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A Policy Agenda for Pro-Poor Agricultural Growth1 - Short Version
Andrew Dorward, Jonathan Kydd, Jamie Morrison, and Ian Urey2
Imperial College of Science, Technology and Medicine, Wye, Ashford, Kent, TN25 5AH, UK
Paper presented at the Agricultural Economics Society Conference, Aberystwyth,
8th – 10th April 2001
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[Download complete paper  - 492Kb ~ 3 min (33 pages)]
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Abstract
Economic growth has been low and the incidence and numbers of poor people remain very high in some parts of the world, notably in sub Saharan Africa and some parts of South Asia. Projections for poverty reduction suggest that these regions are likely to continue to hold very large numbers of very poor rural people in the foreseeable future. Theoretical arguments and empirical evidence suggest that in poor agrarian economies both the processes of structural change within national economies and micro-economic relations within rural economies give agriculture (and particularly intensive cereal based growth) a pre-eminent and unique role in economic development and in poverty reduction. However, reliance on pro-poor agricultural growth as the main weapon against rural poverty today faces more difficult challenges than those faced in the green revolution areas in the latter part of the 20th century, due to a number of features that together increase risk and uncertainty and raise costs and/or lower returns to agricultural investment. Many of these difficulties are endogenous to today’s poor rural areas, others result from broader processes of global change, but it is argued that some are the direct result of policies supporting liberalisation and withdrawal of the state. A review of the green revolutions of the 20th century suggests that state interventions in agricultural markets were widely used and important in supporting sometimes short periods of critical market and technological development in the process of rural growth. Unfortunately the benefits of such interventions have been overlooked as a result of their very evident inefficiency and high costs, without a clear understanding of their institutional benefits. Policy and research implications of this analysis are discussed.
Footnote:
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This paper is written under a research project on Institutions and Economic Policies for Pro-poor Agricultural Growth funded by the Department for International Development of the United Kingdom (ESCOR Project R7989). The findings, interpretations and conclusions expressed in this paper are entirely those of the authors and should not be attributed to the Department for International Development, which does not guarantee their accuracy and can accept no responsibility for any consequences of their use.
This paper has benefited from helpful comments from colleagues in the research project (see http://www.wye.ac.uk/AgEcon/ADU/research/projects/ppag/index.html) and from Stephen Devereux, Karam Singh, Martin Greeley, Hemasiri Kotagama, and Stephen Carr. A longer and fuller version of this paper is available from the authors.
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Centre for Development and Poverty Reduction, Imperial College Wye, Wye, Ashford, Kent, TN25 5AH, UK.
http://www.wye.ic.ac.uk/AgEcon/ADU/index.html
Email contact:
A.Dorward@ic.ac.uk
J.Kydd@ic.ac.uk
J.A.Morrison@ic.ac.uk
I.Urey@ic.ac.uk
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[Download complete paper - 492Kb ~ 3 min (33 pages)]
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