Agricultural research and development has traditionally focused on meeting the challenge of feeding the world's hungry population. Central to this agenda is the need to increase agricultural production through the Participatory Research and Development for Sustainable Agriculture and introduction of technologies and support services for improving farm yield. Following the successes of the Green Revolution in the 1960s and 1970s, newer challenges to agricultural research and development have emerged, such as:
- Promoting more equitable distribution of benefits resulting from dramatic improvements in agricultural production;
- Sustaining productivity gains through better management of natural resources supporting agriculture;
- Shifting the focus of research and development interventions to less favorable environments and low-input agricultural systems;
- Strengthening the capacity of local farming communities to continuously learn and experiment ways of improving their agricultural livelihoods;
- Building synergy between technological change and the socio-economic, cultural and political dimensions of agricultural innovation.
In seeking to address these emerging challenges, the dominant transfer-of-technology paradigm has proven inadequate for managing more complex second-generation issues such as: diverse biophysical environments, multiple livelihood goals, rapid changes in local and global economies, expanded range of stakeholders over agriculture and natural resources, and drastic decline in resource investment for the formal research and development sector.
