Agriculture and Economic Growth: Some Comments

The process of economic growth leads to an increase in per capita consumption made possible by an increase in per capita income. The increase in income is achieved partially through capital accumulation and technical change of various forms. This process can take its natural course through the operation of the market mechanism broadly interpreted. However, it is commonly believed that the rates of growth can be increased by taking active steps to guide and control this process. This is basically the subject-matter of economic development. The approaches, both analytic and practical, to economic development are numerous and differ greatly in nature, but are largely concerned with improving the operation of the economy while taking into account the resultant social problems of the process itself. The huge volume of work done in this area makes it difficult to compress the subject-matter within the limitation of a single paper or of any particular framework. Thus, the discussion is here limited to the presentation of a framework designed to capture some of the more important features relating to the position of agriculture in the growth process. The emphasis is placed on growth rather than on development simply because it makes it possible to describe in a systematic way the main trends on the basis of which the scope for development can be determined.