfishing and environmental issues have
required increased regulation of fisheries to prevent conflict and increase profitable
economic activity on the fishery. Modern jurisdiction over fisheries is often
established by a mix of international treaties and local laws.
Declining fish populations, marine pollution and destruction of important coastal
ecosystems has introduced increasing uncertainty in important fisheries worldwide,
threatening economic security and food security in many parts of the world. These
challenges are further complicated by the changes in the ocean caused by climate
change, which may extend the range of some fisheries while dramatically reducing
the sustainability of other fisheries.

Definitions[edit]
According to the FAO, "...a fishery is an activity leading to harvesting of fish. It may
involve capture of wild fish or raising of fish through aquaculture." It is typically
defined in terms of the "people involved, species or type of fish, area of water or
seabed, method of fishing, class of boats, purpose of the activities or a combination
of the foregoing features".[3]
The definition often includes a combination of mammal and fish fishers in a region,
the latter fishing for similar species with similar gear types.[4][5] Some government and
private organizations, especially those focusing on recreational fishing include in
their definitions not only the fishers, but the fish and habitats upon which the fish
depend.[6]
The term fish[edit]
Further information: Fish § Terminology

 In biology – the term fish is most strictly used to describe any

aquatic vertebrate that has gills throughout life and has limbs, if any, in the shape
of fins.[7] Many types of aquatic animals commonly referred to as "fish" are not
fish in this strict sense; examples
include shellfish, cuttlefish, starfish, crayfish and jellyfish. In earlier times,
even biologists did not make a distinction—sixteenth century natural
historians classified also seals, whales, amphibians, crocodiles,
even hippopotamuses, as well as a host of marine invertebrates, as fish.[8]
 In fisheries – the term fish is used as a collective term, and
includes mollusks, crustaceans and any aquatic animal which is harvested.[3]
 True fish – The strict biological definition of a fish, above, is sometimes called a
true fish. True fish are also referred to as finfish or fin fish to distinguish them
from other aquatic life harvested in fisheries or aquaculture.[9]

Types[edit]
This section needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve
this article by adding citations to reliable sources in this section. Unsourced
material may be challenged and removed. (January 2021) (Learn how and when to
remove this template message)
 Fishermen in Sesimbra, Portugal
The fishing industry which harvests fish from fisheries can be divided into three main
sectors: commercial, recreational or subsistence. They can be saltwater or
freshwater, wild or farmed. Examples are the salmon fishery of Alaska,
the cod fishery off the Lofoten islands, the tuna fishery of the Eastern Pacific, or
the shrimp farm fisheries in China. Capture fisheries can be broadly classified as
industrial scale, small-scale or artisanal, and recreational.
Close to 90% of the world's fishery catches come from oceans and seas, as opposed
to inland waters. These marine catches have remained relatively stable since the
mid-nineties (between 80 and 86 million tonnes).[10] Most marine fisheries are based
near the coast. This is not only because harvesting from relatively shallow waters is
easier than in the open ocean, but also because fish are much more abundant near
the coastal shelf, due to the abundance of nutrients available there from coastal
upwelling and land runoff. However, productive wild fisheries also exist in open
oceans, particularly by seamounts, and inland in lakes and rivers.
Most fisheries are wild fisheries, but farmed fisheries are increasing. Farming can
occur in coastal areas, such as with oyster farms,[11] or the aquaculture of salmon, but
more typically fish farming occurs inland, in lakes, ponds, tanks and other
enclosures.
There are commercial fisheries worldwide for
finfish, mollusks, crustaceans and echinoderms, and by extension, aquatic
plants such as kelp. However, a very small number of species support the majority of
the world's fisheries. Some of these species are herring, cod, anchovy,
tuna, flounder, mullet, squid, shrimp, salmon, crab, lobster, oyster and scallops. All
except these last four provided a worldwide catch of well over a million tonnes in
1999, with herring and sardines together providing a harvest of over 22 million metric
tons in 1999. Many other species are harvested in smaller numbers.

Economic importance[edit]
Directly or indirectly, the livelihood of over 500 million people in developing countries
depends on fisheries and aquaculture. Overfishing, including the taking of fish
beyond sustainable levels, is reducing fish stocks and employment in many world
regions.[12][13] It was estimated in 2014 that global fisheries were adding US$270 billion
a year to global GDP, but by full implementation of sustainable fishing, that figure
could rise by as much as US$50 billion.[14]
In addition to commercial and subsistence fishing, recreational (sport) fishing is
popular and economically important in many regions.[15]
Production[edit]
 Global capture fisheries and aquaculture production
reported by FAO, 1990–2030
Further information: Fishing industry
Total fish production in 2016 reached an all-time high of 171 million tonnes, of which
88 percent was utilized for direct human consumption, thanks to relatively stable
capture fisheries production, reduced wastage and continued aquaculture growth.
This production resulted in a record-high per capita consumption of 20.3 kg in 2016.
[16]
Since 1961 the annual global growth in fish consumption has been twice as high
as population growth. While annual growth of aquaculture has declined in recent
years, significant double-digit growth is still recorded in some countries, particularly
in Africa and Asia.[16]
FAO predicted in 2018 the following major trends for the period up to 2030: [16]

 World fish production, consumption and trade are expected to increase, but with
a growth rate that will slow over time.
 Despite reduced capture fisheries production in China, world capture fisheries
production is projected to increase slightly through increased production in other
areas if resources are properly managed. Expanding world aquaculture
production, although growing more slowly than in the past, is anticipated to fill the
supply–demand gap.
 Prices will all increase in nominal terms while declining in real terms, although
remaining high.
 Food fish supply will increase in all regions, while per capita fish consumption is
expected to decline in Africa, which raises concerns in terms of food security.
 Trade in fish and fish products is expected to increase more slowly than in the
past decade, but the share of fish production that is exported is projected to
remain stable.

Management[edit]
This section is an excerpt from Fisheries management.[edit]
The goal of fisheries management is to produce sustainable biological,
environmental and socioeconomic benefits from renewable aquatic resources. Wild
fisheries are classified as renewable when the organisms of interest
(e.g., fish, shellfish, amphibians, reptiles and marine mammals) produce an annual
biological surplus that with judicious management can be harvested without reducing
future productivity.[17] Fishery management employs activities that protect fishery
resources so sustainable exploitation is possible, drawing on fisheries science and
possibly including the precautionary principle.
Modern fisheries management is often referred to as a governmental system of
appropriate environmental management rules based on defined objectives and a mix
of management means to implement the rules, which are put in place by a system
of monitoring control and surveillance. An ecosystem approach to fisheries
management has started to become a more relevant and practical way to manage
fisheries.[18][19] According to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United
Nations (FAO), there are "no clear and generally accepted definitions of fisheries
management".[20] However, the working definition used by the FAO and much cited
elsewhere is:
The integrated process of information gathering, analysis, planning, consultation,
decision-making, allocation of resources and formulation and implementation, with
necessary law enforcement to ensure environmental compliance, of regulations or
rules which govern fisheries activities in order to ensure the continued productivity of
the resources and the accomplishment of other fisheries objectives.[20]

Global goals[edit]
International attention to these issues has been captured in Sustainable
Development Goal 14 "Life Below Water" which sets goals for international policy
focused on preserving coastal ecosystems and supporting more sustainable
economic practices for coastal communities, including in their fishery
and aquaculture practices.[21]

Law[edit]
This section is an excerpt from Fisheries law.[edit]

Fishery on Lake Tondano, Indonesia

Fisheries law is an emerging and specialized area of law. Fisheries law is the study
and analysis of different fisheries management approaches such as catch shares
e.g. Individual Transferable Quotas; TURFs; and others. The study of fisheries law is
important in order to craft policy guidelines that maximize sustainability and legal
enforcement.[22] This specific legal area is rarely taught at law schools around the
world, which leaves a vacuum of advocacy and research. Fisheries law also takes
into account international treaties and industry norms in order to analyze fisheries
management regulations.[23] In addition, fisheries law includes access to justice for
small-scale fisheries and coastal and aboriginal communities and labor issues such
as child labor laws, employment law, and family law.[24]
Another important area of research covered in fisheries law is seafood safety. Each
country, or region, around the world has a varying degree of seafood safety
standards and regulations. These regulations can contain a large diversity of
fisheries management schemes including quota or catch share systems. It is
important to study seafood safety regulations around the world in order to craft policy
guidelines from countries who have implemented effective schemes. Also, this body
of research can identify areas of improvement for countries who have not yet been
able to master efficient and effective seafood safety regulations.
Fisheries law also includes the study of aquaculture laws and regulations.
Aquaculture, also known as aquafarming, is the farming of aquatic organisms, such
as fish and aquatic plants. This body of research also encompasses animal feed
regulations and requirements. It is important to regulate what feed is consumed by
fish in order to prevent risks to human health and safety.

Environmental issues[edit]
This section is an excerpt from Environmental impact of fishing.[edit]

Fishing down the food web

Greenhouse gas emissions (kg / kg

edible weight) of wild-caught and farmed seafood products
The environmental impact of fishing includes issues such as the availability
of fish, overfishing, fisheries, and fisheries management; as well as the impact
of industrial fishing on other elements of the environment, such as bycatch.[25] These
issues are part of marine conservation, and are addressed in fisheries
science programs. According to a 2019 FAO report, global production of fish,
crustaceans, molluscs and other aquatic animals has continued to grow and reached
172.6 million tonnes in 2017, with an increase of 4.1 percent compared with 2016.
[26]
There is a growing gap between the supply of fish and demand, due in part
to world population growth.[27]
Fishing and pollution from fishing are the largest contributors to the decline in ocean
health and water quality. Ghost nets, or nets abandoned in the ocean, are made of
plastic and nylon and do not decompose, wreaking extreme havoc on the wildlife and
ecosystems they interrupt. The ocean takes up 70% of the earth, so overfishing and
hurting the marine environment affects everyone and everything on this planet. On
top of the overfishing, there is a seafood shortage resulting from the mass amounts
of seafood waste, as well as the microplastics that are polluting the seafood
consumed by the public. The latter is largely caused by plastic-made fishing gear
like drift nets and longlining equipment, that are wearing down by use, lost or thrown
away.[28][29]
The journal Science published a four-year study in November 2006, which predicted
that, at prevailing trends, the world would run out of wild-caught seafood in 2048.
The scientists stated that the decline was a result of overfishing, pollution and other
environmental factors that were reducing the population of fisheries at the same time
as their ecosystems were being annihilated. Many countries, such as Tonga,
the United States, Australia and Bahamas, and international management bodies
have taken steps to appropriately manage marine resources.[30][31]
Reefs are also being destroyed by overfishing because of the huge nets that are
dragged along the ocean floor while trawling. Many corals are being destroyed and,
as a consequence, the ecological niche of many species is at stake.
Climate change[edit]
This section is an excerpt from Climate change and fisheries.[edit]

Part of a series on

Climate change and

society

 Effects
 Mitigation
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 Business action
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 o Carbon tax
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 Climate risk
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o Ecosystem-based adaptation
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o Coal phase-out
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Fisheries are affected by climate change in many ways: marine aquatic

ecosystems are being affected by rising ocean temperatures,[32] ocean
acidification[33] and ocean deoxygenation, while freshwater ecosystems are being
impacted by changes in water temperature, water flow, and fish habitat loss. [34] These
effects vary in the context of each fishery.[35] Climate change is modifying fish
distributions[36] and the productivity of marine and freshwater species. Climate change
is expected to lead to significant changes in the availability and trade of fish
products.[37] The geopolitical and economic consequences will be significant,
especially for the countries most dependent on the sector. The biggest decreases in
maximum catch potential can be expected in the tropics, mostly in the South Pacific
regions.[37]: iv
The impacts of climate change on ocean systems has impacts on
the sustainability of fisheries and aquaculture, on the livelihoods of the communities
that depend on fisheries, and on the ability of the oceans to capture and store carbon
(biological pump). The effect of sea level rise means that coastal fishing
communities are significantly impacted by climate change, while changing rainfall
patterns and water use impact on inland freshwater fisheries and aquaculture.
[38]
Increased risks of floods, diseases, parasites and harmful algal blooms are climate
change impacts on aquaculture which can lead to losses of production and
infrastructure.[37]

See also[edit]
 Fisheries co-management
 Fisheries science
 National Fish Habitat Initiative
 Ocean fisheries
 Population dynamics of fisheries
 Regional Fisheries Management Organisation
 Sea Fish Industry Authority
 Tanka people

References[edit]
1. ^ Fletcher, WJ; Chesson, J; Fisher, M; Sainsbury KJ; Hundloe, T; Smith, ADM and Whitworth, B
(2002) The "How To" guide for wild capture fisheries. National ESD reporting framework for
Australian fisheries: FRDC Project 2000/145. Page 119–120.
2. ^ "fishery". Merriam-Webster Dictionary. Retrieved 2021-08-09.
3. ^ Jump up to:a b FAO Fishery Glossary; "Fishery" (Entry: 98327). Rome: FAO. 2009. p. 24.
Retrieved 21 January 2020.
4. ^ Madden, CJ and Grossman, DH (2004) A Framework for a Coastal/Marine Ecological
Classification Standard Archived October 29, 2008, at the Wayback Machine. NatureServe, page
86. Prepared for NOAA under Contract EA-133C-03-SE-0275
5. ^ Blackhart, K; et al. (2006). NOAA Fisheries Glossary: "Fishery" (PDF) (Revised ed.). Silver
Spring MD: National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. p. 16. Retrieved 21 January 2020.
6. ^ "Open Access Fisheries Journals | Medical Journals". [Link]. Retrieved 2022-07-
06.
7. ^ Nelson, Joseph S. (2006). Fishes of the World. John Wiley & Sons, Inc. p. 2. ISBN 0-471-
25031-7.
8. ^ Jr. Cleveland P Hickman, Larry S. Roberts, Allan L. Larson: Integrated Principles of Zoology,
McGraw-Hill Publishing Co, 2001, ISBN 0-07-290961-7
9. ^ "Finfish – an overview | ScienceDirect Topics". [Link]. Retrieved 2022-07-06.
10. ^ "Scientific Facts on Fisheries". GreenFacts Website. 2009-03-02. Retrieved 2009-03-25.
11. ^ New Zealand Seafood Industry Council. Mussel Farming.
12. ^ C. Michael Hogan (2010) Overfishing, Encyclopedia of earth, topic ed. Sidney Draggan, ed. in
chief C. Cleveland, National Council on Science and the Environment (NCSE), Washington, DC
13. ^ Fisheries and Aquaculture in our Changing Climate Policy brief of the FAO for
the UNFCCC COP-15 in Copenhagen, December 2009.
14. ^ "Prince Charles calls for greater sustainability in fisheries". London Mercury. Archived from the
original on 2014-07-14. Retrieved 13 July 2014.
15. ^ Hubert, Wayne; Quist, Michael, eds. (2010). Inland Fisheries Management in North
America (Third ed.). Bethesda, MD: American Fisheries Society. p. 736. ISBN 978-1-934874-16-
5.
16. ^ Jump up to:a b c In brief, The State of World Fisheries and Aquaculture, 2018 (PDF). FAO. 2018.
17. ^ Lackey, Robert; Nielsen, Larry, eds. (1980). Fisheries management. Blackwell.
p. 422. ISBN 978-0632006151.
18. ^ "The ecosystem approach to fisheries" (PDF). FAO. Retrieved 7 July 2023.
19. ^ Garcia SM, Zerbi A, Aliaume C, Do Chi T, Lasserre G (2003). The ecosystem approach to
fisheries. Issues, terminology, principles, institutional foundations, implementation and outlook.
FAO. ISBN 9789251049600.
20. ^ Jump up to:a b FAO (1997) Fisheries Management Section 1.2, Technical Guidelines for
Responsible Fisheries. FAO, Rome. ISBN 92-5-103962-3
21. ^ United Nations (2017) Resolution adopted by the General Assembly on 6 July 2017, Work of the
Statistical Commission pertaining to the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable
Development (A/RES/71/313)
22. ^ National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Fisheries Service, [Link]
23. ^ Kevern L. Cochrane, A Fishery Manager’s Guidebook: Management Measures and their
Application, Fisheries Technical Paper 424, available
at [Link]
24. ^ Robert Stewart, Oceanography in the 21st Century – An Online Textbook, Fisheries Issues,
available
at [Link] Archived 2020-
08-06 at the Wayback Machine
25. ^ Frouz, Jan; Frouzová, Jaroslava (2022). Applied Ecology. doi:10.1007/978-3-030-83225-
4. ISBN 978-3-030-83224-7. S2CID 245009867.
26. ^ Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) (2019). "Fishery and
Aquaculture Statistics 2017" (PDF). Archived (PDF) from the original on 2019-10-26.
27. ^ "Global population growth, wild fish stocks, and the future of aquaculture | Shark Research &
Conservation Program (SRC) | University of Miami". [Link].
Retrieved 2018-04-02.
28. ^ Laville, Sandra (2019-11-06). "Dumped fishing gear is biggest plastic polluter in ocean, finds
report". The Guardian. Retrieved 2022-05-10.
29. ^ Magazine, Smithsonian; Kindy, David. "With Ropes and Nets, Fishing Fleets Contribute
Significantly to Microplastic Pollution". Smithsonian Magazine. Retrieved 2022-05-10.
30. ^ Worm, Boris; et al. (2006-11-03). "Impacts of Biodiversity Loss on Ocean Ecosystem
Services". Science. 314 (5800): 787–
790. Bibcode:2006Sci...314..787W. doi:10.1126/science.1132294. PMID 17082450. S2CID 37235
806.
31. ^ Juliet Eilperin (2 November 2006). "Seafood Population Depleted by 2048, Study Finds". The
Washington Post.
32. ^ Observations: Oceanic Climate Change and Sea Level Archived 2017-05-13 at the Wayback
Machine In: Climate Change 2007: The Physical Science Basis. Contribution of Working Group I
to the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. (15 MB).
33. ^ Doney, S. C. (March 2006). "The Dangers of Ocean Acidification" (PDF). Scientific
American. 294 (3): 58–65. Bibcode:2006SciAm.294c..58D. doi:10.1038/scientificamerican0306-
58. PMID 16502612.
34. ^ US EPA, OAR (2015-04-07). "Climate Action Benefits: Freshwater Fish". US EPA.
Retrieved 2020-04-06.
35. ^ Weatherdon, Lauren V.; Magnan, Alexandre K.; Rogers, Alex D.; Sumaila, U. Rashid; Cheung,
William W. L. (2016). "Observed and Projected Impacts of Climate Change on Marine Fisheries,
Aquaculture, Coastal Tourism, and Human Health: An Update". Frontiers in Marine
Science. 3. doi:10.3389/fmars.2016.00048. ISSN 2296-7745.
36. ^ Cheung, W.W.L.; et al. (October 2009). Redistribution of Fish Catch by Climate Change. A
Summary of a New Scientific Analysis (PDF). Sea Around Us (Report). Archived from the
original (PDF) on 2011-07-26.
 37. ^ Jump up to:a b c Manuel Barange; Tarûb Bahri; Malcolm C. M. Beveridge; K. L. Cochrane; S.
Funge Smith; Florence Poulain, eds. (2018). Impacts of climate change on fisheries and
aquaculture: synthesis of current knowledge, adaptation and mitigation options. Rome: Food and
Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. ISBN 978-92-5-130607-9. OCLC 1078885208.
38. ^ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), ed. (2022), "Sea Level Rise and
Implications for Low-Lying Islands, Coasts and Communities", The Ocean and Cryosphere in a
Changing Climate: Special Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change,
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 321–
446, doi:10.1017/9781009157964.006, ISBN 978-1-00-915796-4, S2CID 246522316,
retrieved 2022-04-06

