Читать книгу Promoting Investment in Agriculture for Increased Production and Productivity - Saifullah Syed - Страница 9

For any investment to have positive impact on production and productivity, it must contribute to capital formation at the farm level. In this respect, the investments made by the farmers themselves are indispensable. Public investment in agriculture and private investment in agro-industries complement farm-level investment, but cannot substitute for the investments that need to be made by the farmers themselves.

The most comprehensive and readily available data for empirical measurement of investment in agriculture are the FAO estimate of on-farm capital stock. FAO has prepared estimates of on-farm capital stock for 206 countries from 1975 to 2005 based on inventories of agricultural assets contained in the FAOSTAT database. According to this dataset, farmers are the largest source of investment in agriculture for agricultural capital stock (ACS). On-farm investment in agricultural capital stock by farmers is nearly three times as large as other sources of investment combined, including public investment, foreign direct investment and official development assistance.

According to the FAO publication, The State of Food and Agriculture 2012 – Investing in Agriculture for a Better Future (FAO, 2012a), in the 47 countries that are on track to achieve the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) hunger-reduction target, agricultural capital stock per agricultural worker (a proxy for private domestic agricultural investment) has grown by 0.7% per year since 1992. Whereas, this ratio has declined slightly in the 25 countries where progress has been insufficient and strongly in the 15 countries where rates of undernourishment have stagnated or regressed.