Addressing rural decline by valuing agricultural ecosystem services and treating food production as a social contribution

摘要

Agriculture, the planet's principal anthropobiome is faced with the problems of both its economic trivialization in terms of its relative contribution to GDP, and environmental degradation resulting from the replacement of ecosystem processes with external applications of nutrients and pesticides. Here we discuss (i) various dimensions of these problems in view of the rural decline in developing countries particularly India where landholdings are generally < 1 ha, (ii) and explore the possibilities of enhancing natural ecological elements in crop fields, and payment for agricultural ecosystem services to improve the economy of rural areas and global environment. We argue that (i) the enhancement of natural ecological elements in agricultural ecosystems would contribute to the sustainability of agriculture and flow of various ecological services; (ii) the traditional subsidies to agricultural inputs should be replaced with payment to farmers by considering food production as a kind of social service, (iii) additional economic pathways out of poverty that are not restricted to agriculture would be required to make rural life viable and attractive. The payment for food production as a social service would help small farmers,.who are not benefited by traditional subsidies.