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Natural Resource Management
Ways in which societies manage the supply of or access to
the natural resources upon which they rely for their survival and
development. Insofar as humans are fundamentally dependent on natural
resources, ensuring the ongoing access to or a steady provision of
natural resources has always been central to the organization of
civilizations and, historically, has been organized through a range of
schemes varying in degrees of formality and involvement from the
central authorities.

A “natural” resource is one that is afforded by nature without

human intervention; hence, the fertile lands or the minerals within them,
rather than the crop that grows on them, are examples of a country’s
natural resources. Although what is considered a “resource” (or, for that
matter, “natural”) has varied over time and from one society to another,
resources are, ultimately, riches provided by nature from which can be
derived some form of benefit, whether material or immaterial. Under
some definitions, only those natural resources that can renew themselves
and whose exploitation relies on their regenerative capacities properly
necessitate management. For example, oil is not usually considered a
subject of natural resource management, whereas forests are. The use of
nonrenewable resources is subject to regulation rather than
management. The management of renewable natural resources seeks to
balance the demands of exploitation with a respect for regenerative
capacities.

Origins
The emergence of a rational systematic management of natural
resources can be traced back to the phase of
accelerated industrialization of the late 19th century. In a period of
unprecedented industrial growth, the pressures brought to bear on the
supply of raw materials and natural resources by an unrelenting demand
intensified the need to rationalize their utilization, so as to eliminate
increasingly costly waste and to allocate them more efficiently. That
coincided with a broader tendency toward rationalization, a general
social pattern identified by the sociologist Max Weber that emerged in
modern industrial societies in response to the large-scale reorganization
of production and whereby goal-oriented rationality was increasingly
infused into the organization of social activities. Natural resource
management was born at the conjunction of rationalization and its twin
process, bureaucratization, which yielded the first bureaucracies to
manage nature.

Of course, there were huge variations in both the rates and degrees
to which the different states became involved with questions of natural
resource management. The French state, for example, took a heavy hand
in forestry management as early as the 17th century, when wood became
a strategic resource at a time of accelerated mercantilist (export-
oriented) growth that relied primarily on maritime transportation—
namely, wooden ships. Such local variations aside, overall it took a
certain kind of state, the modern bureaucratic state, to steer the
exploitation of natural resources toward principles of scientific
management. In the United States, natural resource management was
made a federal matter for the first time under the presidency of Theodore
Roosevelt. At that time, principles of scientific management, which
combined notions of rational management with in-depth scientific
knowledge of the resource itself, were promoted by key figures such
as Gifford Pinchot, who took a leading role in the U.S. government’s
management of forests in the 1890s and served as head of the Forest
Service from its creation, in 1905, to 1910. In Europe a similar concern
with rational resource exploitation transpired at about the same time.
The International Council for the Exploration of the Sea (established
1902), for example, provided a forum in which northern European
countries could share concerns about maritime research and resources.
It was effectively one of the first international conferences on a natural
resource management question, and there too science was entrenched as
a basis for exploitation of the seas, laying the grounds for future
arrangement for the management of collective resources.
Encountering Earth’s limits
The 20th century saw natural resource management increasingly
projected at a supranational level, where it was also collectivized. A first
major impulse toward the internationalization of natural resource
management was brought by the post-World War II context, with
its pervasive spirit of cooperation on the one hand and its specific
problems of food shortages on the other. Countries came together to
address the issues of damaged capacities and insufficient production—in
other words, insufficient use of available resources. That context yielded
the Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) in 1945, the International
Whaling Commission in 1946, and, much later, the International Fund for
Agricultural Development, established in 1977 to tackle problems of
agricultural production in developing countries. The problem was seen to
lie in the management of the resources rather than in the resources
themselves. Therefore, the solution was to develop common solutions to
management problems that were widely shared from one country to the
next. The problem those organizations attempted to solve, in other
words, was how to create international regimes that
would disseminate better management solutions and thus enable each
country to make better use of its resources.

In a second phase, attention shifted at a global level to Earth’s

resources as a whole—the seas, the air, and biodiversity—because of the
realization that those essential resources, hitherto taken for granted,
were in fact limited. That realization came about through two successive
crises. First was the new awareness that humankind had reached a
global environmental crisis, which triggered a second wave of
bureaucracies to manage nature at both the national and international
levels. At the international level the United Nations Environment
Programme (UNEP) was established in 1972, and at the national level
environmental ministries (in Europe) or agencies (in the United States)
flourished in developed countries in the early 1970s. Significantly, the
issue that popularized the environmental crisis was an issue of failed
global resource management: the overexploitation of whales, which
threatened certain species with extinction. That initial awareness was
rapidly compounded by a global energy crisis that began in 1973
(see Arab oil embargo). At that juncture natural resource management
was recast as an issue of environmental governance, and it was
connected to the new environmental discourses taking shape, such
as sustainable development.

The issue of Earth’s limits is an unsettled question, not least

because of the sheer diversity of natural resources and the difficulty in
assessing them scientifically. However, the remaining controversy
revolves not around the idea that Earth’s resources are limited but rather
around its regenerative capacities, which in turn determines how those
limits are to be considered. If they are relative, the question becomes one
of regulating the access to a resource more stringently or of adapting the
activity relying upon it so that it can use a more abundant primary
resource. If the limits are absolute, then merely switching the activity
from one dependency basis to another is simply insufficient, especially if
such dependency continues to expand overall.

Conceptual approaches to
natural resource management
Natural resource management ties in with applied concepts such as
maximum sustainable yield (MSY) and optimum utilization. Every natural
resource has its optimum utilization, or acceptable levels of use, which
are established scientifically and according to which management
authorities regulate its exploitation. Such a concept presupposes
scientific knowledge as a basis for management and also a regulatory
authority (whether national or international) capable of enforcing the
exploitation of the resources in accord with such scientific knowledge.
The MSY is a regulatory concept that translates precepts of
population dynamics into a management tool. Population studies
in fisheries have shown that, in a given population, when the deaths
increase as a result of human harvesting (exploitation), reproduction
rates usually start to rise (as if compensating for the deaths).
Theoretically, that resultant surplus production can be harvested
sustainably, provided that the harvest is consistently maintained under
the MSY, which is specific to each population (rather than to the species
as a whole). That is the peak level, beyond which the negative effect of
decreasing numbers on the overall population starts to exceed the
positive effect of increased reproduction rates. Subsequently, the
population as a whole (and not just the harvestable surplus) begins to
decline. On the other hand, maintaining exploitation levels below the
MSY creates an efficient use of the resources’ regenerative capacities,
thus in principle enabling exploitation to continue indefinitely. The use of
this tool, which was first developed in fisheries, has been extended more
broadly, notably through its incorporation into the Convention on the
Law of the Sea (1982). However, it has tended to be associated with
species-specific management regimes. It requires careful monitoring
of population growth and overall health, and overharvesting can easily
occur if the population suffers outside declines, such as disease or
habitat loss, and harvesting levels are not adjusted. Additional
regulations, such as limiting the harvest of females or immature
individuals, can help ensure that populations are maintained
at sustainable levels.

Another way to think about natural resource management is to think

about the purpose of the management. The management objectives are
determined by the purpose of the resource itself—as a primary resource,
as a raw material or fuel, as a source of food, or as a recreational
resource. Those uses fall into two broad categories, consumptive and
nonconsumptive. Consumptive utilization implies a once-only form of use
—that is, it refers to activities in which the resource is effectively
consumed or used up, such that it cannot be utilized by another party.
Hence, the possibility of future exploitation relies on the resource’s
ability to regenerate itself. Nonconsumptive utilization also uses the
resource to generate economic value, but it does so without using up the
resource itself. That category encompasses most recreational uses of
natural resources. In the case of consumptive uses, management implies
balancing exploitation with a respect for the resource’s regenerative
capacities. In nonconsumptive uses, management centres on regulating
the ways in which humans interact with the resource and containing the
negative effects of those interactions on the resource. In either case,
management is always about resolving a tension between the potentially
conflicting objectives of protection and exploitation. Sometimes the use
of a resource may change over time or from one part of the globe to the
next. The overexploitation of whales is a case in point: whales were
initially a primary raw material and fuel in the West, until the mid-20th
century, whereas today whales are considered a recreational resource in
the West and a food in other areas. This coexistence of different forms of
use around the same resource has generated conflicts.

Another strand in natural resource management literature focuses on the

difficulties in managing collective resources—that is, resources not
contained within specific territorial boundaries (such as the sea or air) or
resources whose management at the local level has global repercussions,
such as forests. According to one line of argument, known as the tragedy
of the commons, collective resources lack the incentives inherently built
into a privately owned resource to self-limit their exploitation so as to
 ensure that they will last. In other words, individual users tend to
consume as much of the collective resource as possible before others can
get to it, resulting in the overall loss of the resource for all. Also at stake
in discussion of collective resources is the issue of private versus
communal management, a question that goes to the heart of
environmental politics.

References:
[Link]
Conceptual-approaches-to-natural-resource-management

Climate Impacts on
Agriculture and Food
Supply

On This Page:
 Overview
 Impacts on Crops
 Impacts on Livestock
 Impacts on Fisheries
 International Impacts

Overview
Key Points
 Moderate warming and more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere may help some plants to
grow faster. However, more severe warming, floods, and drought may reduce yields.
 Livestock may be at risk, both directly from heat stress and indirectly from reduced
quality of their food supply.
 Fisheries will be affected by changes in water temperature that make waters more
hospitable to invasive species and shift the ranges or lifecycle timing of certain fish
species.
Agriculture is an important sector of the U.S. economy. The crops, livestock,
and seafood produced in the United States contribute more than $300 billion
to the economy each year.[1] When food-service and other agriculture-related
industries are included, the agricultural and food sectors contribute more than
$750 billion to the gross domestic product.[2]
Agriculture and fisheries are highly dependent on the climate. Increases in
temperature and carbon dioxide (CO2) can increase some crop yields in some
places. But to realize these benefits, nutrient levels, soil moisture, water
availability, and other conditions must also be met. Changes in the frequency
and severity of droughts and floods could pose challenges for farmers and
ranchers and threaten food safety.[3] Meanwhile, warmer water
temperatures are likely to cause the habitat ranges of many fish and shellfish
species to shift, which could disrupt ecosystems. Overall, climate change
could make it more difficult to grow crops, raise animals, and catch fish in the
same ways and same places as we have done in the past. The effects of
climate change also need to be considered along with other evolving factors
that affect agricultural production, such as changes in farming practices and
technology.
Impacts on Crops

Despite technological
improvements that increase corn yields, extreme weather events have caused significant yield
reductions in some years. Source: USGCRP (2009)

Click the image to view a larger version.

Crops grown in the United States are critical for the food supply here and
around the world. U.S. farms supply nearly 25% of all grains (such as wheat,
corn, and rice) on the global market.[4] Changes in temperature, atmospheric
carbon dioxide (CO2), and the frequency and intensity of extreme weather
could have significant impacts on crop yields.
For any particular crop, the effect of increased temperature will depend on the
crop's optimal temperature for growth and reproduction.[1] In some areas,
 warming may benefit the types of crops that are typically planted there, or
allow farmers to shift to crops that are currently grown in warmer areas.
Conversely, if the higher temperature exceeds a crop's optimum temperature,
yields will decline.

Related Links
EPA

 National Agriculture Center

 Student's Guide to Climate Change: Agriculture

Other:

 National Climate Assessment: Agriculture

 USDA: Agriculture and Climate Change
 IPCC: Fifth Assessment Report - Food Security and Food Production Systems

 Higher CO2 levels can affect crop yields. Some laboratory experiments
suggest that elevated CO2 levels can increase plant growth. However, other
factors, such as changing temperatures, ozone, and water and nutrient
constraints, may counteract these potential increases in yield. For example, if
temperature exceeds a crop's optimal level, if sufficient water and nutrients
are not available, yield increases may be reduced or reversed. Elevated
CO2 has been associated with reduced protein and nitrogen content in alfalfa
and soybean plants, resulting in a loss of quality. Reduced grain and forage
quality can reduce the ability of pasture and rangeland to support grazing
livestock.[1]
 More extreme temperature and precipitation can prevent crops from growing.
Extreme events, especially floods and droughts, can harm crops and reduce
yields. For example, in 2010 and 2012, high nighttime temperatures affected
corn yields across the U.S. Corn Belt, and premature budding due to a warm
winter caused $220 million in losses of Michigan cherries in 2012.[1]
 Dealing with drought could become a challenge in areas where rising summer
temperatures cause soils to become drier. Although increased irrigation might
be possible in some places, in other places water supplies may also be
reduced, leaving less water available for irrigation when more is needed.
 Many weeds, pests, and fungi thrive under warmer temperatures, wetter
climates, and increased CO2 levels. Currently, U.S. farmers spend more than
$11 billion per year to fight weeds, which compete with crops for light, water,
and nutrients.[1] The ranges and distribution of weeds and pests are likely to
increase with climate change. This could cause new problems for farmers'
crops previously unexposed to these species.
 Though rising CO2 can stimulate plant growth, it also reduces the nutritional
value of most food crops. Rising levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide reduce
the concentrations of protein and essential minerals in most plant species,
including wheat, soybeans, and rice. This direct effect of rising CO2 on the
nutritional value of crops represents a potential threat to human health.
Human health is also threatened by increased pesticide use due to increased
pest pressures and reductions in the efficacy of pesticides.[3]

Top of Page

Impacts on Livestock
 continental United States. Source: USGCRP (2016)

Click the image to view a larger [Link]

consume more than 36 million
metric tons of meat and poultry annually. Livestock and poultry account for
[4]

over half of U.S. agricultural cash receipts, often over $100 billion per year.
[5]
Changes in climate could affect animals both directly and indirectly.

