Agricultural Growth, Technology and Equity

How important is agricultural growth to poverty reduction? This article first sets out the theoretical reasons for expecting agricultural growth to reduce poverty. Several plausible and strong arguments apply -including the creation of jobs on the land, linkages from farming to the rest of the rural economy, and a decline in the real cost of food for the whole economy -but the degree of impact is in all cases qualified by particular circumstances. Hence, the article deploys a cross-country estimation of the links between agricultural yield per unit area and measures of poverty. This produces strong confirmation of the hypothesised linkages. It is unlikely that there are many other development interventions capable of reducing the numbers in poverty so effectively.How important is agricultural growth to alleviating poverty in a world in which farming's share of total output is in decline?We can assess the impact of agricultural growth on poverty in general and rural poverty in particular, in two ways. One draws on theory, building plausible arguments about how changes in agricultural production may affect the numbers of poor and the depth of their poverty. The other takes an empirical approach, by observing directly changes in agricultural productivity and poverty, and then estimating the degree to which they are related. This article deploys both approaches.

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Agricultural Productivity Growth and Poverty Alleviation

Irz

Lin

Thirtle

et al. 2001

Development Policy Review

324

196

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Controversy about agricultural technology lessons from the green revolution

Ruttan

2004

IJBT

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The development and introduction of transgenically modified organisms to enhance crop and animal production has generated considerable controversy about potential food safety and environmental impacts. The introduction in tropical Latin America and Asia of high yielding varieties of wheat, maize and rice beginning in the late 1960s was also controversial. Critics argued that the new technology was biased against the poor-would make the rich richer and the poor poorer. In this paper I review the equity and productivity impacts of the "green revolution" technology and draw several inferences about evaluation the effects of the new biotechnologies in agricultural production.

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The Green Revolution: Inducement and Distribution

Havami¹,

Ruttan²

1984

PDR

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The development and diffusion of modern varieties of rice and wheat in Asia were induced by changing resource endowments. More productive biological and chemical technologies capable of offsetting the effects of population growth are a necessary condition for simultaneous achievement of growth and equity. The new income streams generated by technical change have become a powerful source of demand for institutional change. But rapid growth in rural Incomes is also dependent on growth of demand for labour in the non-agricultural sectors.

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Agricultural Growth, Technology and Equity

Cited by 3 publications

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Agricultural Productivity Growth and Poverty Alleviation

Agricultural Productivity Growth and Poverty Alleviation

Controversy about agricultural technology lessons from the green revolution

The Green Revolution: Inducement and Distribution

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