SUSTAINABLE AGRICULTURAL DEVELOPMENT FOR FOOD SECURITY: A REVIEW

Abstract

Agriculture has positive and significant contributions to food security, employment, export earnings, ecological balance, and etc. However, agriculture development encounters varied challenges. Among others, poor land and water management, backward cultivation techniques, shortage of information on marketing, poverty, natural resource degradation, population growth, poor support services and institutional constraints. The concept of sustainable agriculture comes in response to the declining natural resource base coupled with agricultural and other environmental non-friendly activities. Thus, the sustainability notion has encouraged key adjustments in the conventional agricultural system to make it more economically viable. In order to focus on sustainable agriculture, development of technologies and viable agricultural system that do not have undesirable effect on the environment and, more importantly, acceptable to the livelihood of farmers/pastoralists must be devised and promoted.