 Heat waves, which are projected to increase under climate change, could
directly threaten livestock. In 2011, exposure to high temperature events
caused over $1 billion in heat-related losses to agricultural producers.[1] Heat
stress affects animals both directly and indirectly. Over time, heat stress can
increase vulnerability to disease, reduce fertility, and reduce milk production.
 Drought may threaten pasture and feed supplies. Drought reduces the amount
of quality forage available to grazing livestock. Some areas could experience
longer, more intense droughts, resulting from higher summer temperatures
and reduced precipitation. For animals that rely on grain, changes in crop
production due to drought could also become a problem.
 Climate change may increase the prevalence of parasites and diseases that
affect livestock. The earlier onset of spring and warmer winters could allow
some parasites and pathogens to survive more easily. In areas with increased
rainfall, moisture-reliant pathogens could thrive.[6]
 Potential changes in veterinary practices, including an increase in the use of
parasiticides and other animal health treatments, are likely to be adopted to
maintain livestock health in response to climate-induced changes in pests,
parasites, and microbes. This could increase the risk of pesticides entering the
food chain or lead to evolution of pesticide resistance, with subsequent
implications for the safety, distribution, and consumption of livestock and
aquaculture products.[3]
 Increases in carbon dioxide (CO2) may increase the productivity of pastures,
but may also decrease their quality. Increases in atmospheric CO2 can
increase the productivity of plants on which livestock feed. However, the
quality of some of the forage found in pasturelands decreases with higher
CO2. As a result, cattle would need to eat more to get the same nutritional
benefits.

Top of Page

Impacts on Fisheries
American fishermen catch or harvest five million metric tons of fish and
shellfish each year.[7] U.S. fisheries contribute more than $1.55 billion to the
economy annually (as of 2012).[8] Many fisheries already face multiple
stresses, including overfishing and water pollution. Climate change may
worsen these stresses. In particular, temperature changes could lead to
significant impacts.
 T
his map shows the annual centers of biomass for three species in the northeastern United States from
1968 to 2015. Dots are shaded from light to dark to show change over time. Source: US EPA
(2016). Climate Change Indicators in the United States: Marine Species Distribution. Data Source:
NOAA (2016). [Link]

Click the image to view a larger [Link]

ranges of many fish and shellfish species
may change. In waters off the northeastern United States, several
economically important species have shifted northward since the late 1960s.
The three species shown in [the figure to the left] (American lobster, red hake,
and black sea bass) have moved northward by an average of 119 miles. [9]

 Many aquatic species can find colder areas of streams and lakes or move
north along the coast or in the ocean. Nevertheless, moving into new areas
may put these species into competition with other species over food and other
resources, as explained on the Ecosystems Impacts page.
 Some marine disease outbreaks have been linked with changing climate.
Higher water temperatures and higher estuarine salinities have enabled an
oyster parasite to spread farther north along the Atlantic coast. Winter
warming in the Arctic is contributing to salmon diseases in the Bering Sea and
a resulting reduction in the Yukon Chinook Salmon, Finally, warmer
 temperatures have caused disease outbreaks in coral, eelgrass, and abalone.
[3],[10]

 Changes in temperature and seasons can affect the timing of reproduction

and migration. Many steps within an aquatic animal's lifecycle are controlled
by temperature and the changing of the seasons. For example, in the
Northwest warmer water temperatures may affect the lifecycle of salmon and
increase the likelihood of disease. Combined with other climate impacts, these
effects are projected to lead to large declines in salmon populations.[1],[11],[12]

In addition to warming, the world's oceans are gradually becoming more acidic
due to increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2). Increasing acidity could
harm shellfish by weakening their shells, which are created by removing
calcium from seawater. [10] Acidification also threatens the structures of
sensitive ecosystems upon which some fish and shellfish rely. [1],[13]

This diagram shows the impact pathway of carbon dioxide emissions on the shellfish market. Carbon
dioxide is absorbed by oceans, resulting in ocean acidification. Acidification reduces the size and
abundance of shellfish, which in turn leads to decreased harvest and eventually to changes in prices
for consumers. Source: US EPA (2015). Climate Change in the United States: Benefits of Global
Action

International Impacts
Climate change is very likely to affect food security at the global, regional, and
local level. Climate change can disrupt food availability, reduce access to
food, and affect food quality.[14] For example, projected increases in
temperatures, changes in precipitation patterns, changes in extreme weather
events, and reductions in water availability may all result in reduced
agricultural productivity. Increases in the frequency and severity extreme
weather events can also interrupt food delivery, and resulting spikes in food
prices after extreme events are expected to be more frequent in the future.
Increasing temperatures can contribute to spoilage and contamination.
Internationally, these effects of climate change on agriculture and food supply
are likely to be similar to those seen in the United States. However, other
stressors such as population growth may magnify the effects of climate
change on food security. In developing countries, adaptation options like
changes in crop-management or ranching practices, or improvements to
irrigation are more limited than in the United States and other industrialized
nations.
Any climate-related disturbance to food distribution and transport,
internationally or domestically, may have significant impacts not only on safety
and quality but also on food access. For example, the food transportation
system in the United States frequently moves large volumes of grain by water.
In the case of an extreme weather event affecting a waterway, there are few, if
any, alternate pathways for transport. High temperatures and a shortage of
rain in the summer of 2012 led to one of the most severe summer droughts
the nation has seen and posed serious impacts to the Mississippi
River watershed, a major transcontinental shipping route for Midwestern
agriculture. This drought resulted in significant food and economic losses due
to reductions in barge traffic, the volume of goods carried, and the number of
Americans employed by the tugboat industry. The 2012 drought was
immediately followed by flooding throughout the Mississippi in the spring of
2013, which also resulted in disruptions of barge traffic and food transport.
[3]
Transportation changes such as these reduce the ability of farmers to export
their grains to international markets, and can affect global food prices.
Impacts to the global food supply concern the United States because food
shortages can cause humanitarian crises and national security concerns.
They also can increase domestic food prices.
Top of Page

References
[1] USGCRP (2014). Hatfield, J., G. Takle, R. Grotjahn, P. Holden, R. C. Izaurralde, T. Mader, E.
Marshall, and D. Liverman, 2014: Ch. 6: Agriculture. Climate Change Impacts in the United States:
The Third National Climate Assessment, J. M. Melillo, Terese (T.C.) Richmond, and G. W. Yohe,
Eds., U.S. Global Change Research Program, 150-174.
[2] USDA (2016). Economic Research Service, undated. What is Agriculture’s Share of the Overall US
Economy?
[3] USGCRP (2014). Ziska, L., A. Crimmins, A. Auclair, S. DeGrasse, J.F. Garofalo, A.S. Khan, I.
Loladze, A.A. Pérez de León, A. Showler, J. Thurston, and I. Walls, 2016: Ch. 7: Food Safety,
Nutrition, and Distribution. The Impacts of Climate Change on Human Health in the United States: A
Scientific Assessment. U.S. Global Change Research Program, Washington, DC, 189–216.
[4] USDA (2015). World Agriculture Supply and Demand Estimates. U.S. Department of Agriculture.
[5] USDA (2016). Economic Research Service. Animal Production & Marketing Issues.
[6] CCSP (2008). The Effects of Climate Change on Agriculture, Land Resources, Water Resources,
and Biodiversity in the United States. A Report by the U.S. Climate Change Science Program and the
Subcommittee on Global Change Research. Backlund, P., A. Janetos, D. Schimel, J. Hatfield, K.
Boote, P. Fay, L. Hahn, C. Izaurralde, B.A. Kimball, T. Mader, J. Morgan, D. Ort, W. Polley, A.
Thomson, D. Wolfe, M. Ryan, S. Archer, R. Birdsey, C. Dahm, L. Heath, J. Hicke, D. Hollinger, T.
Huxman, G. Okin, R. Oren, J. Randerson, W. Schlesinger, D. Lettenmaier, D. Major, L. Poff, S.
Running, L. Hansen, D. Inouye, B.P. Kelly, L Meyerson, B. Peterson, and R. Shaw. U.S.
Environmental Protection Agency, Washington, DC, USA.
[7] NOAA (2014). National Marine Fisheries Service. Fisheries of the United States, 2014. NOAA
Current Fishery Statistics No. 2014.
[8] USDA (2012). 2012 Census of Agriculture: Volume 1, Chapter 1: U.S. National Level Data, Table
33. U.S. Department of Agriculture.
[9] US EPA (2016). Climate Change Indicators in the United States: A Closer Look: Marine Species
Distribution.
[10] USGCRP (2014). Doney, S., A. A. Rosenberg, M. Alexander, F. Chavez, C. D. Harvell, G.
Hofmann, M. Orbach, and M. Ruckelshaus, 2014: Ch. 24: Oceans and Marine Resources. Climate
Change Impacts in the United States: The Third National Climate Assessment, J. M. Melillo, Terese
(T.C.) Richmond, and G. W. Yohe, Eds., U.S. Global Change Research Program, 557-578.
doi:10.7930/J0RF5RZW.
[11] CCSP (2008). Preliminary Review of Adaptation Options for Climate-Sensitive Ecosystems and
Resources. A Report by the U.S. Climate Change Science Program and the Subcommittee on Global
Change Research. Chapter 3. Julius, S.H., J.M. West (eds.), J.S. Baron, B. Griffith, L.A. Joyce, P.
Kareiva, B.D. Keller, M.A. Palmer, C.H. Peterson, and J.M. Scott (authors). U.S. Environmental
Protection Agency, Washington, DC, USA.
[12] IPCC (2014). Romero-Lankao, P., J.B. Smith, D.J. Davidson, N.S. Diffenbaugh, P.L. Kinney, P.
Kirshen, P. Kovacs, and L. Villers Ruiz, 2014: North America. In: Climate Change 2014: Impacts,
Adaptation, and Vulnerability. Part B: Regional Aspects. Contribution of Working Group II to the Fifth
Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change [Barros, V.R., C.B. Field, D.J.
Dokken, M.D. Mastrandrea, K.J. Mach, T.E. Bilir, M. Chatterjee, K.L. Ebi, Y.O. Estrada, R.C. Genova,
B. Girma, E.S. Kissel, A.N. Levy, S. MacCracken, P.R. Mastrandrea, and L.L. White (eds.)].
Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, United Kingdom and New York, NY, USA, pp. 1439-1498.
[13] US EPA (2015). Climate Change in the United States: Benefits of Global Action: Shellfish.
[14] USDA (2015). Brown, M.E., J.M. Antle, P. Backlund, E.R. Carr, W.E. Easterling, M.K. Walsh, C.
Ammann, W. Attavanich, C.B. Barrett, M.F. Bellemare, V. Dancheck, C. Funk, K. Grace, J.S.I. Ingram,
H. Jiang, H. Maletta, T. Mata, A. Murray, M. Ngugi, D. Ojima, B. O’Neill, and C. Tebaldi. 2015. Climate
Change, Global Food Security, and the U.S. Food System. 146 pages.

The Role of Agriculture in Ensuring Food Security in

Developing Countries: Considerations in the
Context of the Problem of Sustainable Food
Production
by

Karolina Pawlak

*
and
 Małgorzata Kołodziejczak
Department of Economics and Economic Policy in Agribusiness, Faculty of Economics and Social
Sciences, Poznan University of Life Sciences, Wojska Polskiego 28, 60-637 Poznan, Poland
*

Author to whom correspondence should be addressed.

Sustainability 2020, 12(13), 5488; [Link]

Received: 30 May 2020 / Revised: 3 July 2020 / Accepted: 5 July 2020 / Published: 7 July 2020
(This article belongs to the Collection Sustainable Development of Rural Areas and Agriculture)
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Abstract
Ensuring food security has become an issue of key importance to countries with different degrees of
economic development, while the agricultural sector plays a strategic role in improving food
availability. The aim of this paper is to identify relationships between the undernourishment scale and
selected characteristics describing the agricultural sector within identified clusters of developing
countries. Typological groups of countries were separated using Ward’s method. It results from the
analyses that the greatest problems with maintaining food security are observed in the developing
countries with a high share of agriculture in their Gross Domestic Product (GDP), adverse conditions
hindering agricultural production and deficient infrastructure. Based on research results desirable and
tailored strategies for food security improvement in individual clusters were developed. Promoting
investments in agricultural infrastructure and extension services along with adopting measures aimed
at increasing the households’ purchasing power, especially those in rural areas, appear to be key
drivers for improving both food availability and food access. The paper focuses not only on identifying
the reasons of undernourishment, but also contributes to recognition of the most effective ways to
solve the hunger problem under a country’s unique conditions. It offers a comprehensive perspective
for the policy formulation in various areas world-wide, which may be of interest to scholars and policy
makers.
Keywords:
food security; arable land; capital stock; food production; population growth; agri-food
trade; developing countries

1. Introduction
Despite various measures taken to alleviate the world hunger problem, food insecurity and
undernutrition remain serious problems in many countries [1]. Although achieving food security is
desirable irrespective of the political system and socioeconomic conditions [2], it is an extremely high
priority in the developing regions of the world, where population growth coupled with the increased
intensity of such environmental events as floods, droughts, extreme variability in temperature or
rainfall often pose a threat to food security [3]. Furthermore, due to greater food demand and reduced
crop productivity, higher food prices along with income inequalities may negatively affect food access
and availability for poor households. It should be noted here that poverty, war and conflict, natural
disasters and climate change, as well as population growth are considered to be the main causes of
hunger and malnutrition [4,5,6,7]. According to the most recent Food and Agriculture Organization of
the United Nations (FAO) data, around 13% of the population living in developing countries are
suffering from undernourishment [8], while Porkka et al. [9] indicated that feeding the world’s
population is a challenge that is likely to become even more serious in the future. The global
population exceeded 7.6 billion people in 2018 [10] and is predicted to reach 9.2 billion by 2050 [11],
with a projected increased food demand of 59%–102% [12,13]. In view of the above it seems
necessary to increase agricultural production by about 60%–70% to provide food for the global
population in 2050 [11]. According to Foley et al. [14] and Tilman et al. [15], food production needs to
as much as double by 2050 to meet the increasing demand.
The agricultural sector plays a strategic role in improving the availability of food and achieving
food security [16,17,18,19]. However, while there is general agreement on the increased global
demand for food to be expected in the coming decades, there is uncertainty surrounding global
agriculture’s capacity to service this demand through an expansion in the food supply [20]. Better food
provision ensured by increasing the productivity of agriculture and expanding the range of agricultural
land use seems to be a possible method to eradicate hunger [21,22]. However, in the case of low-
income developing countries the existing technology and knowledge will not enable them to produce
all the food needed in 2020 and beyond [23]. It shows the need to expand investments in agricultural
research and extension systems both in and for developing countries to increase the productivity of
agricultural production per unit of land and per agricultural worker. For Sub-Saharan Africa, it was
discussed by Otsuka [17]. Based on these studies [17,23], it can be clearly implied that it is necessary
to focus on investments that will push African agriculture toward higher productivity without severe
environmental degradation. Technology transfer from developed to developing countries should be
facilitated to support these processes, to eliminate technology gaps and to overcome knowledge
barriers [15].
Bearing in mind that agriculture has a much greater impact on reducing poverty and improving
food security than the other sectors of the economy [24,25], and considering differences in the
potential for agricultural production across countries, the aim of this paper is to identify relationships
between the undernourishment scale and selected characteristics describing the agricultural sector
within identified clusters of developing countries.
Attempts have already been made to recognize groups of countries categorized according to
measures of food security. It is shown that different research issues resulting in different sets of
measures used in the classification can lead to different typologies and hence different conclusions.
For example, Diaz-Bonilla et al. [26] and Diaz-Bonilla and Thomas [27] focused mainly on food
availability issues, utilizing consumption, production and trade measures. They stressed that trade
policies influence world food availability, as well as food production and food imports at the national
level. The indicators used in the study include those describing food availability, access and
utilization, i.e., food production per capita, the ratio of total exports to food imports, calorie intake per
capita, protein intake per capita and non-agricultural population, while the authors address the key
question: what types of countries can use trade and what types of countries can use domestic
production to secure food supply? They identify groups of countries with similarities in their food
security profiles covering the results of agricultural activity and consumption levels rather than
agricultural-based reasons for food insecurity. A similar result-oriented approach was also employed
by Baer-Nawrocka and Sadowski [28], who identified the current status of food security in different
countries around the world considering jointly both the physical and economic availability of food.
Reasons for food insecurity related to the agricultural sector were more specifically considered by Yu
et al. [29] or Yu and You [30]. Referring to the study by Diaz-Bonilla et al. [26], apart from variables
representing food consumption, production, trade and distribution they included in their factor analysis
also the agricultural potential. This dimension of food security was represented by three specific
variables, including the length of the growing period, variation in the length of the growing period and
soil quality. It may be noticed here that a limitation of those studies stems from the fact that the
agricultural potential covers only one production factor, i.e., natural resources. Neither agricultural
labor nor capital were taken into account, which makes the analyses less comprehensive. A more
specific approach was adopted by Zhang et al. [31], who provided a typology of African countries
based on 56 variables in the following data sets: development outcome, geography, macroeconomic
environment, level of security, governance, natural disasters, social and physical infrastructure,
agricultural potential, cultural homogeneity, human disease and other factors. In terms of the
agricultural potential, they considered not only land and water related variables, but also the share of
arable area under irrigation, while the degree of food insecurity was represented by the percentage of
children under five years old, who are undernourished. The prevalence of undernourishment among
the adult population was not investigated. More food security indicators and more determinants of
food and nutrition security were incorporated by Pieters et al. [32]. However, the agricultural potential
and performance are restricted to the length of the growing period, soil quality, precipitation, value
added per worker in agriculture, import share of agriculture and food production per capita. Despite
the limitations of the above-mentioned studies, some valuable conclusions can be drawn. The results
suggest that developing countries are extremely heterogeneous in terms of different aspects of food
security, hence different policy interventions are needed by different types of food-insecure countries
to improve their nutrition status. Our study attempts to meet this challenge.
The paper focuses on the spatial diversity of undernourishment in the most affected developing
countries. We identify groups of countries with similarities in their food security profiles based on the
prevalence of undernourishment as a measure of food insecurity and select characteristics describing
the agricultural sector that refer to the role of agriculture and the agri-food trade in the national
economy or are responsible for the production potential. In this way we examine the linkage between
food security, agricultural performance and the potential represented by all basic production factors
(land, labor and capital). However, our intention is to contribute not only to the discussion on the
reasons for undernourishment, but also to the recognition and better understanding of the most
effective ways to solve the hunger problem under a country’s unique conditions. Hence, based on
research results some desirable and tailored strategies for food security improvement in individual
clusters are recommended, while the paper offers a comprehensive perspective for the policy
formulation world-wide, which may be of interest to scholars and policy makers. Bearing in mind the
most common causes of undernourishment, the potential for food production in countries suffering
from undernourishment, as well as the depletion of natural resources and the need to ensure
sustainable development, this paper attempts to open a new perspective on opportunities to improve
the nutrition situation in the world, while it also provides directions for relevant international policies.
What was also noted, was the importance of stimulating socio-economic development processes to
overcome barriers that prevent the eradication of hunger (or at least the alleviation of
undernourishment). Provided considerations are embedded in a research framework based on the
controversies surrounding the Malthusian theory and its implications for the world hunger problem.

