ABSTRACT
The crucial factor in the pace of agricultural development in the Third World is the dominance of the more developed countries in the world economy. The more developed countries or ‘developed market economies’ have less than a third of the world’s population producing over 80 per cent of the world’s estimated gross domestic product. Agricultural production appears to be increasing at a faster rate in the less developed countries than in the more developed, and faster in the communist countries or ‘centrally planned economies’. Agricultural production results from the systematic arrangement of energy flows, usually organized. The chapter presents a broad division of Third World agricultural systems by purpose, type of management and broad enterprise and enterprise combination class. Such a general system might be as follows: commercial and subsistence, mainly subsistence and mainly commercial. In general, crop innovation in the Third World has occurred less frequently than elsewhere and has diffused more slowly.
