Overview of India, China and Israel

This chapter aims to highlight the structural transformation in Indian, Chinese and Israeli economy and discuss major drivers of agricultural growth. The main objective is to see how these economies overcame the challenge of feeding the growing populations with limited land, water and other resources. India is the largest democratic country in the world accounting for 17.8% of global population, and agriculture continues to be the key sector impacting livelihood of nearly half of country’s population. However, the structural and economic reforms have been implemented slowly and gradually. This can be witnessed on account of the large share of country’s workforce (about 43%) employed in the agriculture sector as well as dominance of grain sector in the total cropped area and value of output. China, on the other hand, has nearly 18.4% of the world’s population, and the country has largely been able to meet its growing demand for food through its own agricultural production. China’s agriculture unlike India’s has experienced rapid transformation over the past four decades. Since 1978, agriculture has significantly diversified, with a much higher share of commercialised and high-value commodities. Off-farm rural employment has also markedly increased. In Israel, structural transformation in the agro-food sector started with the economic policy reforms in 1980s that led to a significant decrease in the number of farms, expansion in the farm size, diversification of cropping pattern towards high-value crops like fruits and vegetables as well as emergence of new private enterprises in serving agriculture.