2. Selected Aspects of the World Hunger Problem: Around the Malthusian Theory and a
Challenge to Feed the World Sustainably
In his classification of needs by urgency and intensity, Maslow [33] stated that the need to
alleviate hunger and thirst is among the basic needs and is essential for human life. In An Essay on
the Principle of Population, As It Affects the Future Improvement of Society, published in 1798,
Malthus claimed that the population size grows geometrically, beyond control, while the production of
food grows only arithmetically [34]. According to Malthus, if the population grows while the supply of
natural resources (especially land) remains constant, productivity in agriculture tends to decline. This
results in a situation in which agricultural production is unable to keep up with the growing population,
while the reduction in supply is followed by famine. Though fitting the realities of the industrial
revolution, the Malthusian theory was quickly met with strong criticism. The primary failure of the
Malthusian approach was to miss technological progress enabling food production growth without the
need to acquire new land resources. This issue was addressed by Boserup, who found that food
production, thanks to innovations and technological progress, was growing faster than the population
size (this pattern is referred to as the Boserupian model), thus preventing the Malthusian catastrophe
[35].
The Malthusian population theory, formulated at the end of the 18th century, has been
demonstrated to be largely wrong (see [36,37]; etc.) Furthermore, from the 18th century onwards,
food supply has almost always increased faster than the population growth [38]. Nevertheless, the
undernourished population is still more than 800 million [39]. Therefore, a question arises concerning
the underlying causes. According to Poleman [40], food production has been growing much faster
than the world’s population, but only in developed countries. This was not the case in developing
countries. While the food production volume has also increased in these countries, the growth rate
was close to the population growth in most cases. Moreover, it has fluctuated increasingly. Poleman
[40] sees the main causes of undernourishment in insufficient incomes. Numerous studies assessing
the relationship between income and food consumption reveal the existence of a positive relationship
[41,42,43]. Increasing the households’ purchasing power in poorly developed countries as a way to
eliminate poverty and improve food security was emphasized by several researchers, including Sen
[44]. Engel’s law laid the foundations for this discussion when establishing that households’ demand
for food increases less than proportionally in relation to the increase in income. Therefore, income
distribution changes are of key importance when predicting food demand growth. Faster income
growth among poorer countries and households should be followed by a more rapid growth in food
demand in the short and medium term, due to the fact that as the income of poorer households grows,
larger shares of their budget are available for food consumption [41].
Published in 2010, the sixth report on the world nutrition situation by the United Nations System
Standing Committee on Nutrition (UNSCN) points to the key role of agriculture in ensuring food and
nutrition security [45]. Since the worldwide food production capacity is no longer the main limitation,
the problem of exhausting resources and sustainable food production appears. Some scientists
observed that intensive and industrialized food production practices, which have been developed to
satisfy the global food demand [46], have been increasingly damaging the environment [47] and may
bring ecological catastrophe on a local or even global scale. Rockström et al. [48] noted the existence
of some bio-physical thresholds in the global ecosystem which, when exceeded, may have disastrous
consequences for humankind. Due to environmental pollution and the reduced ecological stability of
the biosphere, hundreds of millions of people living in extreme poverty will not have a realistic chance
of alleviating hunger and addressing other vital needs. According to Geist and Lambin [49] and Foley
et al. [14,50], agriculture is the largest contributor to tropical deforestation and is responsible for up to
35% of global greenhouse gas emissions, with demonstrated negative impacts on air and water
quality, biodiversity, carbon sequestration and infectious disease transmission. On the other hand, it is
shown that a more productive and resource-efficient agriculture can increase the availability of food
and contribute to world food security, while at the same time preserving natural resources and
biodiversity [51,52,53,54,55,56,57]. McDonald [58] also followed this finding and stressed that it is a
universal observation, especially in developing and the least developed countries, indicating that
hunger is widespread with many food production systems being unsustainable. There are several
indications that a new orientation for agricultural development must be sought [59,60,61,62,63]. The
new trajectory of agricultural development should take into account the postulates of sustainable
development in all countries, with special regard afforded to the developing ones. Obviously, some
transitional stages, such as replacing human labor with mechanical power (mechanization of
agriculture), cannot be completely omitted. However, it should be noted that at such an early stage of
development of agricultural production (e.g. in some African countries), some environmental
restrictions may emerge. Otherwise, in the future these countries would incur significant costs of
today’s production growth, especially when it comes to areas threatened by soil degradation and
water scarcity.
When observing a progressive deterioration in the global nutrition situation, a challenge to feed
the growing world’s population becomes more and more important, while the role of efficient and
sustainable agriculture in this process seems to be a priority (for more see e.g. [64]). Therefore, in this
study selected characteristics of the agricultural sector in developing countries were analyzed as
determinants of their food security status.

3. Materials and Methods

The study is based on data from the Statistics Division of the Food and Agriculture Organization
of the United Nations (FAO) [65]. The analysis covered 100 developing countries most affected by
undernourishment, for which the most recent and comprehensive FAO data from 2016–2018 were
available. The comparative analysis method was employed to perform the research. Typological
groups of countries were separated based on within-group variability using Ward’s agglomerative
hierarchical clustering method. According to Wysocki [66], Ward’s linkage method is by around 40%
more effective than the next best hierarchical method, i.e., the furthest neighbor method. Ward’s
method allows for the merging of objects into subsequent clusters based on the value of the similarity
function. This leads to the minimization of the sum of squared deviations of any two clusters that may

∆(𝐴,𝐵)=∑𝑖∈𝐴∪𝐵||𝑥→𝑖−𝑚→𝐴∪𝐵||2−∑𝑖∈𝐴||𝑥→𝑖−𝑚→𝐴||2−∑𝑖∈𝐵||𝑥→𝑖−𝑚→𝐵||
be created at each stage, as per the following formula:

2=𝑛𝐴𝑛𝐵𝑛𝐴+𝑛𝐵||𝑚→𝐴−𝑚→𝐵||2∆�,�=∑�∈�∪�||�→�−�→�∪�||2−∑�∈�|�→�−�→�|
2−∑�∈�|�→�−�→�|2=������+��|�→�−�→�|2

(1)
where: 𝑚→𝑗�→� is the center of cluster j, nj is the number of points in it and ∆ is called the
merging cost of combining clusters A and B [67]. For a broader description of the clustering procedure
with the use of the presented formula, see Ward [68].
The greater the similarity between the points, the sooner they will be merged with one another
[69]. Clusters are arranged hierarchically so that the clusters of a lower rank are a part of clusters of a
higher rank, in accordance with the hierarchy of similarity between the points [70]. Importantly, unlike
the clustering methods proposed earlier by Cox [71] and Fisher [72], Ward’s method takes into
account the similarity with regard to multiple variables (instead of a single variable). The Euclidean
distance, which is one of the most common distances used in respect to objects with measurable
features [73], was used for clustering purposes. Following the standardization of variables, bearing in
mind that the clustering process is primarily determined by mutually uncorrelated features [74], the
calculated that indicators were assessed in terms of correlation coefficients. A correlation matrix was
created and indicators with a strong or nearly functional correlation (correlation coefficient higher than
0.75) were excluded from the analysis [75]. Values of calculated Pearson’s linear correlation
coefficients between all the characteristics were at most 0.52.
Based on substantive criteria and following the literature review [31,32,76,77,78,79,80,81,82,83],
a set of indicators describing the agricultural sector, while also considered as causes of food
insecurity, was selected for the study. All those indicators either refer to the role of agriculture and
agri-food trade in the national economy (share of agriculture in GDP, share of agricultural population
in the total population, agri-food trade balance per capita) or are responsible for the production
potential (arable land per capita, percentage of arable land equipped for irrigation, number of tractors
per 1000 ha of arable land, value of net capital stock per 1 ha of arable land). Bearing in mind the
Malthusian theory [34], a gap between the food production growth rate and the population growth rate
was also included into the analysis. The prevalence of undernourishment as a measure of hunger and
severity of food insecurity [84] was taken into account in the classification process as well. Selection
of the indicators for the study was limited by formal criteria. The above-mentioned indicators were
those, for which comprehensive and internationally comparable data were available. Due to excessive
correlation, two characteristics were removed from further analysis. These were the share of
agricultural population in the total population and the number of tractors per 1000 ha of arable land. In
the next step, a series of attempts was made to check the robustness of the results to the inclusion or
exclusion of various indicators. Finally, the typology of countries was developed based on the
following characteristics:
 prevalence of undernourishment (%);
 arable land area per capita (ha);
 share of agriculture in GDP (%);
 percentage of arable land equipped for irrigation (%);
 agri-food trade balance per capita (USD);
 value of net capital stock per 1 ha of arable land (USD)—net capital stock
represents the sum of the written-down values of all the fixed assets still in use, which
can also be calculated as the difference between gross capital stock and consumption of
fixed capital [85];
 the gap between the food production growth rate and the population growth rate
(percentage points)—the indicator refers to the difference between the food production
growth rate and the population growth rate. To obtain the food production growth rate,
the aggregate volume of agricultural production in the years 2015–2017 was divided by
the aggregate for the base period 2004–2006 (a 3-year average was used in order to
eliminate the impact of random factors such as climatic conditions; in line with the FAO
approach [86] the aggregate volume was compiled by multiplying gross production in
physical terms by output farm gate prices for a given year and country). The population
growth rate was calculated by dividing the average population in the periods 2016–2018
and 2004–2006.
It should be noted here that the set of indicators suggested in the research is a simple, but
relatively rarely made attempt to integrate five main approaches to the analysis of food security [76].
In line with the oldest and the most influential food availability approach, which is also known as the
Malthusian approach, the balance or imbalance between population and food production growth is
included into the analysis. The income-based approach brings into the analysis such variables related
to economic growth as Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and income. The basic needs approach refers
to the availability approach and the ability to adequately satisfy food consumption needs for a healthy
life at all times. That is why the linkage is considered between the prevalence of undernourishment as
a measure of food insecurity and both agricultural potential and performance. The entitlement
approach developed by Sen [87] is represented by indicators related to agricultural farms’
endowments and foreign trade entitlement. The analysis and results discussion is also compatible
with the Sustainable Livelihoods (SL) approach.
A hierarchical procedure was employed to group the countries. The agglomerative technique
characterized by the development of a tree-like structure was used. It means that at the beginning of
the clustering process each country covered by the analysis is a singleton. Countries which are most
similar to each other in terms of designated characteristics are progressively grouped into new,
increasingly larger clusters. The ultimate goal is to obtain a single cluster covering all analyzed
countries [75]. The number of clusters was based on the requirement that the number of separated
subsets cannot be excessively high and the subsets themselves need to be properly separated and
internally consistent [88]. The characteristic features of each cluster, i.e., the key reasons for
undernourishment in countries belonging to a specific cluster, were separated with the use of the

𝑧𝑐𝑘(𝑑)=𝑥̲𝑐𝑘−𝑥̲𝑘𝑠𝑘(𝑤)
measure of differences between the mean values of continuous metric features [66]:
(𝑐=1, … ,𝐶;𝑘=1 … ,𝐾)����=�¯��−�¯���� �=1, … ,�;�=1 … ,�

(2)
In the formula above, 𝑥̲𝑐𝑘�¯�� is the mean value of feature k in cluster c; 𝑥̲𝑘�¯� is the
general average value of feature k in a population of n objects; (𝑤)��� is the average within-cluster

(𝑤)=⎡⎣⎢1𝑁−𝐶∑𝑐=1𝐶(𝑁𝑐−1)·𝑠2𝑐𝑘⎤⎦⎥12���=1�−�∑�=1���−1·���212
variability of feature k, calculated as follows:

(3)
with 𝑠2𝑐𝑘���2 meaning the within-cluster variance in cluster c (c = 1, …, C) calculated for
feature k. It was assumed that if 𝑧(𝑑)∈(−2;2),����∈−2;2, there is an average intensity of

If 𝑧𝑐𝑘(𝑑)∈(−3;−2〉����∈(−3;−2〉 or 𝑧𝑐𝑘(𝑑)∈〈2;3),����∈〈2;3), there is, respectively, a low

feature k in cluster c; the feature does not stand out and is not characteristic.

if 𝑧𝑐𝑘(𝑑)∈(−∞;−3〉����∈(−∞;
or high intensity of feature k in cluster c; the feature stands out (positively or negatively) and is a

−3〉 or 𝑧𝑐𝑘(𝑑)∈〈3;∞),����∈〈3;∞), there is, respectively, a very low or very high intensity of
characteristic feature. In turn,

feature k in cluster c; the feature stands out (positively or negatively) and is a highly characteristic
feature [66].

4. Results and Discussion

Ward’s method allowed us to separate eleven internally homogeneous clusters of developing
countries differing in terms of their population nutrition levels (Figure 1). The mean values of
characteristics in specific clusters are shown in Table 1. The measure of differences between mean
values, used to identify the characteristic features of specific clusters, is shown in Table 2. Table
3 presents the characteristics of identified clusters of the analyzed countries, while in Table 4 the
recommendations on strategies for food security improvement in the identified clusters are included.
Figure 1. Typology of selected developing countries according to the undernourishment scale and
selected characteristics describing the agricultural sector. Source: the authors’ calculations based on
[10,39,85,86,89,90,91].

Table 1. Within-cluster mean values of the undernourishment scale and selected characteristics
describing the agricultural sector in the set of developing countries.

Table 2. Values of measure of differences between means of characteristics describing the

agricultural sector and the undernourishment scale in the set of selected developing countries and
clusters (Ward’s method).

Table 3. Description of clusters of developing countries according to the undernourishment scale and
selected characteristics describing the agricultural sector.

Table 4. Recommendations on strategies for food security improvement in identified clusters.

