After 20 years of neglect by international patrons, agriculture is now again in the headlines because high food prices are increasing food anxiety and poverty. In the coming years, it will be important to increase food productivity and production in developing countries, expressly in Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asian countries like Afghanistan with smallholders. This, however, wants finding viable solutions to a number of complex procedural, institutional, and policy issues, including land markets, research on seeds and inputs, agricultural extension, credit, rural organization, connection to markets, rural non-farm employment, trade policy and food price stabilization. This paper reviews what the economic poetry has to say on these topics. It debates in turn the role played by agriculture in the development course and the interactions between agriculture and other economic sectors, the determinants of the Green Revolt and the foundations of agricultural growth, issues of income diversification by farmers, approaches to rural growth, and issues of international trade policy and food security, which have been at the root of the crisis in agricultural commodity instability in recent years.
Food prices and the multiplier effect of trade policy
