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2018 | Book

Agricultural Development in the World Periphery: A General Overview Read chapter Read first chapter

Agricultural Development in the World Periphery

A Global Economic History Approach

Editors: Prof. Vicente Pinilla, Prof. Henry Willebald

Publisher: Springer International Publishing

Book Series : Palgrave Studies in Economic History

Part of: Springer Professional "Wirtschaft+Technik" , Springer Professional "Technik" , Springer Professional "Wirtschaft"

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About this book

This book brings together analysis on the conditions of agricultural sectors in countries and regions of the world’s peripheries, from a wide variety of international contributors. The contributors to this volume proffer an understanding of the processes of agricultural transformations and their interaction with the overall economies of Africa, Asia and Latin America. Looking at the nineteenth and twentieth centuries – the onset of modern economic growth – the book studies the relationship between agriculture and other economic sectors, exploring the use of resources (land, labour, capital) and the influence of institutional and technological factors in the long-run performance of agricultural activities. Pinilla and Willebald challenge the notion that agriculture played a negligible role in promoting economic development in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, when the impulse towards industrialization in the developing world was more impactful.

Table of Contents

Frontmatter

Introduction, Theory and World Approaches

Frontmatter
1. Agricultural Development in the World Periphery: A General Overview
Abstract
The objective of the Chapter 1 is to present a general overview of the agricultural development in the world periphery to serve as an introduction to this volume, whose aim is to provide a long-term perspective that allows a better understanding of the process of agricultural transformations. This process shows great diversity, especially concerning the drivers of change in regions with low levels of development, institutional restrictions, a variety of distances to the technological frontiers, and different modalities of participation in the international markets. The big trends and stylised facts of the world core and the agriculture of the periphery are described, and the content of each chapter is briefly introduced. Finally, some concluding remarks are proposed to answer the research question: what can we learn from history?
Vicente Pinilla, Henry Willebald
2. Between the Engine and the Fifth Wheel: An Analytical Survey of the Shifting Roles of Agriculture in Development Theory
Abstract
Over the last decade, attention to agricultural development in less developed countries has increased. However, two opposing views on its role in economic development exist within the scholarly debate, either as a potential engine for economic growth or as a fifth wheel unlikely to generate transformative growth. Taking these contrary opinions as a point of departure, Chapter 2 reviews the origins of prominent views of the role of agriculture in development theory. Next, it bibliometrically assesses the pattern of fluctuating scholarly attention to agriculture, and attempts to understand the reasons behind this pattern. The chapter identifies four influential views on agriculture in development theory; five distinct phases of ups and downs in the scholarly attention to agriculture; and discusses five potential reasons behind these fluctuations.
Martin Andersson, Emelie Rohne Till
3. The World Periphery in Global Agricultural and Food Trade, 1900–2000
Abstract
In the last two hundred years, agricultural trade has grown at a remarkably rapid rate. Chapter 3 deals with the globalisation of this trade. In the first globalising wave, international trade was based on the exchange of primary products for manufactured goods. This provided important opportunities for complementarity in certain countries on the periphery that took advantage of the opportunity to base their economic development on the growth of their exports and the linkages between them and the rest of the economy. However, most of the agricultural exporting countries obtained few benefits from this model of development. In the second wave of globalisation, this pattern of trade was increasingly replaced by an intra-industrial trade. In addition, the more developed countries tended to protect their agricultural production, which have been a major obstacle to agricultural trade.
Gema Aparicio, Ángel Luis González-Esteban, Vicente Pinilla, Raúl Serrano
4. Plantations and Economic Development in the Twentieth Century: The End of an Era?
Abstract
After a shameful period of forced labour and colonial exploitation, a modern plantation system emerged during the twentieth century, akin to a near-industrial form of production of tropical commodities. Chapter 4 reviews the experience of plantations over the twentieth century, mainly for bananas, oil palm, rubber, sugar cane and tea, with particular attention to the political economy of plantations versus smallholders, infringement of land rights inherent in large land concessions, and the rights and welfare of the large labour force employed. The chapter concludes that large plantations that were the norm at the beginning of that century had largely given way to smallholders by the early twenty-first century and this trend is likely to continue. Land rights of communities on the frontier remain imperfectly recognised while labour rights and conditions on plantations vary widely depending on country and commodity.
Derek Byerlee, P. K. Viswanathan

