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1 results

  • 13 - Assessing imperialism

  • from Part III - Politics
  • Edited by J. R. McNeill, Georgetown University, Washington DC, Kenneth Pomeranz, University of Chicago
  • Book:
    The Cambridge World History
    Published online:
    05 May 2015
    Print publication:
    30 April 2015, pp 331-365

  • Summary

    In the last two centuries, world agriculture succeeded in producing enough to provide more food per capita than ever before, in spite of an almost seven-fold increase in population, and to supply industries with raw materials, all using less land, capital, and labor per unit of output. Production can be augmented by using more inputs such as capital, labor, and land, and/or by using them more efficiently. This chapter highlights a key distinction between the number of agricultural workers and their share of the total workforce. The farmers have introduced thousands of innovations, which for the purpose of illustration can be grouped into four categories. They are new practices of cultivation, new plants and animals, chemical products, and machinery. In the economists' jargon, institutions can be defined as the set of formal or informal rules that determine the ownership of the goods and factors and regulate the interactions among individual agents or households.