SOCIAL SCIENCE RESEARCH COUNCIL
VOLUME 20 . NUMBER 3 . SEPTEMBER 1966 230 PARK AVENUE· NEW YORK, N.Y. 10017
AGRICUl rURAL DEVELOPMENT: PROBLEMS AND ISSUES· by Bruce F. Johnston and Herman M . Southworth
THE Council's Committee on Agricultural Economics has attempted to respond to and serve the growing interest in the problems of agriculture in the less developed countries by producing a volume dealing with agricultural development in the context of over-all economic growth. Strategic aspects of the subject are discussed in chapters contributed by 18 authors and coauthors, who draw together what we have learned of relevant characteristics of traditional agricultures, what their modernization requires from other sectors of the economy, and what it contributes to them.l Each chapter delineates problems and points to lines of economic research critical for their resolution. Experience has demonstrated that low productivity in agriculture can limit economic growth. Industrialization and agricultural development are not valid alternatives. Effective plans for development must embrace both. Raising agricultural productivity and inducing a marketed surplus of farm products must be a major concern, as must development of linkages between the
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• This is a condensed version of the introductory chapter in Agl"icultuml Development and Economic Growth, a book sponsored by the Council's Committee on Agricultural Economics (whose members also constitute the Committee on New Orientations in Research of the American Farm Economic Association) and edited by Herman M. Southworth of Pennsylvania State University, chairman of the committee, and Bruce F. Johnston of Stanford University, a member of the committee since 1962. The volume is to be published in 1967 by Cornell University Press (copyright by Cornell University), with whose permission this version is printed here. The other members of the committee are John Blackmore, University of Minnesota; Robert L. Clodius, University of Wisconsin; George Montgomery, Kansas State University; Philip M. Raup, University of Minnesota; and George S. Tolley, North Carolina State University. . . 1 A list of the chapter titles and authors, with the names of critics in '-parentheses, appears at the end of this article.
two sectors that will give effect to the interdependence required of them in a modem industrial economy. INTERRELATIONSHIPS BETWEEN AGRICULTURAL AND NONAGRICULTURAL DEVELOPMENT A number of broad interrelationships between agriculture and the nonagricultural economy in development are well recognized. As the largest sector of the economy, agriculture is the source of manpower for industrial expansion, the source of essential supplies for maintaining a growing industrial population and of exports to be traded for industrial goods, and the chief potential source of savings for nonagricultural investment. For these roles to be fulfilled, however, agricultural productivity must be increased. This requires a variety of off-farm inputs; providing them can be a stimulus to the industrial sector. It also requires incentives for farmers to invest in these inputs, in the form of attractive markets for their increased output; this, too, the growing nonfarm sector can provide. For incentive income to be meaningful to farmers, there must be goods that they can buy with it; the development of this rural market can also provide stimulus to nonagricultural production. Thus growth in the two sectors interacts, each supporting and stimulating the other. It is at once evident, however, that the nature and strength of these interrelationships change as development progresses. It would be most helpful if we had a fully elaborated theory of agricultural development and its interconnections with the rest of the economy at successive stages. Because of conceptual difficulties and,
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