The new video produced by Antonello Proto at the FAO Information Division addressed the socio-economic factors underlying the need to promote and implement Sustainable Agriculture and Rural Development (SARD). Global inequality refers to the 1/3 of the world's population living on less than $1 per day, the 800 million people who don't have access to enough food, and hunger/malnutrition being a serious concern in many countries. These population pressures and demands on agriculture will continue to grow, and farmers who lack adequate access to technology and face diminishing returns, will need to find new ways to survive. Poverty brings land-degradation, and land-degradation brings poverty, intensification of land-use, sterile land, soil erosion, and desertification.  This self-perpetuating cycle can be curbed by rational land-practices and rural development.

Achieving sustainable agriculture leads to rural development, and this process involves combining appropriate technologies with innovative thinking based on local knowledge with a view to maintaining land fertility and rational resource use. The film is a good introduction to these issues, and overviews case studies in integrated land management, rural community development through popular education on farming, diversified agriculture, conservation farming, the use of seed hybrids to increase yields. But yields are only one part of the picture, working alongside conservation of natural resources and providing some increases in living standards for farmers. Although increasing land production can lead to increased incomes, they can also drive down prices for the consumer, and depress local economies over time.