ABSTRACT
Agriculture is still the basic concern of most people in the Third World, whether as landowners, tenants, smallholders, peasant farmers producing largely for themselves, or as landless labour. It is crucial to the prospects of development. Some countries have made great strides towards industrial development; some have been enriched by the possession of mineral resources, especially oil, with strategic value on the world market. But most are heavily dependent on agriculture not only for their basic food supplies but also for exports with which to finance essential imports. Many farming families consume the greater part of the food they produce, but as towns and cities have grown, production for the urban market has become of increasing importance. In terms of national aggregates, food production in many countries is as sufficient to feed growing numbers as it was 30 or 40 years ago. However, this is by no means true of all countries, and in most of the developing world, poverty still denies many people access to enough to eat. Hunger and famine in Ethiopia, the Sudan and Somalia are but the most recent poignant examples of how close so many rural people and so many rural production systems are to the very margins of survival.
