How Agribusiness Helps to Achieve Sustainable Development Goals

The importance of agribusiness stems from the basic need for nourishment to address climate change and its repercussions to achieve sustainable development goals.

FREMONT, CA: Agriculture alone employs 26.5 per cent of the world’s workforce, highlighting agribusiness's importance. Agribusiness entails the whole chain and supporting services like consultants, fertilisers, transport companies, etc. The significance of agribusiness is rightly noted by the UN's food and agriculture organisation (FAO) through various factors. It is the primary source of off-farm employment in rural areas of developing countries. It positively affects poverty reduction and women’s empowerment in countries with high-value agri-food export production.

Furthermore, agribusiness creates off-farm employment opportunities in agro-industrial companies in rural areas, improving the rural households' income through wage employment and spillover effects, thus increasing on-farm agricultural productivity. This is achievable through greater liquidity to purchase inputs and a higher capacity to adopt technologies. Agribusiness also forges the necessary connection between the agriculture and manufacturing sectors to catalyse the broader manufacturing industry's development by rendering material inputs for food processing, textiles, and biofuels.

With an increasing world population, there is greater pressure to achieve sustainable development goals and zero hunger. The world's growing population, along with rising urbanisation, will have an apparent effect on food systems. These shifts and changes will have a considerable impact on dietary preferences. From a consumer’s perception, a trend moves away from a diet with a large percentage of consumed cereals. Consumers look to diversify their diets by adding proteins, fresh fruits and vegetables, and a lot of fat.

These transformations, including the growing world population and climate change, highlight agribusiness's challenges. Sustainably enhancing agricultural productivity to meet increasing demand, ensuring a sustainable natural resource base, addressing climate change and natural hazards, eradicating extreme poverty and reducing inequality, and eliminating hunger and malnutrition are some of them. In terms of food chain systems, the challenges are making them more efficient, inclusive, and resilient. In addition, improving income-earning opportunities in rural areas and dealing with migration root causes, building resilience to protracted crises, disasters, and conflicts, eliminating transboundary and emerging agriculture and food system threats, and addressing the need for harmonious and effective national and international governance are becoming significant obstacles. Climate change will severely threaten food systems, affecting agriculture worldwide. However, in developing countries, agriculture has less resilience against the impacts of climate change.

Despite these challenges, agribusiness makes food systems efficient and sustainable. It is significant beyond its primary function and job creation in developing countries, where it plays a significant role in securing a more sustainable future. Climate change and its repercussions are affecting developing countries and food systems that lack high resilience to climate events. Agribusinesses are an essential tool in managing the effects of global warming effects and achieving the UN’s sustainable development goals.