Increasing farm productivity is generally a precondition to improving food security and income in rural areas. This can also relieve pressures to expand farming and grazing into ecologically fragile areas and reduce reliance on unsustainable resource extraction activities. Efforts to raise agricultural production – by improving crop yields, technology, and access to inputs and markets and fostering a shift towards higher value crops – are thus often seen as a means of simultaneously addressing growth, equity and environmental issues in rural areas
