ABSTRACT
This chapter examines how developments in the three East European countries contribute to a critical assessment of agriculture's role in structural transformation. They are: Yugoslavia, Poland, and Bulgaria. Yugoslavia, Poland, and Bulgaria today all have levels of per capita income that identify them as middle-income developing countries. All three countries emerged from World War II as fundamentally agrarian economies and societies. The chapter considers two distinct groups of issues that influence the role of agriculture and agricultural organization in development. It also considers the ways in which agriculture, and especially different types of agricultural organization, either contributes to or hinders the accumulation of savings and its transfer to productive investment in other sectors. The chapter examines the shift of labor out of agriculture into other productive sectors, in particular how agricultural and system organization affects both the changes in agricultural technology associated with labor transfer and the social disruption this transformation produces.