Africa

Frontmatter
5. Ghana’s Recurrent Miracle: Cocoa Cycles and Deficient Structural Change
Abstract
Chapter 5 examines potentials and obstacles to productivity growth and structural change in an African “miracle” economy, Ghana. The focus is on an examination of long-term growth in the cocoa industry. The history of the cocoa industry exhibits a pattern of recurrent booms and busts with episodes of great economic success followed by long periods of stagnation and decline. This chapter investigates whether the structure of the industry in the current boom may be undergoing a process of change or if the drivers of growth are similar to those prevailing in an earlier expansion a hundred years ago. If the recent boom is driven by land expansion and increased use of labour rather than by productivity growth doubts can indeed be raised about the sustainability of Ghanaian cocoa production.
Christer Gunnarsson
6. Initial Conditions and Agricultural Development in Zambia, 1915–2015
Abstract
Chapter 6 dealt with the case of Zambia, previously Northern Rhodesia, which has exhibited a remarkable consistency in the focus of its agricultural policies throughout the colonial and independence eras. Assessing the 100 year period from 1915, this study applies a political-economy framework to present evidence on the extent to which, and through what mechanisms, initial natural resource endowments have influenced state policies in Zambia, and how those policies have determined the state of the contemporary agricultural sector.
Ellen Hillbom, Samuel Jenkin
7. Maize and Gold: South African Agriculture’s Transition from Suppression to Support, 1886–1948
Abstract
Chapter 7 revisits the development of the South African agricultural sector during the early mineral revolution (1886–1948) and contributes to the recent extension of the structural transformation literature that stresses the importance of taking underlying country fundamentals into account with development policy formation. This case illustrates the complexity of the political tensions created during the transformation process and their long-term impact, since these played a significant role in putting the country on the path to grand apartheid. In addition, a newly compiled long-term dataset on agricultural prices, output and public spending is provided, to add a quantitative perspective to the ability of either party to capture the state and a more precise estimate of the timing of the disintegration of the alliance.
Jan C. Greyling, Nick Vink, Emily van der Merwe

Asia

Frontmatter
8. The Agriculture–Macroeconomy Growth Link in India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh: 1900–2000
Abstract
Using a long-term dataset that correspond to the current borders for the period c.1900–2000, Chapter 8 investigates the agriculture–macroeconomy growth link in India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh. The empirical results show a long-term decline in the share of agriculture in GDP in all three regions, including the colonial period when per-capita GDP stagnated. They also show two structural changes. The first one occurred between pre- and post-1947 periods in India and Bangladesh. The portion of non-agricultural growth that can be attributable to agricultural growth increased substantially after Partition in 1947. The second one occurred around the 1970s–1980s in all the three countries, when non-agricultural growth that occurred autonomously became the main engine of macroeconomic growth.
Takashi Kurosaki
9. Southeast Asian Agricultural Growth: 1930–2010
Abstract
This chapter examines the changing role of agricultural production in Southeast Asia from the early decades of the twentieth century to the first decade of the twenty-first century. The chapter argues that the key drivers of agricultural growth in Southeast Asia have been population growth, leading to increased domestic demand for food, and increased involvement in international trade, which in Southeast Asia led to the rapid growth in production of a number of crops for global as well as domestic markets. Many of these crops were not indigenous to the region, but were introduced from other parts of Asia, Central and South America and Africa. A third driver has been technological change, which increased output per unit of factor input (both land and labour). Institutional changes, including changes in land tenure systems, changes in labour contracts and changes in government policies towards agriculture have also been important, but these changes have occurred mainly in response to the changes brought about by population growth, international trade and technological change.
Anne Booth
10. The Two Rice Deltas of Vietnam: A Century of Failure and Success
Abstract
This chapter provides a historical institutional perspective to the understanding of the remarkable economic transformation of Vietnam since the 1980s. The literature normally credits this success to the liberalization reform known as Doi Moi, while the disparity in economic performance between the two rice bowls of the country is commonly attributed to their historical differences. The chapter examines the institutional factors, mainly land tenure conditions and size distribution of landholdings, and their transformation prior to Doi Moi as to provide a potential explanation of the success and identify the constraints experienced by farmers over the last century.
Montserrat López Jerez
11. Transforming Indonesia: Structural Change from a Regional Perspective, 1968–2010
Abstract
Since 1968, Indonesia has been among the few developing countries able to sustain per capita income growth over 5 per cent. However, poverty and surplus labour are still the main features of the economy. Chapter 11 asks to what extent the dual nature of growth has stimulated structural change—or has it just rewarded a particular sector or region? We find that the emblematic State support to agriculture has not tapped the potential growth in labour reallocation. Despite the income diversification within and outside agriculture, the linkages between sectors and regions remain weak. In order to catch up, the integration of the outer regions into the economy must still take place in agriculture, investment in human capital, infrastructure, social policies and local capabilities.
Tobias Axelsson, Andrés Palacio
12. Perspectives on Agricultural and Grain Output Growth in China from the 19th Century to the Present Day
Abstract
This chapter reviews agricultural development in China during the last two centuries. Changes in land and population, impacting on output growth, reflect decades of stability and peace that followed the establishment of the Qing Dynasty, but were halted in the late nineteenth century. Subsequently, under the Republic of China (1912–1949), political and military upheavals severely constrained output growth—a situation exacerbated by the Guomindang Government’s failure to institute constructive institutional, economic or technological policies for agriculture. In the Maoist Era (1949–1978) the establishment of collective agriculture and a monopoly procurement system helped promote industrialisation by transferring grain from the rural to the urban sector, albeit at the expense of squeezing Chinese farmers. Since 1979 market forces have played an increasingly important role, although tensions between maintaining cheap food supplies to hold down industrial wage costs, facilitating output growth and achieving fiscal balance have been a persistent challenge.
Robert Ash, Jun Du, Cheng King

