Further, rising incomes shift the nature of demand. The second challenge for agriculture is to be an engine of growth and poverty reduction. We must develop technologies, policies and institutions to unleash agriculture's full potential as an engine of growth. This will require farmers to have access to both domestic and international markets. The third challenge for agriculture is to create a set of technologies, incentives and policies which encourage small farmers to pay attention to the long-run stewardship of the natural resources they manage.
Agricultural activities influence the boundaries of forests and deserts.
Expanded trade may not be the answer. Tropical and subtropical farming systems are complex, highly heterogeneous, fragile, generally low in productivity and dominated by small-scale, poor farmers. And to make things more complicated, we know much less about farming systems in these regions. The bottom line is we are going to have to do more in farming systems about which we know less and which are generally low in productivity. That makes it a much bigger challenge than aggregate numbers would suggest.