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Agriculture Versus Industry in Economic Development

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 November 2008

Ian Livingstone
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Extract

Writing in a previous issue of this Journal, A. F. Ewing has stated that ‘it is fortunately no longer necessary to argue in favour of industrialisation in opposition to another approach to economic development’, although ‘the doctrine that industry is the key to economic development is of comparatively recent origin’. The article is entitled ‘Industrialisation and the U.N. Economic Commission for Africa’.1

Type
Articles
Information
The Journal of Modern African Studies , Volume 6 , Issue 3 , October 1968 , pp. 329 - 341
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1968

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References

Page 329 note 1 Ewing, A. F., ‘Industrialisation and the U.N. Economic Commission for Africa’, in The Journal of Modern African Studies (Cambridge), II, 3, 10 1964.Google Scholar

Page 329 note 2 Balogh, T., ‘Agriculture and Economic Development’, in The Economics of Poverty (London, 1966), ch. 4.Google Scholar

Page 329 note 3 Robinson, E. A. G., ‘The Future of British Imports’, in The Three Banks Review (Edinburgh), 03 1953;Google Scholar and ‘The Problem of Living within our Foreign Earnings’, ibid. March 1954. Both articles deal with the place of agriculture in a developed economy.

Page 331 note 1 T. Balogh, op.cit.

Page 331 note 2 Lewis, W. A., ‘The Industrialisation of the British West Indies’, in Caribbean Economic Review (Kingston, Jamaica), II, I, 05 1950.Google Scholar

Page 332 note 1 See Knight, J., ‘The Determination of Wages and Salaries in Uganda’, in Bulletin of the Oxford Institute of Economics and Statistics (Oxford), XXIX, 3, 1967.Google Scholar

Page 332 note 2 See Reynolds, L. G., ‘Wages and Employment in a Labour Surplus Economy’, in American Economic Review (Cambridge, Mass.), XLV, 3, 1965.Google Scholar

Page 333 note 1 Seers, D., ‘The Role of Industry in Development: some fallacies’, in The Journal of Modern African Studies, I, 4, 12 1963.Google Scholar

Page 333 note 2 Johnston, B. F. and Mellor, J. W., ‘Agriculture in Economic Development’, in American Economic Review (Wisconsin), 09 1961, p. 571.Google Scholar

Page 333 note 3 Johnston, B. F. and Neilson, S., ‘Agriculture and Structural Transformation in a Developing Economy’, in Economic Development and Cultural Change (Chicago), XIV, 3, 1966.Google Scholar

Page 334 note 1 Livingstone, I. and Ord, H. W., An Introduction to East African Economics (London, 1968), table 36.Google Scholar

Page 334 note 2 Bauer, P. T., ‘The Vicious Circle of Poverty’, in Weltwirtschafthiches Archiu (Hamburg), 1965.Google Scholar

Page 334 note 3 Rosenstein-Rodan, P. N., ‘Notes on the Theory of the Big-Push’, in Ellis, H. (ed.), Economic Development for Latin America (London, 1961).Google Scholar

Page 336 note 1 Galenson, W. and Leibenstein, H., ‘Investment Criteria, Productivity, and Economic Development’, in Quarterly Journal of Economics (Cambridge, Mass.), LXIX, 1955.Google Scholar

Page 336 note 2 The fallacy that ‘industry is more modern’ is the counterpart of the one that ‘food and agriculture come first’, that developing countries should first satisfy their primary needs, especially food, before considering other forms of production. Nicholls, in ‘The Place of Agriculture in Economic Development’, in Eicher, C. K. and Witt, L. W., Agriculture in Economic Development (New York, 1967),Google Scholar has been charged with ‘propagating the physiocratic doctrine that food comes first’. A more obvious example is in an article by Papi, G., ‘The Place of Agriculture in Balanced Growth’, in Robinson, E. A. G. (ed.), Problems in Economic Development (London, 1965).Google Scholar He states that: ‘Before anything else, the living conditions of the people must be improved and barring exceptional cases, economic development should therefore begin with raising the production of foodstufl, agricultural raw materials, clothing and housing, and should then lead to producing industrial equipment requiring low capital investment… The problem had best be considered in the setting not of one single country or one single zone, but of the world economy. If we take it for granted that in the initial phase of development fIrst priority belongs to the production of the goods for the… satisfaction of the population's primary needs…’ Apart from the fact that it is not helpful to assume that the world has just started, one need only point out that agricultural cash crops are mostly produced for export, not domestic markets, while existing imports of manufactured goods indicate that domestic demand is not merely for ‘basic’ items.

Page 337 note 1 Balogh, op.cit. p. 59.

Page 337 note 2 For examples of this as wide apart as Turkey and Kenya, see Alexander, A. P., ‘Industrial Entrepreneurship in Turkey: origins and growth’, in Economic Development and Cultural Change, 07 1960;Google Scholar and Mbithi, P., ‘Famine Crises and Innovations: physical and social factors affecting new crop adoptions in the marginal farming areas of Eastern Kenya’, Rural Development Research Paper no. 52, Makerere University College, 1967.Google Scholar

Page 338 note 1 Ewing, op.cit. p. 351.

Page 338 note 2 See Prebisch, R., The Economic Development of Latin America and its Principal Problems (Economic Commission for Latin America, 1950),Google Scholar and ‘Commercial Policy in the Underdeveloped Countries’, in American Economic Review, Papers and Proceedings (1959).

Page 338 note 3 Kindleberger, C., The Terms of Trade (New York, 1956), ch. 10.Google Scholar

Page 338 note 4 Ellsworth, P. T., ‘The Terms of Trade between Primary Producing and Industrial Countries’, in Inter-American Economic Affairs (Washington), X, 1956.Google Scholar

Page 339 note 1 Macbean, A., Export Instability and Economic Development, (London, 1966).Google Scholar

Page 341 note 1 Ewing, op.cit. pp. 355–6.