Latin America and the Settler Economies

Frontmatter
13. The Goose That Laid the Golden Eggs? Agricultural Development in Latin America in the 20th Century
Abstract
In the last third of the nineteenth century, a large majority of Latin American countries adopted export-led models of growth, mostly based on agricultural exports. In some countries, this strategy produced significant results in terms of economic development but in most of the countries, the strategy was not successful, either because of too slow growth in exports or because linkages with the rest of the economy were very weak and there was no significant growth-spreading effect. After WWII, Latin America turned to a new model of economic development: the import substitution industrialisation (ISI). The ISI policies penalised export-led agriculture. The 1980s and 1990s were characterised by an expansion of adjustment policies and structural reforms. The new strategy consisted of mobilising resources in competitive export sectors, including agriculture. Chapter 13 analyses Latin America’s inability to get the maximum benefit from the changes that have occurred over this period.
Miguel Martín-Retortillo, Vicente Pinilla, Jackeline Velazco, Henry Willebald
14. Agricultural Development in Australia: 1845–2015
Abstract
Chapter 14 examines the extent to which agricultural sector developments in the Australian economy can be understood using international trade theory, awareness of several major mining booms and knowledge of key policy developments. It suggests those developments are not inconsistent with theory, but it also reveals several features that make Australia’s economy unusual. The most striking are the facts that the agricultural sector’s share of GDP remained fairly constant rather than falling during 1860–1960, even during the latest mining boom, and that the farm sector continued to enjoy a strong comparative advantage despite periodic spurts of growth in mining exports.
Kym Anderson
15. From Backwardness to Global Agricultural Powerhouse: The Transition of Brazilian Agriculture
Abstract
This chapter describes the transformation of Brazilian agriculture since the mid-twentieth century, from a first phase, until 1970s, based on incorporating frontier land few improvements in productivity, to a subsequent phase of conservative modernisation up to the early 1990s, in which technological and organisational improvements led to productivity gains, but in which agriculture was subjugated to other economic and political motivations, such as promoting industry and combating inflation. Since the early 2000s a more market-based approach has prevailed, in which Brazil has been able to take full advantage of the extended period of high commodity prices to further increase production, productivity and exports. We discuss how different theories of agricultural development relevant to the Brazilian case explain this trajectory.
Charles C. Mueller, Bernardo Mueller
16. Development Models, Agricultural Policies and Agricultural Growth: Peru, 1950–2010
Abstract
Throughout its history, Peru, as a small open economy, has undergone cycles of crisis and recovery, usually linked to fluctuations in the international market. The Peruvian economy has always been an exporter of primary products and an importer of manufactured goods. Chapter 16 has a two-fold aim: to identify the salient characteristics of the development models and policies affecting Peruvian agriculture since the mid-twentieth century, and to identify what effect they have had on agricultural production and productivity based on an estimation of total-factor productivity (TFP) for the 1950–2010 period. Development strategy models have ranged from the diversification of primary exports to import-substitution industrialisation and to the promotion of non-traditional exports, which is the current model.These strategies have determined the outcome for agriculture.
Jackeline Velazco, Vicente Pinilla
17. Land Frontier Expansion in Settler Economies, 1830–1950: Was It a Ricardian Process?
Abstract
Settler economies (Argentina, Australia, Canada, Chile, New Zealand, South Africa and Uruguay) benefited from the consequences of the Second Industrial Revolution as their temperate climate and fertile soils were suitable for the production of agrarian commodities. The main domestic contribution was the incorporation of “new” land into the economic relationships of the first expansion of the world capitalism. The aim of Chapter 17 is to understand this process in the long term (1830–1950) using the land frontier expansion as a central concept. We present a Ricardian analytical model to explain the process in terms of extensive and intensive margins. Our evidence supports the predominance of the extensive margin in Argentina, Uruguay and New Zealand, and the intensive margin in the first two and Chile, but not in the other countries.
Henry Willebald, Javier Juambeltz
18. Technological Change and Productivity Growth in the Agrarian Systems of New Zealand and Uruguay (1870–2010)
Abstract
New Zealand and Uruguay were typical settler economies and were similar in many ways, but there were also major differences in how they developed. Chapter 18 aims to describe the New Zealand and Uruguayan livestock systems by analysing their technological trajectories as they sought to raise land productivity. We use a systematic case-oriented comparison and an evolutionary theoretical approach to technological change to understand the process in both pastoral systems in the long term (1870–2010). In the nineteenth century Uruguay had more favourable conditions for pastoral production and, until the 1930s, higher production volumes per hectare. New Zealand had higher growth rates in all livestock physical productivity indicators from 1870 to 1970, and overtook Uruguay’s levels by the mid-twentieth century.
Jorge Álvarez Scanniello
Backmatter
Metadata
Title
Agricultural Development in the World Periphery
Editors
Prof. Vicente Pinilla
Prof. Henry Willebald
Copyright Year
2018
Electronic ISBN
978-3-319-66020-2
Print ISBN
978-3-319-66019-6
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-66020-2