Rural Population and agricultural produce

Global Scenario in Agricultural sector

Sounds strange but according to United Nation’s social and economic sources the pattern of habitation is changing at very brisk rate especially during the last 20 years or so. It would look like that cities are spreading fast but the fact is people from rural areas are moving to cities being the main reason that the number of people living in cities have increased dramatically.

For instance in 1995 more than three billion people were living in rural areas and urban population was close to 2 billion but by the end of 2015 the number of people living in urban areas has well gone past 4 billion and population living in rural areas has come down to less than 2 billion. The fact in itself is self explanatory at the rates the villagers are migrating to urban areas which is one of the major factors of reducing agricultural produce apart from the other major reasons like population explosion in certain parts of the world including Asia.

Rural and Urban Factor

Let us look at some other crucial factors about decreasing area of agricultural produce which tells its own story in a nutshell. In the year 2006 almost 38% of total land was used for agricultural purpose which came down to 37% in 2011 and as the experts suggest that they won’t be surprised if the next result by the end of this year’s revealed that it has come down to 35%. It is a clear indication that farmers are lesser interested in agriculture as a profession.

However, if some of the countries are still not unsafe from paucity of agricultural products the reason is simple the agriculture science has developed modern and industrial agricultural methods. But in doing so we have lost some of our orthodox agricultural methods or in other words we have lost bio-diversity in agricultural methods. Let us not forget that increased urbanization has caused a major setback to villages and agriculture. In the process of urbanization we have lost natural forests and agricultural land and harmed the cause of rivers, mountains and glaciers.

We are not talking about countries where population is increasing at fast rate but the story is same in all the continents of the world including developed, developing or backward countries. The countries like America, China and Japan are in the list of the countries which have lost their rivers during the last 20 years. The quality and quantity of water has gone down which is very much visible in the entire world. The increased quantity of garbage in the rivers, reducing and dying ponds in villages and the decreasing or thinning sources of water have a warning written large for coming generations.

Let’s look at the gross domestic product (GDP) at global level. The urban GDP has increased by 50% or more compared to rural areas within a short period of 1998 to 2003. The financial growth rate in rural income has gone down drastically during last few decades especially in poor countries. There is a clear indication that the balance of rural and urban life is fast losing balance despite all the claims and it is time that the governments will have to take this matter on priority or be prepared to face the consequences.