in the next 20-25 years, with an increasingly younger work force and larger proportion of women engaged in cultiva­tion and agricultural labor. Rural women will play greater roles not only as unpaid family workers but more impor­tantly as de facto farm managers. Thus in the future AKST will have to empower rural women by enhancing their skills and knowledge on all aspects of production and processing which will raise agricultural productivity and lead to eco­nomic development.
     Despite projected increases in food production and a marginal improvement in per capita food consumption, South Asia will account for almost half of the world's mal­nourished children (with India hosting one in every three undernourished children in the world, and China record­ing the highest reduction in child malnutrition by 2020), and will continue to have low access to education, health and basic environmental services like drinking water and sanitation.
     While the diversity of agricultural production and mar­ket access will increase, the role of small and marginal farm­ers in production systems will continue well into the future, until overall rural out-migration due to education and more urban jobs will allow these populations dependent on small unviable holdings to move to higher paid jobs and more predictable incomes. This has implications for investments and subsidies in the region, to protect small producers, to provide some social security, or to enable through invest­ments, more opportunities for employment in a liberalized Asian/global context.
     Globalization and increasing market liberalization will lead to increasing regional preferential trade agreements, especially for agriculture, with all ESAP countries gradu­ally withdrawing production (input and price) subsidies and other trade distorting practices; some studies point to a trend of increasing inequality and of a need for redistributive poli­cies that may reduce widening income gaps in ESAP.

2.    Agriculture will gain from and contribute to economic growth in the region, but the economic gains will be far less than the contributions of the sector to factors of growth and growth processes. The ESAP region is expected to be the fastest growing region in the world over the next two de­cades (national and per capita income growth rates in East Asia and Pacific countries will be higher than those of South Asian countries). There will be increasing trade in agricul­ture which will be accompanied by a steady fall in prices of agricultural commodities and an overall increase in prices of inputs (especially rising energy prices), with increasing total factor productivity and substitution of labor for capital in agriculture.
     Demand for agricultural commodities will not only in­crease dramatically over time, but the composition of that demand will change significantly as per person wealth in­creases. The ESAP region is gradually diversifying its farm production in favor of higher valued commodities including fruits, vegetables and meats. The change in diets and declin­ing terms of trade for cereals in Asia will lead to diversifi­cation of farm production into higher value products. The decline in the terms of trade and falling prices will also mean that for countries in the ESAP region to maintain a compar­ative advantage in agricultural commodities, they must off-

set through higher productivity by increasing farm sizes and increasing the mechanization of farming processes. Further agricultural development in ESAP must exploit comparative advantages in a more globalized economy. This will mean further industrialization and product diversification, lead­ing to the creation of larger, more technologically advanced farming industries.
     The demand for rural employment, improved livelihoods and political stability, along with increasing agricultural di­versity, post-harvest and value-addition processes, special­ization (organic agriculture for instance) and urbanization of food markets, will pose macroeconomic challenges as well as opportunities to move people out of direct dependence on agriculture to other non-farm or urban employment. Agri­culture will be integrated into industrial, environmental and health sector growth in a wider, more diverse form.
     Agriculture will be at the receiving end of most of the negative consequences of globalization and trade liberaliza­tion with elimination of tariffs in the ESAP region, marking a wider rural-urban disparity, increasing concentration of food markets/retail and grain trade in the hands of a few global players, varying levels of investment (public and pri­vate),  improved transport and communication facilities, along with increasing restrictions on economic activity due to IPRs or other trade policies, increasing disillusionment, political instability, intra and inter-regional tensions (over water, trade, subsidies, environmental compliance, oceans and fishing rights, etc.), and increasing marginalization of indigenous and tribal people within these countries. Con­certed action by Governments will be necessary to ensure that social safety nets and adequate investments and benefits flow to the agriculture sector and into poorer regions and communities within ESAP.

3.    Environmental and social costs of agricultural growth and overall economic growth will pose additional challeng­es. With increasing evidence of impending climate change and  marginalization  of significant  proportions  of rural Asians from mainstream development processes, there is a requirement in ESAP for an increasingly diverse portfolio of policies, institutions and organizations to address these diverse complex problems.
     Agriculture in ESAP will be increasingly constrained by worsening environmental degradation (land, water and air pollution) caused by population pressures, agricultural production  practices,  urban  and industrial wastes,  and perceptible climate change impacts. The lack of legal and institutional mechanisms as well as lack of compliance to arrest environmental degradation and improve mitigation investments and practices will continue in most developing ESAP countries.
     Increasing land degradation, decreasing access to suf­ficient quality irrigation, increasing incidence of pests and diseases (with added problems epidemics like the avian flu and other livestock diseases), and varying impacts of global warming, will most likely result in increasing rural distress and migration in many ESAP countries. This will add to environmental degradation and urbanization pressures.
     The role of nonconventional actors will become increas­ingly important in ESAP agriculture (the socially responsible among the corporate sector and the CSOs); especially in en-