Cluster I—countries with the lowest prevalence of undernourishment in the investigated

population of countries—was composed of the United Arab Emirates and Kuwait. Compared to the
other countries they were distinguished by the lowest share of agriculture in GDP and a very low food
production growth rate, which failed to offset the population growth. The volume of agricultural
production obtained from the very small area of land suitable for cultivation, despite being fully
equipped with irrigation infrastructure and a very high value of net capital stock, was insufficient in
relation to existing needs. A significant role in the reduction of undernourishment in those countries
was played by food imports. Deficit in the agri-food trade per capita was the highest in that group and
amounted to almost USD 1160, i.e., it was almost five-fold higher than the mean for the whole
investigated population of countries. The positive and statistically significant effect of trade openness
on the level of food security was shown, e.g., by Brooks and Matthews [81] and Dithmer and Abdulai
[104]. In relation to the importance of agri-food trade to ensure food security it may also be stated that
over ¾ countries worldwide (77%) suffer from calorie deficit [105], while almost ¼ of global food
production is subject to international trade. Fader et al. [106] indicated that 16% of the global
population consume food provided by international exchange, with the greatest dependency on
imports found in countries of North Africa, the Andean countries and the Arab countries.
A more serious problem with ensuring food security than that in cluster I was recorded in the
second cluster. It comprises oil exporters, with a marginal role of agriculture in their GDP; countries, in
which on average every eighth inhabitant faced undernourishment. At very low, although to a
considerable extent irrigated, arable land resources and a relatively low net capital stock per 1 ha
arable land, the nutrition status in that cluster was also determined by the potential to obtained
imported food products. A considerable role of trade to modify the nutrition status of the local
population was also observed in clusters III and IV. They comprised countries which financed imports
of food products to eliminate the deficits mainly through exploitation and the processing of crude oil
and natural gas (Brunei Darussalam, Trinidad and Tobago), tourism (French Polynesia, New
Caledonia, Mauritius, Barbados) or transport services and transit fees (Djibuti). Based on the above
results, it may be stated that a crucial role in ensuring food security in countries covered by clusters I-
IV is played by trade policies aimed at enhancing trade openness (Table 4). In the Arab countries
(clusters I and II) they should have been supplemented by the adoption of innovative technologies to
boost food production, delivering services for agriculture, as well as technical, administrative and
training support for farmers. In countries classified in clusters III and IV, apart for the liberal trade
policy, a milestone to improve the food security status might be to maximize agricultural land use and
to develop both farming technologies and investments in agricultural infrastructure.
An approximately 3.5-fold lower prevalence of undernourishment than the average in the
developing countries, at a simultaneously high surplus in agri-food trade per capita, was recorded in
cluster V. In Malesia and Costa Rica, apart from tourism, an important branch of the national economy
is agriculture. Malesia is one of the main world exporters of palm oil, while Costa Rica specializes in
the export of pineapples, bananas, coffee and sugar [91]. In these countries, technology transfer and
productivity enhancement through implementation of high-yielding varieties and increasing the
cropping intensity seem to be important in improving food availability (Table 4). The adaptation and
delivery of efficient services, as well as the promotion of training and extension services, might also
be desirable to increase agricultural productivity and consequently reduce the undernourishment
scale.
Cluster VI comprises 18 countries, in which the prevalence of undernourishment was
approximately 2-fold lower than the average in the developing countries (7.3% vs 13.0%). A factor
supporting fight against hunger, at a relatively low arable land area per capita, was connected with the
scale of irrigation in arable land. It may be observed that the lack of agricultural land and insufficient
water resources are the most frequently mentioned causes for a lack of food security indicated in
literature on the subject [83], while Gohar, Amer and Ward [82] considered relationships between
water availability and irrigation infrastructure and food security. Attaining food security in the cluster
including some of the most populous countries in the world (China, Egypt, Bangladesh and Vietnam),
was in turn hindered by the relatively low net capital stock per 1 ha arable land. As a consequence,
the food production growth rate was lower than the population growth rate. A lack of capital stock and
investments may be considered as the factor that hampered reaching a higher agricultural
performance. It can be noted here that the importance of irrigation infrastructure and the availability of
technical production assets to food security in developing countries was indicated by Dec et al. [107].
The impact of new techniques and technologies on farm productivity was also discussed by Schultz
[108], Hayami [109], Hayami and Ruttan [110], as well as Stellmacher and Kelboro [111]. In view of
the above, all the possible strategies related to the investment in infrastructure and agricultural
research, as well as the improvement in extension services and training programs for farmers, seem
to be highly recommended to boost agricultural production, while domestic production might be
supported by food imports under preferential trade agreements (Table 4). Considering income
inequalities in the countries included in this cluster the government policies aimed at increasing the
households’ purchasing power would also be of key importance to address the food security
challenge efficiently.
Cluster VII included three countries obtaining a considerable surplus in agri-food trade per
capita, in which the highest resources of arable land per capita in the analyzed population of the
developing countries compensated for capital and infrastructure deficits, which manifested, e.g., in the
very low percentage of arable land equipped for irrigation. The very low value of net capital stock per
1 ha arable land and a lack of irrigation infrastructure also constituted a barrier to the growth of
productivity in agriculture in countries of Africa, Asia and Latin America, classified to clusters VIII and
IX.
A very high (over 30%) prevalence of undernourishment was recorded in the countries
comprising cluster X. The observed very high share of the agricultural sector in GDP may be
considered as equivalent to the very low level of income for the population working in agriculture,
which on the one hand indicates a lack of resources for investment in farms, while on the other hand
—a lack of purchasing power of consumers. The strictly agricultural character of the national
economies in those countries compounded problems with providing adequate nutrition to the
population. The very low level of capital resources, including a lack of irrigation systems, influenced
the level and growth rate in agricultural production, which was insufficient in relation to the population
needs, resulting in necessary food imports and a deficit in agri-food trade. It should be stressed here
that policy actions aimed at enhancing agricultural productivity, including the development of relevant
infrastructure, will not solve the hunger problem without eliminating poverty and increasing the
consumers’ economic access to food. It strongly refers to the agricultural countries gathered in cluster
X, but it is also true for clusters VII-IX and XI (Table 4).
The highest prevalence of undernourishment in the analyzed population of countries was found
in cluster XI. It consisted of 15 countries (eleven African countries, three countries from Asia and
Haiti), in which, similarly as in clusters VIII and IX, despite the relatively large arable land area per
capita, the lack of capital and infrastructure led to food shortages suffered by almost 40% of their
inhabitants. Results obtained in the present study confirmed that investment is one of the key drivers
for the improvement of efficiency in agriculture and food production. These findings have policy
implications for strengthening food security through an increase in efficiency. It has already been
emphasized by Ogundari [112], who suggested the need for programs and policies that will boost
agricultural efficiency levels through the improvement of extension services, as well as the
introduction of robust training programs for farmers on the usage of modern technologies, etc. This
issue has also been discussed by Prus [113,114,115].

5. Conclusions
The world experiences highly uneven patterns of socio-economic development, which on one
hand are manifested in large surpluses and, on the other, by permanent food shortages contributing
to hunger and undernourishment. Maintaining food security is a problem that most severely affects
developing countries with low per capita GDP levels, which usually also suffer from unfavorable
agricultural conditions and infrastructure deficiencies. Based on the cluster analysis, two main
reasons for food insecurity may be identified. In some regions, the reason is the physical and/or
economic unavailability of food (clusters composed of Sub-Saharan Africa and South-Eastern Asia).
Other ones, in turn, experience social inequalities in nutrition (countries affected by this problem
include oil producers with various economic development levels, located in different continents, such
as Iraq, Angola, Nigeria or Ecuador).
It results from these analyses that problems with maintaining food security are found with the
greatest intensity in developing countries with a high share of agriculture in their GDP, adverse
conditions hindering agricultural production and deficient infrastructure. However, a small arable area
per capita does not necessarily mean high rates of undernourishment. This is because the limited
resources of agricultural land may be compensated for by increased productivity and imported food to
cover the deficiency. Therefore, somewhat in spite of the Malthusian theory, the irrigation of arable
land, the agricultural trade balance and the deployment of technical production assets proves to be
more important in determining the nutrition situation than arable area per capita. Increasing the
agricultural productivity through the adaptation and adoption of farming technologies, as well as the
improvement in extension services and training programs for farmers and implementing an open trade
policy which, while not detrimental to the interests of domestic producers and consumers, allows
countries to raise funds for financing the import of food that compensates for the short domestic
supply. These are the measures that could result in solving the nutrition problem in oil- or natural gas-
producing countries and small island tourist economies (clusters I-IV). Promoting environmentally
friendly technologies, expanding investments in agricultural research and extension systems and
enhancing farmers’ education accompanied by technology transfer from developed countries should
be seen as crucial components of policies implemented to improve food security in countries facing
the challenge of agricultural productivity enhancement, including the most populous ones in the world
(clusters V-VI). Investments in agricultural infrastructure along with eliminating income inequalities by
adopting measures aimed at increasing the households’ purchasing power, especially those in rural
areas, are key drivers for improving food access in countries all over the world, with special regard to
Africa, Asia and Latin America (clusters VI-XI).
Note that poorly developed countries may lack incentives that trigger growth and agricultural
performance, both on the supply and the demand side. With this in mind, and considering Nurkse’s
model of the vicious circle of poverty [116] and the scarcity of capital, it should be emphasized that
alleviating the global hunger problem requires the involvement of the international community, which
should provide development assistance oriented at the reasons (rather than just on the effects) for
food insecurity. Food aid that supports the development of production and enhancing market
infrastructure can play a positive role in enhancing food security. However, food aid is not the only, or
in many cases the most efficient, means of addressing food insecurity. In this context, it becomes
necessary for developing countries to establish and implement socio-economic growth strategies
focused on ensuring conditions for development resulting in increasing the efficiency of national
economies, as well as improving the quality of human life. It is necessary to take into account the
environmental, social and economic specificity of each country, as well as its political and institutional
 conditions. Only sustainable development and, subsequently, economic growth is the way to ensure
food security at regional, national and individual household levels.
This paper addressed three issues: the linkage between food security, agricultural potential and
agricultural performance, spatial diversity of agriculture-oriented reasons for undernourishment, as
well as the recognition and better understanding of the most effective interventions to solve the
hunger problem under a country’s unique conditions. In this way it was possible to offer a
comprehensive perspective for the policy formulation world-wide, which may be of interest to scholars
and policy makers. However, the study has its limitations. The primary aim of the typology was to
investigate spatial diversity in food security and its sectoral causes. Hence, the study is primarily a
static one and generally it does not take into account the variation of these variables over time and the
source of this variation. It may be important to include indicators of time trends to gain insight into
changes in the food security status and evaluate the effectiveness of interventions implemented.
Examining the impacts of macroeconomic, institutional and external shocks over time would require
additional research. These shocks that affect agricultural activity and disrupt agricultural production
include, e.g., price fluctuations, trade policies, political instability, weather conditions, natural disasters
and epidemic threats. Variables responsible for the population’s purchasing power and shaping the
economic access to food should also be considered. Including into the analysis both macro- and
mesoeconomic determinants would have offered many more comprehensive foundations to establish
multidimensional growth strategies aimed at improving food security. It can also be mentioned that
this paper, similarly to the majority of existing studies, is related to food availability and food access
rather than the health and nutrition dimension of food security. In the further step of the research, it
may be valuable to incorporate into the grouping some criteria related to consumption patterns and
food utilization.

Author Contributions
Conceptualization, K.P. and M.K.; methodology, K.P.; formal analysis, K.P. and M.K.;
investigation, K.P. and M.K.; resources, K.P. and M.K.; writing—original draft preparation, K.P. and
M.K.; writing—review and editing, K.P.; visualization, M.K.; supervision, K.P.; project administration,
K.P.; funding acquisition, K.P. and M.K. All authors have read and agreed to the published version of
the manuscript.

Funding
This research was funded by the Faculty of Economics and Social Sciences, Poznań University
of Life Sciences.

Conflicts of Interest
The authors declare no conflict of interest.

