sist mainly of countries in South and East Asia and the Middle East and North Africa. These countries are less dependent on agriculture for overall growth than are the agriculture-based, but agriculture and rural development are needed to reduce poverty and narrow the urban-rural divide. In the urbanized economies, which include most countries in Latin America and Europe and Central Asia, poverty is no longer primarily rural, and agriculture contributes only modestly to growth.
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Growth and Productivity in Agriculture and Agribusiness
Agriculture is a competitive sector and can contribute to poverty reduction by including the rural poor as producers and providing them with jobs in modern food markets. World Bank interventions during the evaluation period were distributed relatively evenly across the three categories of countries, whereas IFC interventions were concentrated in the urbanized category (with IFC investments in only eight agriculture-based economies).