PART 1 - KEY ISSUES FACING RESEARCH IN HORTICULTURE: PRIORITIES, MANAGEMENT, FUNDING, POLICY AND COOPERATION

World horticulture has had a very marked development in recent decades and the results are more than evident for all to see. It has had the merits too of resolving certain seemingly intractable problems throughout the world, consolidating the economies of the developed and helping many emerging countries towards steady growth. The growth rate in many cases has even exceeded consumer demands—a fact that has led to certain problems in the marketplace (Figs. 1, 2). This is evident especially for certain commodities in developed economies and has erected barriers to trade and the liberalization thereof, which in turn has restrained expansion of other countries.

On the basis of this initial analysis, we find some countries which have high and stable production levels because demand is stable, although increases of exports are constrained by high output costs—North America, most of Western Europe, Japan, part of Oceania. On the other hand there are countries in Asia, South America and part of Africa that have development trends of 3–5% for an array of produce commodities, a rate-spread superior to the others and induced by increased domestic demand spurred by a growing economy. These countries are now ready to enter the export arena to compete for share in the global marketplace, especially countries like Chile, South Africa, Morocco, Egypt, Israel, India, Thailand and so on.

Thus there is a two-tiered order—the countries whose response is largely geared to meet domestic demand, a quantitative response, and those that can now seek a share of the global market through exports, a response linked to the attainment of an entry-threshold quality. Quality is the watershed—the engine that drives exports.

The three reports of Avermaete, Segrè and de Groot provide significant contributions to our knowledge of what the world is producing in horticulture and delineate a disquieting scenario for its future. It is as much a problem of production equilibrium as of market equilibrum. For, if horticulture is a sign of an advanced agriculture in economies that provide a good return on investment, then the policy of most such countries is to protect horticulture because of its strategic role in providing higher standards of living. And in the long run such a policy contrasts with the concept and workings of a completely free market economy.

This is one of the reasons why the World Trade Organisation (WTO) at the recent Singapore meeting succeeded in reaching a consensus on global liberalization in the information technology and telecommunications sectors but not in agriculture. Luckily, however, given the heavy dependence on climate and seasonality and the marked perishability of its commodities, horticulture is a driving force behind the integration of producing zones that derive reciprocal advantages from increased trade, advantages that in most cases are passed along to consumers.

In future horticulture must try to seek global agreements among nations that will not only meet the latter's domestic demand but also help to serve the needs of other areas with which they are linked by trade. Yet even in this outlook there will remain evident

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