Economics and Policy in the Agricultural Transition from Poor to Rich

Dear Colleagues,

The global transformation from rural economies, in which most people worked on farms, to urban economies, in which most people work in industry or services, began 2 centuries ago. It is largely complete in the US, Western Europe, Japan, the Republic of Korea, and the Antipodes. It is following rapidly in China, India and Indonesia and in much of Latin America with a significant lag only in sub-Saharan Africa. This transformation, associated with a fall in the share of rural GDP in total GDP, a decline in the rural labor share, and a shift in the enterprise mix to livestock and higher-value crops, has induced a change in the focus of economics and policy research on the agricultural sector. That change is, broadly, an expansion of the traditional professional concerns of profitability and technical change to encompass newer themes of: (1) the role of agriculture in an industrial and services economy, notably as it affects human welfare; (2) the role of agriculture in a global economy in which a much larger share of farm goods is traded internationally; (3) the role of the small, family farm; (4) the environmental benefits and costs of agriculture, especially problems of long-term sustainability and, more recently, climate change; (5) consumer and worker safety; (6) human nutrition, both over and under nutrition; (7) the shift to higher value crops and livestock with related changes in technologies, such as precision mechanization, digital agriculture, and value chain management.

Prof. Dr. Jock R Anderson
Dr. John McIntire
Guest Editors

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• agricultural transition
• agricultural transformation
• temperate agriculture
• tropical agriculture
• low and middle-income nations
• rural employment
• agricultural growth and productivity
• labor productivity
• farm types