Looking ahead: Elements of future strategies

Previous section The need to get prices right

The need for technological change

Leveling the playing field, and appropriate price signals may induce a different set of technologies. This new set will respond, to a higher degree, to true scarcities as they incorporate the value of environmental goods. This process needs to be facilitated and accelerated.

- Firstly, there is the need to facilitate technology adoption, essentially by training, education and extension and by incorporating environmental aspects into extension messages and curricula; by providing credit where high investment costs constitute an impediment, for example, methane digesters or waste treatment facilities; correcting policies which are misguiding resource use or which have perverse effects; and financially supporting accelerated adoption of win-win solutions such as benefit sharing arrangements.
- Secondly, there is a continued need to generate technologies if the adapted technological solution for more sustainable livestock production is not available. It is important to design technologies that anticipate future resource constraints based on current intrinsic scarcities. To achieve this there is a need to invest in basic and adaptive research and to create and sustain the institutional capacity to undertake the work.

Technological change is the key to solving the problems of sustainable agriculture as technology determines resource use. This study demonstrates that currently available technologies can already significantly increase efficiencies, enhance resources in use and recycle waste at various stages of the production process. The study also demonstrates that knowledge needs to progressively substitute for physical inputs, and that the scope for increasing knowledge about livestock production while simultaneously reducing the use of natural resources per unit of product is enormous.

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