The World Development Report 2008 — Agriculture for Development, released by the World Bank, addresses a challenging development issue: does agriculture have a key role in unleashing prosperity in rural areas and in poverty alleviation? Even though the share of agriculture in national income has declined, a powerful case is made for the centrality of agriculture towards achieving the Millennium Development Goal of halving poverty and hunger by 2015. While agriculture alone will not accomplish this goal, it is emphasised that its importance in growth acceleration and expansion of employment opportunities in rural areas remains undisputed. Attention is drawn to the pervasiveness of rural poverty and dependence on agriculture as a source of livelihood. “Three out of four poor people in developing countries live in rural areas — 2.1 billion living on less than $2 a day and 880 million on less than $1 a day — and most depend on agriculture for their livelihoods”, it says.

A typology of agriculture’s role is proposed. Developing countries are grouped into agriculture-based, transforming and urbanised. Most of Sub-Saharan Africa, for example, belongs to the first group, South and East Asia to the second, and Latin America and the Caribbean to the third. The shares of agriculture in these groups are 29 per cent, 13 per cent and six per cent, respectively. The range of rural poverty rates is also large — 51 per cent in the first, 28 per cent in the second and 13 per cent in the third.

... contd.