Thrust of future efforts in increasing productivity

Abstract

World food crops and their productivity affect people in every occupation and in every social and economic status. Patterns of the world food supplies and demand have been developed based on principles of biological evolution and ecology and influenced to a great extend by man's ambition and ingenuity. However, we do find disparity in food productivity between nations, same producing food surpluses while in many areas of the world, large elements of the population suffer from famine and hunger. Up to World War II, the emphasis in agriculture in USA was on mechanization. Horses were replaced by tractors and other manual activities were substituted with machines. The agricultural output of USA increased considerably. The yield increases per hectare for some crops were small e.g. wheat increased about 3kg -1 yr -1. In Europe during the same period, more emphasis was given to increasing tie productivity per unit of land, but the yield was again rot impressive. A few years after the war (World War II) ,the yields for both regions increased tremendously. For example, the wheat yields in the United States and the United Kingdom reached 50-80 kg ha-1yr -l as shown in Fig. 1. What causes this persistent yield increases? In general, it could be said that the adoption of adaptable new varieties, the practise of proper management systems and the introduction of new agricultural technologies, have contributed to these yield increases.