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Between the Engine and the Fifth Wheel: An Analytical Survey of the Shifting Roles of Agriculture in Development Theory

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Agricultural Development in the World Periphery

Part of the book series: Palgrave Studies in Economic History ((PEHS))

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.

The authors benefitted from comments on an earlier version of this chapter at seminars at University of Queensland and University of Zaragoza, as well as from the editors and Derek Byerlee . The authors also gratefully acknowledge research funding from Marianne and Marcus Wallenberg Foundation, The Wenner-Gren Foundations and The Crafoord Foundation.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    A similar theoretical strand, emphasising the potential ability of agriculture to contribute to growth via exports, is staple theory, as developed by W. A. Mackintosh and Harold Innis. In this, demand for staple products (products that can be produced in surplus of domestic demand) is crucial for growth, together with a country’s ability to reduce its cost to supply these products. If achieved, staple exports are seen to spur investments and consumption throughout the domestic economy. A main difference to “vent-for-surplus ” is that staple theory emphasise different productivity-generating capacities of products, where staple products yield more output than focusing on less export-oriented products. As such, it places more emphasis on agricultural productivity increase than “vent-for-surplus.”

  2. 2.

    The JEL-codes of relevance are:

    O: Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth/O1 Economic Development/O13 Agriculture, Natural Resources, Energy, Environment, Other Primary Products.

    Q: Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics, Environmental and Ecological Economics/Q1 Agriculture/Q17 Agriculture in International Trade .

  3. 3.

    The method generates a slightly higher number of articles for JEL-code O (1972 vs 1869, in 2005), and lower for JEL-code Q (514 vs 684, in 2005), but the difference is not enough to alter any trends in the three years when both versions are used.

  4. 4.

    The analysis traces the share of articles published with the keyword “agricultur*” and a specific geographic region (Africa , Asia , Latin America ), out of all the articles with the keyword “agriculture*” in WoS SSCI, 1957–2015.

  5. 5.

    The graph displays food prices based on IMF IFS annual data to provide an indication of the long-term trend. This trend is similar to that of agriculture’s terms of trade, which strengthened in the 1970s, followed by a long decline, until it turned upwards in the early 2000s (Ocampo and Parra-Lancourt, 2009). For a more thorough assessment of the price development of agricultural commodities since the 1950s, see Serrano and Pinilla (2011).

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  1. Department of Economic History, Lund University, Lund, Sweden

    Martin Andersson & Emelie Rohne Till

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  1. Martin Andersson
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  1. Department of Applied Economics and Economic History, Universidad de Zaragoza, Zaragoza, Spain

    Vicente Pinilla

  2. Department of Economics, Universidad de la República, Montevideo, Uruguay

    Henry Willebald

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Andersson, M., Rohne Till, E. (2018). Between the Engine and the Fifth Wheel: An Analytical Survey of the Shifting Roles of Agriculture in Development Theory. In: Pinilla, V., Willebald, H. (eds) Agricultural Development in the World Periphery. Palgrave Studies in Economic History. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-66020-2_2

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