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Technological modernization and its impact on Agriculture, Fisheries and Fossil fuel
utilization in the Asia Pacific Countries with emphasis on sustainability perspective
Olaganathan Rajee* and Kathleen Quigley College of Arts and Sciences and College of
Business Embry Riddle Aeronautical University Worldwide, 75 Bukit Timah Road, #02-01/02
Boon Siew Building, Singapore. 229833 * Corresponding Author E-mail:
[Link]@[Link]; Phone: +1 626 236 2254 ABSTRACT Modernization is a
process that moves towards efficiency. This affects most of the fields such as agriculture,
fisheries, forestry, urban planning, policy, fossil fuel usage, manufacturing, technology,
economic growth etc. This process plays a major role in moving forward making things
faster, better and basically more efficient. The effects of modernization on all these fields
bring about the major changes to aspects such as social, economic and the environment. The
level of operation has increased from a domestic level; small family scale business to large
commercial levels. As the level of operation increased, the utilization of natural resources
increased gradually and paved way for the use of synthetic materials and machines. This
shift brought about changes in attitude of managing resources and economic growth. Most
of the countries upheld importance in maximising short-term benefits in terms of economic
efficiency rather than sustainability of the resources. The rapid increase in human
population also contributed to this. This paper discusses about the impact of modernization
on different perspectives such as socioeconomic, environmental and sustainability issues in
the field of agriculture, fisheries, fossil fuel and energy sector in Asia pacific countries. Key
words: Modernization, Agriculture, Fisheries, Fossil fuel, Energy, Sustainability
INTRODUCTION Modernization is a process in which a country moves from a traditional
society to an urbanized and industrialized society. During this process the country changes in
different levels. The changes are depicted in terms of traditional value rather than scientific
belief. Its population becomes more urbanized, it changes economically from conventional
farming to industrialized/ mechanized farming which can create dire consequences
compared to the fact that the country’s economy solely depends on producing goods and
services. Modernization is due to the improvements in science which in turn leads to the
advancements in technology. Technology drives modernization in different directions. It
allows the farmers to cultivate more crops, it allows the development of factories thereby
providing jobs to the new urban dwellers; provides entertainment, improved health care and
other innovations. This leads the society to become more modernized, providing access to
many goods which in turn make life more comfortable. Besides these benefits,
modernization also has its own drawbacks. The main negative impact is on the Technological
modernization and its impact on Agriculture, Fisheries and Fossil fuel utilization in the Asia
Pacific Countries Olaganathan Rajee, et al. 423 environment because modernization
encourages corporate giants to source pollution rich sources of cheap fuel to power new
technology. Another negative impact is that it causes society to break up social ties and lose
its social identity. Thus, the cause & effects of modernization can be both positive and
negative. This paper will discuss mainly about the impact of modernization on the food
sector i.e., agriculture and fisheries division and in the energy sector about the fossil fuels
and relevant environmental issues and the associated sustainability perspective in the Asia
Pacific region with special emphasis on the most populated countries such as China, India,
Indonesia and Philippines which are of course the developing nations in this region. Fisheries
Sector Traditionally, fishing has been the main profession of the people living along the
coastal region. Apart from providing food security, fisheries occupy an important place in the
socioeconomic development of the country by providing employment and income to the
rural population and it serves as a valuable foreign exchange for the development of the
country. During the last five decades in fact outpacing the world population growth, the
annual global fish production has been growing steadily at the rate of 3.2% (FAO, 2012).
Meanwhile, the global per capita consumption of fish has also increased steadily from an
average of 9.9 kg in 1961 to 19.2 kg in 2012 (FAO, 2012) and is still increasing thus exerting
more pressure on resources available. This increase in fish consumption is attributed to a
sustained fish production, increase in human population, high per capita income and
urbanization which is facilitated by the strong industrialization in fishing industry and
modernization in the efficient distribution of the products. This section will discuss about
technological advancement in the fisheries industry and the role of fisheries in highly
populated countries such as China, Indonesia, India and Philippines in the Asia Pacific region
with special reference to production, challenges/negative impacts, sustainability perspective
and socio economic perspective. Technological Advancement In early 1900’s all activities
related to the fishing industry was carried out by the fishermen community with versatile
skills and knowledge such as craft engineering, textile engineering, navigational skills,
oceanography, astronomy, engineering, transportation, processing, marketing etc. of which
they acquired through experience from previous generations. As human population
increased, the demand for seafood also increased tremendously. Knowledge and
technological growth played a major role in capture fisheries and helped to go further into
the ocean in search for more fish varieties and yield. After globalization, fishing became a
commercialized venture. The modern fishing fleet with processing facilities, fish scouting
airplanes, cold storage and the acoustic technology help to detect the size and nature of fish
schools in the open ocean and at various depths. Modernization brought new changes
causing structural shift by improving the efficiency of crafts and gears, creating new
employment, increasing the economic growth of the community and the country. In the late
1900s and early 21st century there has been a considerable increase in the mechanization of
the industry especially the ring seine, mini trawlers which led to the over exploitation of
some fishery causing destruction and collapse (FAO-SOFIA, 2006). Production Perspective
Asia-Pacific region plays a dominant role in global fishery production. In 2002, total
production was around 133 million tons and AsiaPacific countries contributed to 50 percent
of capture fishery production and 89 percent of global aquaculture production. In 2003, the
top 10 producers in Asia –Pacific Countries are China, Japan, Indonesia, India, Thailand,
Philippines, Republic of Korea, Vietnam, Malaysia and Taiwan Province of China (FAO, 2005).
This tremendous growth and reliance of Asia-Pacific Technological modernization and its
impact on Agriculture, Fisheries and Fossil fuel utilization in the Asia Pacific Countries
Olaganathan Rajee, et al. 424 countries on fishing are mainly due to their socio economic
benefits. China: China has a coastline of 14,500 km, and an Exclusive Economic Zone of
877,019 square km. China has ongoing disputes with neighboring countries over the exact
extent of EEZ. In 1985 China started distant water fishing activities. It had agreements with
other foreign countries to access their EEZ for fishing. This opened up new fishing grounds
for Chinese fishermen providing more income and contributed to the nation’s economy. In
1996 it extended to 60 regions globally with an operation of 1381 vessels providing
employment to 21,200 fishermen and their capture fisheries produced 926, 500 tons (NOAA,
2000). This led to an increase in the fishery trade and annual growth was estimated to be
15.7% in export and 17.2% in imports (Aquaculture in China and Asia, FAO, 2007). China is
the world’s largest exporter of fish and fish products from 2002 and the value of the industry
was US$ 7.7 billion. In 2013 China earned a surplus of USD$ 11.6 billion through the fishery
trade (NOAA, 2000). In 2015, China aims to expand its distant water fleet to 2,300 vessels.
Indonesia: Indonesia has a long coastline of 54,716 km with an Exclusive Economic Zone of
3.1 million square km which is the fifth largest in the world (FAO, 2013a). In the coastal zone
it has approximately 5.8 million square km of fishing area and its fresh water sector has over
5,500 rivers and an estimated total dam capacity of 22.49 km3 (FAO, 2013b). Fishery plays a
major role in the socio economic sector of Indonesia due to these abundant water resources
and the growth of fishing industry is about 7 % per year. Indonesia is one of the largest
producers of fishery products in Southeast Asia; in 1998, Indonesian prawn exports
exceeded USD$1 billion and it ranks third in tuna production. The production in the tuna
sector alone has increased by 3.31% during 2005-09 accounting for total production of
203,269 tons. In 2009 the total production was 9.82 million tons and in 2010 the total fishery
production reached 10.83 million tons, up by 10.29%. According to the data of the
Indonesian Chamber of Commerce and Industry (Kadin), in 2010 the Indonesia’s fishery
exports was USD$2.86 billion; in 2011 it rose to USD$ 3.52 billion and in 2012 has reached
USD$3.85 billion. India: India has a long coastal line of about 8,118 km with a wide exclusive
economic zone (EEZ) of about 2.172-million square km. Since 1947, the fish production has
increased more than ten times in India. In 1950 the fish production was 800,000 tons and
increased to 4.1 million tons in the early 1990s. The fish production has doubled in India
between 1990 and 2010 (FAO, 2011) it reached approximately 8 million metric tons. As a
result of modernization special efforts were made by the Government to promote both
coastal farming, extensive and intensive inland fish farming. Apart from this the Government
also encouraged deep sea fishing through joint venture. These efforts played a major role in
increasing the nation’s economy by reaping increase in fish production in marine sector from
520,000 tons in 1950 to 3.35 million tons in 2013; in inland sector it increased from 218,000
tons in 1950 to 6.10 million tons in 2013. In 2006, it exported over 600,000 metric tons of
fish, to some 90 countries, earning over USD$1.8 billion (MPEDA, 2013). In 2008, India was
the sixth largest producer of marine and freshwater capture fisheries, and the second largest
aquaculture farmed fish producer in the world (FAO, 2010). During 2013 -14 the fish
production was 9.58 million metric tons out of which 6.14 million metric from inland and
3.44 million metric tons from sector. During this year the growth of marine sector is 3.7%
and the inland sector is 7.3% which together contributed to the overall growth in of 5.9 %
(Handbook on Fisheries Statistics, 2014). Philippines: Philippines have an extensive coastline
of 17,460 km with an Exclusive Economic Zone of 2.2 million sq km. In 1950s to 1960s the
fish production mainly came from the marine sector and only during 1970s a significant
contribution came from inland sector and aquaculture. In 1951 the fish production was only
Technological modernization and its impact on Agriculture, Fisheries and Fossil fuel
utilization in the Asia Pacific Countries Olaganathan Rajee, et al. 425 250,000 tons and this
increased substantially to 1.6 million tons in 1990s (Ahmad et al, 2003). The growth rate of
the industry was 2.04% from 1992 to 2001. In 2001 the production was around 3.149 metric
tons and they achieved 105% against the targeted production for the year. In 2010 it ranked
as the fifth top fish producer globally. In 2011 eventually the total production decreased at a
rate of 3.6% but the total export value was USD$ 871 million while import was USD$ 217
million and left a positive balance in trade and contributed to the country’s GDP (BFAR
2011). Negative Impacts of Modernization in Fishery Sector Modernization has been
overwhelmingly good for humanity in terms of economic and social improvement but it also
has some negative impacts. With regard to the fishery sector it has caused the following
impacts: Most of the marine fishing grounds have been excessively overexploited for human
consumption, for fish meal, vitamins and various other uses. Due to this over fishing 8% of
marine fisheries were depleted, 16% over exploited and 52% fully exploited, 21%
moderately exploited and 3% under exploited (FAO-SOFIA, 2006). This poses a terrible threat
to the sustainability of marine resources. Aquatic habitats have also been altered or
destructed massively for the construction of embankments for flood control, irrigation,
drainage, construction of weirs in rivers, excessive withdrawal of surface water, pollution
caused by the agricultural pesticides, fertilizers, indiscriminate release of industrial effluents,
unplanned construction of rural roads and culverts that obstruct the movement of fish all
together contributed to the destruction of marine fisheries. FAO (2007) report states that
fish catch has decreased drastically in China, India, Japan, New Zealand, South Korea and
Thailand. Due to declining fish stocks, fishermen have ventured out into the country’s
offshore waters including disputed waters and other countries EEZ to catch fish. This causes
a great challenge not only to marine resources but also the security of the countries. China
being the world’s largest exporter of fish and fish products for twelve consecutive years is
facing criticism with regards to offshore fishing by their fishermen and their export value of
products is US$ 20 billion in 2013. China’s Institute of Oceanology stated that 30% of
fisheries have collapsed and 20% were overexploited and the impact of overfishing and
pollution is larger than a decade ago ([Link]/news101). Sustainability
Perspective Modernization and the technological advancements have extremely changed
the fishery sector during the past few years. This has depleted the resources drastically and
has raised the question of Sustainability. FAO (2005) quantified that the catch from capture
fisheries increased three times from 20 million tons (1950) to 60 million tons (1970).
Hannesson (1995) reported signs of stress in numerous large scale fisheries globally. The
Peruvian anchovy fishery collapsed due to over fishing in 1971-72. Further North Atlantic
demersal fisheries like haddock, halibut and cod were also declining (Botsford, 1997 and
Haggon, 1998). In 1992 the situation was worsen in Canada where the abundance of Cod
stocks were reduced to 10% of their long term abundance (Charles, 1998 and Pauly et al.,
2002). Canada government announced a 2 year ban for commercial fishing off Labrador and
Newfoundland. In 1997-98 Canada partially reopened the fisheries but data confirmed that
cod stocks were not recovering. In 2003 the cod fisheries were closed until further notice. In
2011, at Grand banks the stock had increased by 34%. When Cod population decreased, the
population of forage fishes increased several fold due to the absence of the predator. Due to
the ban in the area not only cod but other marine invertebrate populations have also
recovered (Frank Kenneth et al., 2005). This proves that protecting marine areas will help to
protect not only the marine fauna and flora but the entire ecosystem. Seeing the success in
cod fishery, other developing countries are also changing their policy to protect resources
for future generations thus moving Technological modernization and its impact on
Agriculture, Fisheries and Fossil fuel utilization in the Asia Pacific Countries Olaganathan
Rajee, et al. 426 towards a sustainable future. There are legislations in place to protect the
resources for future sustainability. This is discussed briefly in the following section. China: In
China the production, development and the utilization of the country’s fishery resources is
regulated by the Fisheries law (1986) which was amended in 2000. According to this law the
state government has to adopt a policy with special emphasis on the development of fishing,
aquaculture and fish processing. The Protection of Wildlife Act (1988) implemented by the
Regulations for the Protection of Aquatic Wildlife (1993) regulates responsibility to the
Fisheries administration to manage the endangered species in aquatic wildlife. Meanwhile,
marine resources were protected by the Marine Environment Protection law (1982). China
also have the Water Law (1988) amended in 2002 to regulate the development, utilization
and management of water resources. The establishment of Marine Functional Zonation
Schemes such as coastal land use, urban and port development was regulated by the Sea
Area Use Management Law (2002). Indonesia: The Act of the Republic No.6 relating to
Indonesian Waters (1996) regulates the navigation in Indonesian waters and emphasizes the
management, utilization and protection of the water resources; the Law on Water Resources
(2004) which regulates the sustainable use of both freshwater and coastal water. Besides
this there is a Fisheries Law (2004), Environmental Management Act (1997) which protects
the fishery resources, provides guidelines for aquaculture activities and protects the
environment on a wider perspective. Garcia et al., (2003) suggested that “Ecosystem Based
Management” will be the new approach for fishery management but it would be an
extension of the gradual improvement of existing fishery management ideas. Moreover,
they report that fisheries has a substantial negative impact on the ecosystem and only an
Ecosystem based management approach will strive to minimize those impacts. India: India
has a federal structure of government. There are many laws and regulations that may be
relevant to fisheries and aquaculture adopted at state and central level. It includes the
British-era Indian Fisheries Act 1897, which penalizes the killing of fish by poisoning water
and by using explosives; the Environment Protection Act 1986, an umbrella act containing
provisions for all environment related issues affecting fisheries and aquaculture industry in
India. India also has enacted the Water Act 1974 (Prevention and Control of Pollution) and
the Wild Life Protection Act 1972. All these legislations must be read in conjunction with one
another, and with the local laws of a specific state, to gain a full picture of the law and
regulations that are applicable to fisheries and aquaculture in India. During the Eleventh Five
Year Plan (2007-12) the Planning Commission suggested to employ a Fishery Management
Plan through the enforcement of Marine Fisheries Regulations Act which limits the entry of
new coastal mechanized fishing crafts in banned areas. Philippines: Agriculture and Fisheries
Modernization Act (1997), provides guidelines to modernize the agriculture and fisheries
sectors in order to enhance their profitability. The Philippines Fisheries Code (1998) provides
regulations for the development, management, conservation and utilization of fisheries and
aquatic resources. Apart from these two acts they also have Biological and Genetic
Resources Order (1995), National Integrated Protected Areas System Act (1992), Philippines
Clean Water Act (2004), Philippines Environment Code (1988) which protects the natural
resources and environment. All these legislations play a major role in protecting natural
resources. Following the success of Marine Protected areas in developed countries Asia Pac
is also adopting this approach. Both in conservation and in the fishery perspective, these
protected areas are valuable and is considered as a management tool in Fishery sector
(Mous et al., 2005). The development and expansion of these areas is required from both
conservation and fisheries perspective. In fact, Technological modernization and its impact
on Agriculture, Fisheries and Fossil fuel utilization in the Asia Pacific Countries Olaganathan
Rajee, et al. 427 marine protected areas are a valuable tool for fishery management and can
supplement, or even replace, standard fishery management approaches under certain
conditions (Mous et al., 2005). Socio Economic Impacts of Fisheries in Asia Pacific region It is
important to note that Asia produces 86% of total fisheries contributing 2.5 tons per person
and more than 37 million people are employed in this sector. It produces over 94 million
tons of fish (including capture and aquaculture), which is about 66% of the world's
production. The fishing industry has a tremendous impact on the life and livelihood of
people in Asia Pacific Countries. The industry also offers part-time or occasional work that
has certain peak periods during vaccination, harvesting etc. One aspect that continues to
plague the industry is lower fish stocks due to overfishing. However, for each person
involved directly in the industry, it is estimated that there are four people in associated
industries such as processing, manufacturing and maintenance of fishing boats, and
manufacturing and maintenance of fishing gear and nets. It is also estimated that each
person either directly or indirectly involved in the industry has three dependents (Green
Facts, 2015). The number of people employed in the industry and value of the industry in
China, Indonesia, India, and Philippines is given in Table 1. Table 1. Employment and Value of
the industry in Asia Pacific region Country Number employed Value of the industry China 12,
594, 654 (Green Facts, 2015) 61 million tonnes (China aquaculture industry report 2015-
2018. Oct 2015. ID 3449146). Fishing and aquaculture contribution to GDP is 3.7% (FAO,
