Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/190136 
Authors: 
Year of Publication: 
2018
Series/Report no.: 
WIDER Working Paper No. 2018/87
Publisher: 
The United Nations University World Institute for Development Economics Research (UNU-WIDER), Helsinki
Abstract: 
Over the past sixty years, most Asian countries have undergone relatively rapid agricultural transformations that helped jumpstart broader economic development. However, the changes have differed markedly in nature and speed across countries of the region. In much of East and Southeast Asia, the Green Revolution brought a quantum leap in yields of staple crops. Agricultural productivity growth facilitated labour exit and savings transfers, which helped jumpstart industrial growth and urbanization, which in turn induced deeper agrarian change and food system transformations. In South Asia, these transformative changes have lagged in part because of structural hurdles to agrarian change signalled by Gunnar Myrdal in his seminal book Asian Drama of 1968. More recently, South Asian economies also managed to overcome most of those obstacles, inducing accelerated growth of both agriculture and non-agricultural sectors. Vast challenges of still widespread poverty and food insecurity in this part of Asia remain. These challenges remain in a context of relatively advanced urbanization, strongly changed dietary patterns and agri-food systems, and pressing environmental constraints. Consequently, as this paper argues, moving forward, the role and nature of agricultural transformations and structural change in forging economic growth and poverty reduction in still disadvantaged regions of Asia will need to be different as well.
Subjects: 
Agricultural productivity
structural change
rural transformations
poverty
rural-urban linkages
food policy
JEL: 
O13
O18
O47
Q18
Persistent Identifier of the first edition: 
ISBN: 
978-92-9256-529-9
Document Type: 
Working Paper

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