Binaya Ghimire

It is ironic that farmers are always in the news for bad reasons. After the shortages of chemical fertilisers that hit hard the farmers, they grabbed the headlines with their protest against the sugar mill owners. News like this is not uncommon in our part of the world. Just a few weeks ago farmers in India marched towards New Delhi against the government’s agriculture policy. The condition of farmers is even worse in India where more than 10 thousand farmers committed suicide due to crop failure or debt burden in 2019 alone. Farmers feed us but sadly they are unable to feed themselves.
Agriculture is a technique of growing plants and raising animals for human consumption. It is one of the remarkable achievements of humankind because it was the best thing to happen after the discovery of fire. It marked the beginning of human civilisation. Human beings started agriculture about 10,000 years ago. Since then, the agricultural sector has undergone a lot of developments and technological advancements.
Advanced technology
The poor nations still use the traditional means and equipment of farming which include wooden plough, horses or bulls for ploughing land and manual labour but the developed nations have adopted advanced farming technology. Modern agriculture techniques include using machines in the farmland and limiting the use of human labour. The developed nations are not only industrially developed but they have also taken agriculture to the next level, becoming the world's top food producers. Even though a small percentage of their population is engaged in agriculture, they are able to produce foods for a huge population. The growing world population needs more food and the developed countries are contributing to the global food supply and security.
Even though these days advanced agriculture techniques have made it possible to produce almost anything anywhere, agriculture produce is mainly affected by geography and climate. Likewise, the amount of agriculture produce is affected by the technological advancement and economy of that particular country. Agricultural products are broadly categorised as fuels (biofuels), food (grains, vegetables, fruits, dairy products, meat products, etc.), fibre (jute, cotton, etc.), and raw materials for various industrial products (rubber, paper, etc.). The most developed agricultural countries include the Netherlands, China, the United States, Denmark, Japan and Brazil.
The developed agricultural countries have completely industrialised agriculture and become top producers of agriculture products. It is interesting to note that developed countries are the countries that top the list of countries with high food production. They are known as industrialised countries and have mechanised their agriculture sector to produce more than the developing countries where agriculture is still powered by animals and human labour. Developing countries have not achieved industrial prowess so they are also not producing much.
Agriculture holds key to determine whether a country is a developed or a developing one. That’s because agriculture not only feeds people but it also produces raw materials for various industries, providing employment to a lot of people. Nevertheless, a lot of countries do not produce enough food to feed even their own people. Actually, agriculture is a troubled sector for many countries. It has also become vulnerable sector in the absence of basic inputs such as irrigation, fertiliser and advanced equipment.
Farmers in most parts of the world undergo post-harvest losses owing to the poor or inadequate storage facilities and conditions. Farmers also lack storage facilities, which create a room for pests and diseases infestations. Wet conditions in the stores provide room for the growth of fungal diseases. In the developing world, the farmers have to depend on rainfall for irrigation. Climate change poses a significant threat to the global food system. Even when there is a proper irrigation system, climate change hampers the smooth irrigation.
Crops’ interaction with the environment determines their survival. Ecology tells about how living things, plants, animals, and the microbes interact with one another. The world might be already producing more than enough to feed the global population. However, there are food shortages caused by pest and disease infestation.

Poor harvest
Farmers in the developing countries face a lot of problems. In most cases, the governments do not promote local produce. Instead, they import produces from abroad which is really bad for the farming communities of the given countries. This makes the farmers end up selling their produce at a throwaway price which worsen their conditions. They suffer from poor harvest due to extreme weather conditions or post-harvest loss due to pest or poor storage. These are but a few problems farmers are facing in the developing countries. However, there is also some good news. A lot of people are taking interest in growing their own food. In fact, urban food production is growing rapidly in developed as well as developing countries.

(Ghimire is a freelance writer.)