ABSTRACT
In this chapter, the author defines an "agricultural surplus" as the physical amount by which, in any given country, total food production exceeds the total food consumption of the agricultural population. Insofar as policy-planners have done so, they have largely proposed means of raising agricultural productivity, notably mechanization and land consolidation, which require drastic structural changes in agriculture and presuppose the massive absorption of surplus agricultural labor by prior industrialization. The chapter gives special attention to determinants of the size, and potential contributions to economic growth, of the agricultural surplus under various conditions of population pressure and under different systems of land tenure. It particularly emphasizes the opportunities for, and limitations of, making agriculture a positive generating force instead of a needless drag on general economic development. The chapter analyses food production under a landlord-tenant system in a way that is equally applicable to food production under a two-sector situation.