2006) Indonesia 4, 496, 680 (Green Facts, 2015) 8.9 million tons. Value of fishing and
aquaculture contribution to GDP is 3.9% (FAO, 2006) Philippine s 1, 500, 000 (FAO, 2006) 3.9
million tons. Fishing and aquaculture contribution to GDP is 4.8% (FAO, 2006) India 2, 500,
000 (FAO, 2006) 9.6 million tons. Aquaculture contribution to GDP is .5% (FAO, 2006)
Agriculture Sector Modernization in the field of agriculture has increased food supply to
mankind and has also played a significant role in raising the income of farmers and local
economy. This section of the report will discuss about the facts, prospects and impacts of
agricultural modernization in these highly populated Asia Pacific countries. China: China is
the most populated country but it has only 5% of earth’s water resources and 7% arable
land. With this limitation it has to feed 20% of the world population and it was a great
challenge with limited resources (Wang et al., 2010). Modernization of the agricultural
industry paved a way to solve the issues. In 1949, China’s total food grain production was
approximately over 100 million tons and in 1998 it has increased to 500 million tons. After
1998 the grain production has more or less levelled off (Feng, 2007). This increase in the
production was due to the green revolution. China adopted the semi dwarf trait in rice and
wheat which substantially increased the yield since 1960s (Gaud, 1968). In 1970, China
adopted the hybrid variety of maize which was a successful product in USA in 1940s. In
1980s the adoption of the hybrid variety of rice pushed the production to a greater success
(Yuan, 1992; Katsura et al., 2007). Moreover, in 1980s China implemented the “Household
Responsibility System” – each household was allocated with a plot of land for farming, gave
incentives to the farmers to produce more and increase their earnings. This arrangement
was a great success and was considered to be the Golden era in 1980 to 1998 and made a
record in 1998 with a wheat production of 512 million tons. This has not been broken so far
(National Bureau of Statistics of China, 2009). The utilization of fertilizers also played a
significant role by contributing a 45-50 % increase in food production during the past 30 to
40 years. Sam Portch and Jinyi Jin (nd) reported that the utilization of fertilizer increased
from 1.94 million tons in 1965 to 49.73 million tons in 2005. The usage of fertilizer has been
increasing Technological modernization and its impact on Agriculture, Fisheries and Fossil
fuel utilization in the Asia Pacific Countries Olaganathan Rajee, et al. 428 tremendously till
2007 and has reached the maximum plateau of 50 million tons per year now (History of Soy
in China and Taiwan, 2014). Indonesia and Philippines: Rice is the staple food in Indonesia
and production was about 10 million tons in 1961 and has since increased to 54 million tons
in 2004. In 1961 the yield per hectare was 2 tons and increased to 4.5 tons in 2003. The
highest growth rate occurred during 1970-90. During the green revolution, infrastructure
development played an important role in improving rice yields mainly due to the
development of irrigation networks which were developed before World War II (van der
Kroef, 1963). The utilization of fertilizers, pesticides and cultivation of high-yielding hybrid
rice, especially insect-resistant hybrids contributed to increased production. Government
also offered the “Mass guidance program” through which it provided technical assistance,
credits and marketing support through cooperative departments. This reflected in the
success of green revolution. Rosset and Collins (1998) reported that in West Java alone the
fertilizer and pesticide utilization increased by 65% and 19% respectively. In 1961 the
fertilizer consumption was 135,990 metric tons and it increased to 1,173,025 metric tons in
1980 and in 2002 it approximately doubled to 2,992,000 metric tons (FAOSTAT, 2015).
According to FAOSTAT (2011), Philippines is the 8th largest rice producer in the world
contributing to 2.8% of total global rice production. Since 1950, rice production has
increased significantly. This increase in production is mainly due to the green revolution,
improved crop varieties and increase in the utilization of foliar fertilizer. The average
productivity increased from 1.23 metric tons per hectare in 1961 to 3.59 metric tons per
hectare in 2009 (FAOSTAT, 2011). In 2010, nearly 15.7 million metric tons of palay (pre-
husked rice) were produced and accounted for 21.86% percent of gross value in agriculture
(Philippines economy posts, 2011). In 1980s the rice yield increased 13% in Central Luzon
but at the cost of 21% increase in fertilizer usage. While in Central plains the yield was up to
65% due the increased utilization of 53% pesticide and 24% of fertilizer Rosset and Collins
(1998). India: In 1940s the ‘Grow more Food Campaign’ was started towards promoting the
growth of food crops while the Integrated Production Program concentrated on cash crops
production. Reclamation of land and its development, mechanization, use of chemicals –
fertilizers, pesticides, herbicides were promoted extensively by the government under the
five year plan. From 1960s revolutions started in many areas including Green Revolution
(agriculture products), Yellow Revolution (oil seeds from 1986-1990), Blue Revolution
(Fishing from 1973-2002). A remarkable growth was noted after 1991 due to economic
reforms and innovations in Agro Processing and Biotechnology (Kumar, 2005). Due to
industrialization in agricultural sector the ratio of the economic yield to the biological yield
was high (Shiva, 1993). The average yield per hectare for rice is 7.1 quintals and 6.6 quintals
for wheat in 1949-50. This increases to 10.8 quintals of rice and 9.1 quintals of wheat in
1964-65 with an annual growth rate of 2.1% and 1.3% respectively. During post green
revolution i.e., from 1965-2009 the average yield of rice increased to 21.86 quintals with an
annual growth rate of 2.3% and wheat yield was 28.91 quintals with a growth rate of 3.4%.
In 2001, the wheat production was 74 million tonnes of wheat which is high compared to 6
million tons during 1947 (Abrol, 2000). The overall annual production of food grains is about
82 million tons in 1960-61 and increased to 123.7 and 172.5 million tons during 1980-81 and
1990-91 respectively (Abrol, 2000). In 1979, India was holding 16 million tons of surplus food
grain in storage (Lappe et al., 1982). Though food availability increased there was unequal
access to food and resources which led to poverty. During 1998-99 production level is 195
million tons and the country has been able to accumulate substantial quantity of 35 million
ton as stocks to cope up with any sudden difficulties arising from drought or a similar
situation in any Technological modernization and its impact on Agriculture, Fisheries and
Fossil fuel utilization in the Asia Pacific Countries Olaganathan Rajee, et al. 429 part of the
country (Abrol, 2000). This increase in the production of food grains are attributed to the
utilization of fertilizers. Next to China and USA, India utilizes more amounts of fertilizers
which have increased from 1.54 million tons in 1967-68 to 17.31 in 1997-98. However 65%
of the fertilizer is used for rice and wheat production. The requirement of the fertilizers is
projected to increase up to 30-35 million tons by 2020 for food grain crops. The demand will
increase to another 15 million tons for horticulture, vegetables and other commercial crops.
The wide spread adoption of high yielding varieties and the irrigational coverage coupled
with fertilizer and pesticide usage had led to significant increases in cropping intensities.
Negative Impacts of Modernization in Agricultural Sector The main objective of the Green
revolution was to produce more food for the growing population and it was successful
(Janvry and Sadoulet, 2002). It involves the widespread use of chemical fertilizers, pesticides,
intensive irrigation and hybrid strains/high yielding strains. The introduction of chemicals
reduced the productivity of land and created a necessity for intensive inputs to get the same
yield from the land thus added to the financial burden of farmers (Pereira, 1996). Moreover,
the approach of green revolution neglected indigenous knowledge, assumed farmers were
ignorant and thus benefits were not evenly distributed (Gadgil et al., 1996). Dogra (1990)
reported that large scale farmers had more access to subsidies for irrigation and credit from
the government. Genetically modified crops gained attention and were used widely in Asia
Pacific countries. China and India together contributed 8% of genetically modified (GM) crop
production at a global scale (FAOSTAT, 2004). In spite of the advantages, there were severe
impacts both on the health and environmental perspective. Steinbrecher (1996) reported
that GM crops can be sprayed with a herbicide to kill weeds without killing the crops but
intensified spraying on long term might boost the resistance of some weeds against the
herbicide. As weeds become resistant higher doses of herbicide are needed and that might
remain as a residue on crops and soil. The chance for bioaccumulation and bio magnification
will be higher. Above all GM crops might itself become a weed. Besides the development of
pest resistant and herbicide tolerance crops biotechnologists are also developing pathogen
resistant crops. The risk related to the herbicide resistant crop is the transfer of the genes to
wild varieties through cross pollination producing super weeds which is later difficult to
eradicate (Ho, 1998). Stone (2002) reported that insects might adapt their behavior and
genetics in unpredictable ways to survive and emerge as superbugs which can become
difficult to control. Ho (1998) reported that genetic modification for disease or pest
resistance in not a solution and on the other hand, intensive agriculture creates conditions
favorable for new pathogens. IR-36, a hybrid rice variety was engineered to be resistant to
eight major diseases and pests including bacterial blight and tungro, but when it was grown
were attacked by two new viruses, ragged stunt and wilted stunt is an example for this. GM
crops also pose a large threat to biosafety (Wilson et al., 2006). Threat to biodiversity,
evolution of resistance varieties and genetic pollution are some of the concerns related to
GM crops. Sustainability Perspective Generally, less research was done during the green
revolution on integrated technology for diversifying the livelihoods of small-scale farmers in
developing countries and increasing the sustainability of land use. The importance of organic
matter in soil, role of legumes in biological nitrogen fixation, use of organic fertilizers,
reduced tillage systems gained importance during the beginning of this century. The
technology and practices that do not have adverse impacts on the environment and human
health, leading to the improved food production is referred to as Sustainable agriculture (Ho
and Ching, 2003). The research carried out by Niggli et al. (2007) showed that sustainable
agriculture Technological modernization and its impact on Agriculture, Fisheries and Fossil
fuel utilization in the Asia Pacific Countries Olaganathan Rajee, et al. 430 requires a site
specific technology. They also reported that several projects done by grass root
organizations has shown increased productivity, high income, increased access to food,
reduced malnutrition and improved the livelihood of poor people. There are lots of socio,
economic and environmental benefits related to sustainable agriculture: Some organic farms
require more labor. Due to crop diversifications there is distribution of labor in organic
farming which contributes to the stabilization of employment and reduces problems related
to seasonal migration (FAO, 2002). It improved food security and meets the goal of
mitigating poverty and enhancing environmental sustainability (ESCAP, 2002). IFAD (2002)
reported there is an increased demand for organic food. On the environmental side it plays a
significant role in reducing the contamination of water by synthetic fertilizers, pesticides and
especially nitrogen and phosphorus leaching which causes eutrophication in nearby aquatic
habitats. Soil erosion and sedimentation of aquatic habitats are also reduced at a greater
extent (FAO, 2002). FAO (2002) report proved that 98% of energy inputs (animal manure,
biogas) in organic systems were from renewable resources while 70% energy inputs in
conventional system were nonrenewable (electricity, chemical fertilizers and pesticides). It
also plays a significant role in reducing the emissions of agricultural greenhouse gases and
thus contributes positively towards climate change. The carbon sink idea of Kyoto protocol
was effectively achieved by sustainable agriculture (Climate Change Conference, 2015).
Moreover, organic crop rotation protects surface soil and prevents nutrients from leaching.
Based on these benefits of organic farming and to protect resources for future generations
by reducing soil compaction, soil erosion, soil degradation that occurs due to mechanization
most of the countries have legislations that are directed towards sustainability. This is
discussed briefly in the following section. The Chinese government has implemented a series
of policies and measures for agriculture according to national economic and agricultural
development for different periods. There were three categories in this agricultural legal
framework namely basic agricultural policies, agricultural production policies and policies to
protect agricultural benefits. Under these categories there were several laws and regulations
such as Basic rural management system, Farmland protection policy, Food security policy,
Agricultural structural adjustment policy, Agricultural product quality and safety policy,
Agricultural taxes policy, Agricultural subsidy policy, Agricultural product marketing policy,
Agricultural science and technology policy, Agricultural resources and Environmental
protection policy, Agricultural product trading policy etc. The most recent one is the
Environment and Natural Resources policy which promotes the development of eco-friendly
agriculture (Zhen Zhong and Xiangzhi Kong, 2014). Similar to this, the recent regulation in
Indonesia is the Grand Strategy of Agricultural Development 2015-2045. This emphasizes on
the development of agricultural bio industry and offers a new concept and approach on
future agriculture development in Indonesia. This approach is in accordance to emerging
challenges related to resource constraints, climate change, science and Innovation as well as
the governance issues. The Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Law amended in 1988 aims to
improve equity and productivity in the agriculture sector by establishing owner cultivator
ship of economic sized farms to landless farmers and tenants. In the absence of National
Land Use Act, the AFMA has instituted its policy - the establishment of the Strategic
Agriculture and Fisheries Development Zones (SAFDZ) within the Network of Protected
Areas for Agriculture and Agro Industrial Development (NPAAAD). SAFDZ aims to ensure that
lands are efficiently utilized for agricultural purposes (Habito and Briones, 2005). After
modernization, a common act was amended Technological modernization and its impact on
Agriculture, Fisheries and Fossil fuel utilization in the Asia Pacific Countries Olaganathan
Rajee, et al. 431 in Philippines in 1997. That is the Agriculture and Fisheries Modernization
Act, - simply known as AFMA and it defines measures to modernize agriculture and fisheries
for the country to compete in the global market. The main principle is to improve living
conditions of farmers and fishermen and increase their productivity and income. An
Executive Order (EO) 481 was issued in 2005 in Philippines which called for “Promotion and
Development of Organic Agriculture in the Philippines”. It aims to promote and develop
organic agriculture as a farming scheme that would enhance global competitiveness, forge
effective networking and collaboration among stake holders, and guarantee food and
environmental safety. Furthermore, it covers the integrity of organic products through
approved organic certification procedures and organic production, handling and processing
standards. This was later amended as the “Organic Agriculture Act” in 2010. This is to ensure
prioritization and appropriation of funds to support programs, projects and activities for its
operation and sustainability. In India there are several laws and regulation in place regarding
the agricultural activities. Some are listed here: Seeds Act 1966, Seeds Rules 1968, Seeds
(Control) Order 1983, Insecticides Act, 1968, Insecticides Rules, 1971, Dangerous Machine
Act 1983, Dangerous Machines (Regulation) Rules, 2007; Environment Protection Act on
genetically modified organisms - the companies dealing with development of transgenic
seeds/vegetables, genetically modified seeds or planting material are obligated to meet the
safety requirements as stated under this Act. Furthermore the import of GMOs may be
subjected to conditions laid down in the notifications issued under the Foreign Trade
(Development and Regulation) Act 1992. The latest national agricultural policy of India was
announced on 28 July 2000, with its core goal being equitable inclusive growth and
sustainability in terms of efficient use of resources. The policy incorporates scientific and
technological advancement in its objectives in order to compete globally. The policy
encourages the use of biotechnology for evolving plants that consume less water, are
drought resistant, pest resistant, contain more nutrition, provide higher yields and are
environmentally safe for consumption. Socio Economic Impacts of Agriculture The
employment in Agriculture is measured as a percentage of total employment in the country.
Agriculture, hunting, fishing, and forestry are included in the Agriculture sector
([Link]). In all of the above countries, the relative value of agriculture is measured
as percentage of GDP which had steadily fallen since 2011 ([Link]). The value added
per worker is one way of measuring the productivity in this sector. In all the above countries,
the value added per worker increased slowly but steadily since 2011 ([Link]). The
statistics from 2004-2006 shows that the crop production index has slowly grown in China,
Indonesia, India, and has slightly declined in the Philippines. One concern that has been
raised is that these countries could be in the “Middle income traps” (Wilson, 2014). As the
economy becomes stronger, wages are raised. These countries are competing with other
developing countries that may have a lower cost of production. At the same time, they are
also competing with developed countries that offer high value products (Wilson, 2014). As
technology and equipment are added, the production per worker in the agricultural sector
can increase. Labor force participation may also grow, as more people are employed.
Urbanization and increased labor in the manufacturing sector may provide a boost to the
GDP of a country thus agriculture may show a decreasing trend as a percentage of the GDP
(Wilson, 2014). Both reduction in poverty and an increase in food security have been linked
to productivity in the agricultural sector (FAO, 2006). The number of people employed in the
industry and value of the industry in China, Indonesia, India, and Philippines is given in Table
2. Technological modernization and its impact on Agriculture, Fisheries and Fossil fuel
utilization in the Asia Pacific Countries Olaganathan Rajee, et al. 432 Table 2. Employment
and Value of the industry in Asia Pacific region Country Employment Value of industry China
29.5% of the workforce was employed in Agriculture in 2014. This figure has steadily
decreased each year; in 2004, 46.9% of the workforces were in agriculture ([Link]).
The value added per worker was $7.91 as measured in 2005 USD ([Link]). Even
though the percentage of employees has decreased, the agricultural gross production value
has continued to grow. In 2014, the value was about 5.5 trillion yuan. This has grown each
year; in 2004, the value was 1.8 trillion yuan ([Link]). The value of agriculture in 2014
was 9.2% of GDP ([Link]). Crop production index was 133.6 in 2013 ([Link]).
Indonesia 35% of the workforce was employed in Agriculture in 2013 ([Link]). The
value added per worker was $1,079 as measured in 2005 USD ([Link]). The value of
agriculture in 2014 was 13.4% of GDP. Crop production index was 136.6 in 2013
([Link]). Philippines 30% of the workforce were employed in Agriculture in 2014
([Link]).The value added per worker was $1,148 as measured in 2005 USD
([Link]). The value of agriculture in 2014 was 11.3 of GDP ([Link]). Crop
production index 117.6 in 2013 ([Link]). India 50% of the workforce were employed
in Agriculture in 2013 ([Link]).The value added per worker was $7.16 as measured
in 2005 USD ([Link]). The value of agriculture in 2014 was 17.8% of GDP
([Link]). Crop production index was 141.9 in 2013 ([Link]). Fossil Fuels and
Energy During industrialization and modernization fossil fuel played a significant role in the
fields of transportation, electricity, industrial power, military, and medical applications. In
spite of these advancements and the potential benefits, fossil fuel technologies also played a
major role behind war, political unrest, human rights abuses, extreme and permanent
environmental degradation, and human disease. This section will discuss about both the
sides of fossil fuels in modernization with special emphasis on environment. Energy
Production and the emissions China: The energy production in 1990 was 880.8 thousand
