284 Int. J. Globalisation and Small Business, Vol. 7, Nos. 3/4, 2015
Copyright © 2015 Inderscience Enterprises Ltd.
Reaching out to organic agriculture for sustainability
in agribusiness
Suja R. Nair
c/o Mr. Prithviraj,
Librarian CMS Business School,
Jain University,
319, 17th Cross, 25th Main,
JP Nagar, 6th Phase, Bangalore – 560078, India
Email: sujarnair@rediffmail.com
Abstract: The rapid economic development of the Asia-Pacific region is
causing climate changes, altering the growth of the agricultural markets, raising
concern on issues related to food security and healthy food consumption.
Countries in this region are realising the need to adopt sustainable agricultural
practices. This paper with the help of an exhaustive literature review examines
the potential of organic agriculture in the Asia-Pacific region with the focus
being on its contribution towards sustainable development. The paper begins
with reviewing the agriculture sector in the Asia-Pacific region then the
benefits of organic agriculture are discussed and finally the scope of organic
agriculture and the issues inhibiting its development across the Asia-Pacific
region are examined. A simple framework calling for the coordinated efforts of
all the stakeholders to ensure sustainable development of organic agriculture is
also proposed.
Keywords: organic agriculture; Asia-Pacific region; sustainable development;
food security; certification; climate change; agro-ecosystem.
Reference to this paper should be made as follows: Nair, S.R. (2015)
‘Reaching out to organic agriculture for sustainability in Agribusiness’,
Int. J. Globalisation and Small Business, Vol. 7, Nos. 3/4, pp.284–299.
Biographical notes: Suja R. Nair has to her credit BA (Hons) and MBA
degrees and is currently pursuing her PhD at the Jain University, Bangalore,
India. She looks after Strategic Marketing at Educe Micro Research, Bangalore.
Prior to this, she had been working with the corporate sector and as a
management faculty at various academic institutions in Bangalore. Since 1999,
she has been the author with Himalaya Publishing House, Mumbai, and written
more than 20 text books in the areas of marketing research, consumer
behaviour, retail management and organisational behaviour. Her research
interests include agriculture economics, marketing, retail management, and
entrepreneurship. Her chapter titled ‘Ethics in Higher Education’ in the
Handbook of Research on Higher Education in the MENA Region: Policy and
Practice, by Dr. Neeta Baporikar was published by IGI Global in 2014.