DEVELOPMENT ISSUES RELATED TO IMPROVEMENT OF SMALL-SCALE HORTICULTURAL PRODUCTION

On behalf of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, I should like to say that it is an honor and a pleasure to be present at this Symposium, and to bring to all participants the greetings of our Director-General, Dr. Edouard Saouma.

I should also like to extend my sincere thanks to the Government of Indonesia, to the Indonesian Society for Horticultural Science, to the Bogor Agricultural University, and to the International Society for Horticultural Science for organizing and supporting this important meeting.

Special thanks are also expressed to Dr Sri Setyati Harjadi and the other members of the organizing committee for the tireless efforts they have devoted to making this symposium a success.

The decision to combine the two themes : "Small Scale Vegetable Production" and "Horticultural Economics in Developing Countries" seems to be particularly appropriate here in the island of Java - the home of Pekarangan - and has perhaps led us to make some reflections about the importance of small-scale horticultural production systems, not only from the technical view point, but also in term of their place in the national economy and their potential contribution to environmental conservation in delicate ecologies.

It is, in fact, very difficult to find figures, even estimates, reflecting the real contribution of the informal small-scale and household horticulture sector to basic food supplies and to family income in rural areas, not to mention its importance to the overall economies of developing nations. economies - such as those in many tropical countries of Asia and the Pacific, Africa and Central America, where there may be greater or lesser traditions of cultivating horticultural staples and some cash crops in proximity to the homestead - the output of these production units highly significant, particularly in relieving other formal agricultural sectors of much of the burden of meeting the food security needs of the population at large.

It may be interesting to recall here that in Indonesia, recently, effort have been made to derive such estimates in relation to Pekarangan (or home gardens), concluding that, although the situation varies widely over the national territory, on average some fifty percent of the horticultural produce consumed by rural families, and up to

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