metric tons of oil equivalents and in 2012 increased to 2525.3 thousand metric tons of oil
equivalent. The energy usage from 1990 to 2012 has increased by 5.9%
([Link]/table/3.6). Since 1950 China’s industrial emissions of CO2 has
grown tremendously due to modernization and its coal production has increased since 1960s
and due to this emission from fossil fuel has doubled. In 2008, it was approximately 1.92
billion metric tons due to fossil fuel utilization and cement production while the liquid fuel
contributed 14.7% of emissions (Energy Statistics, [Link] The fossil
fuel emissions have grown at 5.4% per annum from 1970 to 1997 mainly due to the
utilization of coal which accounted for 98.7% of total emissions in 1950 and 73.3% in 2008.
There was an increase in per capita emissions due to the high GDP and in 2006 it increased
up to 4.83 metric tons of carbon which is above the global average. China’s per capita
emission is 2.65 in 2000, increased to 6.07 metric tons of carbon in 2010 and in 2011 it is at
6.59 metric tons (Millennium Development Goals Indicators, 2015). Indonesia: The energy
production in 1990 was 168.5 thousand metric tons of oil equivalents and in 2012 it
increased to 440.3 thousand metric tons of oil equivalent. The energy usage from 1990 to
2012 has increased by 3.5% ([Link]/table/3.6). The emissions from fossil
fuel usage has increased since 1960s in Indonesia which has a population of approximately
230 million people and the per capita emission has increased five folds up to 0.49 metric
tons of carbon in 2008 and it is below the global average. On the other hand the emissions
from natural gas consumption and liquid petroleum has increased steadily since 1970s and
constituted 15% and 36.6% respectively of total emissions of 2008 in Indonesia. Emissions
from Technological modernization and its impact on Agriculture, Fisheries and Fossil fuel
utilization in the Asia Pacific Countries Olaganathan Rajee, et al. 433 coal usage have
increased sharply up to 47 million metric tons of carbon and it surpassed the emissions from
liquid fuels for the first time in 2008. Indonesia emitted nearly 111 million metric tons of
carbon in 2008 and ranked 15th at the global level (Boden, Marland and Andres, 2011).
Indonesia’s per capita emission rate is 1.26 metric tons in 2000, 1.76 metric tons in 2008 and
2.3 metric tons in 2011 (Millennium Development Goals Indicators, 2015). India: The energy
production in 1990 was 291.8 thousand metric tons of oil equivalents and in 2012 it
increased to 544.6 thousand metric tons of oil equivalent. The energy usage from 1990 to
2012 has increased by 4.1% ([Link]/table/3.6). From 1950 to 2008, India’s
CO2 emissions increased dramatically at the rate of 5.7% per year and it ranked third at the
global level in emitting CO2 from fossil fuels. The emissions from coal contributed
approximately 87% of emissions in 1950 and 71% in 2008 while at the same time the
emission from oil utilization increased from 11 to 20%. Compared to 2007, India’s total fossil
fuel CO2 emission increased 8.1% in 2008 which was equivalent to 475 million metric tons.
Being the second most populated country with a population of 1.1 billion India’s per capita
emission rate is 1.13 metric tons in 2000, 1.52 metric tons in 2008 and 1.69 metric tons in
2011 (Millennium Development Goals Indicators, 2015). Philippines: The energy production
in 1990 was 17.2 thousand metric tons of oil equivalents and in 2012 it increased to 24.4
thousand metric tons of oil equivalent. The energy usage from 1990 to 2012 has increased
by 1.6% ([Link]/table/3.6). It is projected the production will increase up
to 31.6 metric tons in 2035 (DOE, 2010 a). The emissions due to coal alone accounted for
14% in 2010 (DOE, 2010 b). Philippines’s per capita emission rate is 0.94 metric tons in 2000,
0.84 metric tons in 2008 and 0.86 metric tons in 2011 (Millennium Development Goals
Indicators, 2015). It is gradually decreasing due to efforts taken by the government.
Environmental Impacts of fossil fuel Fossil fuels are becoming more important in this
modernized world as it provides lots of luxury services. These fossil fuels are reclaimed from
the terrestrial and aquatic environment and converted into energy. Fossil fuels are
considered as a nonrenewable energy and environmental impacts are linked with a large
number of natural disasters / reactions which are irreversible both on a local and global level
and it has to be addressed to ensure a sustainable life for the future generations. The
environmental implications were discussed briefly in the following section: Global Warming,
Climate change and Natural disasters CO2 is the most significant greenhouse gas that traps
heat at the troposphere and contributes to global warming. As a result the earth’s average
temperature increases slowly and affects ecosystems across the earth due to the resultant
change in the climate. This climate change is responsible for economic consequences across
the countries. The economic loss that occurred between 1950 and 1959 due to the natural
disasters were USD$ 38 billion and increased to USD$535 billion in 1995 and 1999 (ECLAC
2000). During 1991-92 and 1997-98, where the El Nino was in effect, affected over 200
million people in China were by the worsened floods. In 1991, Bangladesh had 139,000
people affected by cyclones. During 1995 the worst economic loss occurred in Japan due to
the earthquake. Despite being a highly developed country which is economically strong
Japan faced serious setbacks. In 2003 Europe’s heat wave was the biggest event that costed
more than USD$ 10 billion losses in the agricultural sector and killed approximately 20,000
people. In 2015 the heavy rainfall during the northeast monsoon caused heavy floods in
South India which affected the Coromandel coastal region particularly Chennai City was hit
very badly. More than 400 people died (The Hindu, 2015) and over 1.8 million people were
Technological modernization and its impact on Agriculture, Fisheries and Fossil fuel
utilization in the Asia Pacific Countries Olaganathan Rajee, et al. 434 displaced (North
Rosemarie, 2015). The economic loss ranged from US$ 3 to 15 billion. This is the costliest
flood and natural disaster that occurred in 2015 (Business Standard, 2015 a). The flood was
attributed to the El Niño phenomenon during the El Niño year of 2015 (Business Standard,
2015 b). Apart from economic losses, the changes in global temperature also have a
significant impact on other animals which subsequently cause them to enter an endangered
status and might lead to their extinction. In California a marine mammal hospital has
rescued 1631 marine animals in 2009 and has increased to more than 1740 stranded seals
and sea lions in 2015. This increase in stranding is due to warm waters in the Pacific Ocean.
The change in water temperature is mainly attributed to 2015’s exceptionally strong El Nino
and this affected the distribution of fish populations and made it harder for seals and sea
lions to find food. This has raised a question of what would happen to the next generation if
this phenomenon continues. The Marine Mammal Center in California also insists the need
for further research on both climatology and other anthropogenic activities such as pollution
and overfishing that have a major impact on marine ecosystems ([Link]). This
type of research would help us develop a better understanding about the impacts and
implement the corrective measures to not only protect the environment as an ecosystem
but also help us to take measures to move towards Sustainability for future generations.
Solid Wastes The fossil fuel extraction also causes the accumulation of solid waste. This type
of waste increases the risk of toxic run off that can pollute surface water, ground water
sources and also soil. This toxic run off endangers surrounding fauna and flora in both
terrestrial and aquatic environments. The most significant impact in fossil fuel production is
the potential environmental disaster that occurs during transportation. Apart from these
transportation disasters at a lower level even the leakage from storage tank and other
accidents can directly damage the environment. The following are some of the spills that
occurred during the transportation of fossil fuels. In China both the Xingang port oil spill and
Yellow river oil spill occurred in 2010, in India, Mumbai-Uran Pipeline spill, Mumbai oil spill
both occurred in 2011, in Philippines Guimaras oil spill occurred in 2006 and during 2013,
typhoon Haiyan caused the oil spill, though the flow rate was not known exactly this spill has
caused approximately 520 tons of oil leakage. The pollution of this sort is often costly to
clean up. The extraction of oil and gas from underneath the earth causes large holes
underground and this ultimately leads to land subsidence causing both environmental and
property damage. Next to oil spills, coal mining is also considered disastrous as it affects the
health of the environment and people. Especially so strip mining affects the environment to
a greater extent. In China, Benxihu Colliery mine had an accident that occurred in 1942 and
was regarded as the biggest accident in the coal mining history because it caused the death
of 1549 miners in a single day. A similar incident happened in the France Courrières mine in
1906 where 1099 miners were killed after an explosion. Apart from accidents there are also
other impacts such as loss of top soil, soil erosion, ash that is left after burning of coal and
the materials other than coal that is brought to the surface after mining also accumulates as
solid wastes and removing them is labor intensive and costly. On the other hand, during
extraction certain fluids and muds containing toxic and nontoxic chemicals that are used for
lubrication also accumulate and contaminate the environment. Acid Pollution Recently in
East Asia there has been an increase in acid rain incidents. Among one third of the world’s
population resides in East Asia and modernization has given rise to lot of industries thereby
increasing the economic growth of the region over the last two decades. But within the last
one decade acid rain has grown from being local problem to a major problem at a global
level. Technological modernization and its impact on Agriculture, Fisheries and Fossil fuel
utilization in the Asia Pacific Countries Olaganathan Rajee, et al. 435 Rapid industrialization
and agricultural modernization especially in populated regions like China, India, Indonesia
and Thailand has resulted in abnormal increases in SO2 and NOX emissions and is projected
that these levels will increase in the future. Although the per capita emissions are less
compared to US and Europe, scientists believe that total emissions in the regions will exceed
the cumulative emissions of US and Europe by 2020 International Energy Agency Report
(2006). In Asia, China and India are the two major polluters. The SO2 emissions are mainly
due to the utilization of coal and in 2005 China emitted approximately 25.5 metric tons
which was at the rate of 71% increase compared to 1990 and 27% compared to 2000
emissions. Since 1980 India’s SO2 emission is increasing steadily and almost doubled
between 1985 and 2005. An uncertainty with SO2 was estimated in 2010- 2011 by Smith et
al. (2011) due to major contributions from developing countries and international shipping.
From 2000 to 2009, Zhang and Reid (2010) found a statistically negligible trend in aerosol
optical depth over the marine ecosystem. They found the consistent increase over Bay of
Bengal, east coast of Asia and the Arabian Sea in Asia region while there was a decrease in
the terrestrial emissions in China but emissions from shipping sector is increasing steadily.
However, declining emissions in China and the planned decrease in shipping emissions in
other Asian countries are likely to lead to further net decrease in the future at the global
level (Forster et al. 2007). This will cause a change in the future of climate change. Sea level
rise Sea level is increasing at an alarming rate and there is strong evidence for this. The two
major reasons for this is the thermal expansion of the ocean caused by global warming and
loss of land based ice such as glaciers which melt due to an increased atmospheric
temperature. Research shows that from 1900 the sea level is increasing by 0.04 to 0.1 inches
per year. Since 1992 it is increasing by 0.12 inches per year (Ocean service, nd). During the
past 22 years it has been increasing by 2.75 inches but the west coast of US has not seen
much rise due to the Pacific Decadal Oscillation which is masking the global effect (Tia
Ghose, 2015). It is projected to rise another 1 to 4 feet by 2100. The sea level rise will be
accompanied by the storm surges, high tides, land subsidence, flood, salt water intrusion
(NASA, nd). Due to the insufficient supply of sediments, coastal wetlands such as
saltmarshes and mangroves will also decline. This physical impact will have a cascading
effect on the socioeconomic impacts which is overwhelmingly negative (Nicholls et al.,
2008). Besides, human activities are intensifying the incidence of subsidence on susceptible
coasts, including the river deltas such as the Ganges, Brahmaputra, Mekong, and Changjiang
deltas Ericson et al. (2006) and Syvitski et al. (2009). The subsidence effect caused by
drainage and groundwater withdrawal have caused the coastal subsidence of up to 5 m in
Tokyo, 3 m in Shanghai, 2m in Bangkok (Nicholls et al., 2009). All these cities are now
depending on the water management infrastructure and flood defense mechanism to avoid
the effect of subsidence. Other changes that occur in coastal areas include coastal defenses,
destruction of wetlands, construction of port and harbor works, reduced supply of
sediments due to the construction of dams worsens the impacts of sea level rise (Nicholls et
al ., 2008 and 2009). Health Impacts The scientists from WHO reported that 160,000 people
die every year due to the side effects of climate change such as floods, droughts, warmer
temperatures and related disease outbreaks like malaria, diarrhea and malnutrition and will
increase two times by 2020 (Alister Doyle, 2003). The chemicals used in the extraction of
fossil fuel such as oil, gas and coal are extremely dangerous to human health. The chemicals
used widely in fossil fuel extraction are Benzene, Sulphur di oxide, Nitrogen oxides,
petroleum coke, formaldehyde, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, Technological
modernization and its impact on Agriculture, Fisheries and Fossil fuel utilization in the Asia
Pacific Countries Olaganathan Rajee, et al. 436 mercury, silica, radon and hydrogen fluoride.
Among these, Benzene is a carcinogen that causes leukemia, breast and urinary tract
cancers. The exposure to benzene causes a reduction in both red and white blood cells in the
bone marrow and decreases the human body’s immunity. The primary air pollutants from
coal power plants such as Sulphur di oxide and nitrogen oxides are highly toxic and cause
lung cancer and other cardiopulmonary illness. The dangers that arise from petroleum coke
are not revealed to the general public. When it is burned it causes 5 to 10% more CO2 that
contributes towards global warming. Another important pollutant from the coal industry is
mercury which is a neurotoxin. It damages the brain and the nervous system through
inhalation, ingestion or contact with skin. According to International agency for Research on
Cancer, formaldehyde is highly toxic which is linked to leukemia, nasopharyngeal cancers
and DNA alteration. Polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons are also carcinogenic and mutagenic
in nature and it contributes to childhood asthma, adverse birth abnormalities such as heart
malformations and damage DNA. Silica and Radon are also carcinogenic in nature (Ecowatch,
2013). Apart from the public health danger, fossil fuel also contributes to climate change
through combustion. Sustainability Perspective Due to the health implications, global
warming, sea level rise and other associated disasters the world nations are now making an
attempt to move towards renewable energy and reduce reliance on fossil fuels which was
evident in the Paris Climate Change Conference (2015). During industrialization the high
energy requirement of China has pushed the country towards an increase in the
consumption of coal. Coal is supplying nearly 80% of China’s energy requirements. In 2009
China built the world’s largest dam, the Three Gorges Dam which provides hydroelectric
power and plays a major role in reducing air pollution that arises from coal power plants.
This is the major step taken by China towards renewable energy. During the Paris Climate
Change Conference (2015) China has promised to quadruple solar installations by 2020. This
will be China’s contribution towards the bill to lessen climate change (Priya, 2015). The fossil
fuel consumption of India increased during the industrial revolution and greenhouse gas
emissions increased greatly. At the Paris Climate Change Conference (2015) India being the
third largest coal consumer at the global level has complied to stop importing thermal coal
by 2018 (Priya, 2015). India has also mentioned that 40% of its energy requirement will be
from clean energy after 2030 till that it will be relying on coal. Yet India’s coal utilization is
not close to China. At the Climate Change conference Indian Environment Minister has
mentioned that India is targeting to increase the production in renewable energy sector by
10 times by 2030 (Priya, 2015). Not only China and India, the most populated countries in
the world but other developed and developing countries are also moving towards renewable
energy sources such as wind energy, solar energy, tidal energy, geothermal energy and
nuclear energy Most of the countries are switching towards the energy efficient
technologies which is a step to protect the earth for sustainable future. Socio Economic
Impacts Fossil fuels The consumption of fossil fuels includes petroleum, coal, oil and natural
gas products. Consumption is measured as a percentage of the total consumption of energy.
The recent statistics from the countries listed below it is obvious that there is a little change
from 2013 to 2014 for all of these countries (World Bank, 2015). All four of the countries
relay heavily on the fossil fuels. Worldwide consumption and production of coal, oil, and gas
are growing continuously (IER, 2015). Fossil fuels are stable, produce a great amount of
energy, and thus can be easily transported and stored for a long period of time. They are
also readily available, and have a relatively low cost of production (Conserve Energy Future,
2015). “Energy use refers to use of primary energy before transformation to other end-use
fuels, which is Technological modernization and its impact on Agriculture, Fisheries and
Fossil fuel utilization in the Asia Pacific Countries Olaganathan Rajee, et al. 437 equal to
indigenous production plus imports and stock changes, minus exports and fuels supplied to
ships and aircraft engaged in international transport” (World bank, 2015). It is measured as
the kilogram of oil equivalent per capita. In all the countries discussed in this study, this
figure has increased since 2011, and the latest figures are from 2012. It is important to
discuss the renewable energy jobs in Asia. China holds 43% of renewable energy jobs in the
world. Primarily, this is due to manufacturing jobs for solar panels and wind power
manufacturing. Table 3. Fossil fuel consumption and energy usage for Asia Pacific countries
Country Fossil fuel energy consumption as measured as a percentage of the total
consumption Energy use as reported as the kg of oil equivalent per capita China 88.2% 2143
Indonesia 66.5% 861 Philippines 60.7% 443 India 73.6% 624 CONCLUSION Modernization is a
process of socioeconomic, cultural and environmental transformation. Today’s environment
is totally different from ancient periods. As discussed in this paper technology and
innovation are the main forces that still lead in the fields such as agriculture, fisheries,
energy usage and have established a superior quality of life and convenience. On the
downside it has caused deforestation, soil erosion, soil salinization, soil degradation,
destruction fisheries, and depletion of natural resources. It has also created serious
environmental problems in the world, such as air pollution, water pollution, soil pollution,
increase in carbon dioxide emissions and increase in other greenhouse gases that has
ultimately resulted in the increase in global temperature that has caused global warming
and resultant climate change. Climate change has indirectly caused the increase in sea
levels, submergence of low lying coastal areas and an overall impact on the ecosystem as
such. Though the negative impacts of the modernization have been overlooked for several
centuries, now the world countries are taking lot of measures to reduce the dependency on
natural resources, increasing the efficiency of the resources utilization, reforestation,
restoration of fisheries, developing the technology for renewable resources. All the issues
discussed in this paper helps to understand the correlation between modernization and its
impact on environmental issues in the few countries mentioned in the Asia Pacific region. All
these findings have played an important role in developing and implementing lots of strict
policies thereby moving towards the sustainability of natural resources for future
generations. But it is necessary to do a review at the global level to have a bigger picture of
the issue. This type of review will help to develop new policies to protect resources and
sustain the earth for future generations.

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