Importance of Agriculture and Investment in Agriculture

What is the importance of agriculture and investment in agriculture? The idea of 'food security' is basically important, and for that cause, agriculture is important. The task of nourishing its people has been possibly the main concern of its rulers throughout history. As such, agriculture is measured to be the very basis of political and social steadiness of a nation since times immemorial.

In addition, the agricultural division plays an important role in the sphere of given that large scale employment to people. Large and fairly large farms employ workers to undertake the various jobs relating to farming of crops and care of farm animals. In most of the countries of the world, agriculture still remains the biggest division responsible for the employing and feeding a large percentage of the population.

Agriculture is also important from the viewpoint of assessing the standard of a country's development, based on the capability of its farmers. Poorly trained farmers cannot apply the higher methods and new technologies. The importance of science and technology in the development of agriculture is fairly clear from the words of Deng Xiaoping -

The growth of agriculture depends primary on policy, and next on science. There is neither any limit to developments in science and technology, nor to the role that they can play in the field of agricultural growth'.

Even if agriculture frequently plays a contributory role in the 'Gross Domestic Product' - GDP - of most countries, it nevertheless requires a substantial increase from both the local and the international community.

Agriculture is conventionally based on bulk manufacturing. Harvesting is done once a season, most of the times, and stocked and used later. In fact, some thinkers opine that people have begun to adopt 'batch processing' and 'stocking' in manufacturing, as a result of the practices from agricultural thinking. Before industrialization, people with the biggest stocks of food and other supplies were considered more stable, and they were able to face challenges of nature without having to starve.

So important is the role of agriculture that new concepts keep 'cropping up' to give the traditional activity a modern turn. One such new idea the world is gibbering about these days is - the importance of 'organic farming'. There is evidence that, apart from their numerous other benefits, organic farms are more sustainable and environmentally sound, giving agriculture a new measurement.

The importance of agricultural practices was further established when 'Organic food' began as a small movement decades ago, with gardeners and farmers refusing the use of conservative non-organic practices. With the growth of the Organic food market now outpacing much of the food industry, many big companies have ventured into it. With the emergence of multi-national companies, and with the creation of a legal certification structure such as the Soil Association, there is every hesitation that the very definition of natural food will change, making it more of a commercial activity than ever before!

In fact, modern agriculture has already undergone a sea-change from the olden times. Nowadays, the importance of agriculture lies in the fact that it is practiced both for survival as well as profitable reasons!

Investment in Agriculture is now an ordinary managed investment option for investors with a focus on a number of key Australian agricultural commodities such as forestry and horticulture. A key feature of agribusiness investing is the tax effectual feature providing substantial tax deductions supported by an Australian Taxation Office Product Ruling. Agribusiness is an alternative asset class that offers returns generated from a traditional income source. Agribusiness offers investors another level of diversification because it is not correlated with interest rates, sharemarkets, bonds or property markets.