ABSTRACT
History teaches us that the agricultural transformation process is a necessary step towards inclusive economic development, structural change, poverty alleviation and overall better living conditions. Rising productivity in agriculture allows for increasing incomes within agriculture and at the same time more resources can be devoted to other sectors. In effect, a secular growth in population can be matched by an even faster growth in food and other necessary items, initiating what is most known as ‘modern economic growth’ (Kuznets 1973). This process of change can be identified in agricultural-based societies in the past and the conclusions drawn from those experiences continue to be valid in contemporary times. There is a long tradition of studying the agricultural transformation as a universal process and numerous attempts have been made to model the various stages in the process. As stated by Peter Timmer (1998: 113): ‘The agricultural transformation has been a remarkably uniform process when viewed from outside the agricultural sector itself’. The point of departure for this book, however, is that although the process is homogeneous when looked at from the outside, it is full of diversity within. To understand the variety of pathways leading to a completed transformation there is still much more to be learned, especially concerning drivers of change at the local level and incentives influencing farmers’ strategies.
