Agriculture for Development: Analytics and Action

For many poor countries and for a majority of poor people in the world, agriculture broadly defined can be one of the most effective instruments for development. Yet using agriculture for development, while widely advocated in the development profession and effectively practiced by a number of countries, remains too often well below potential. At the invitation of the editors of the Annual Review of Resource Economics, we retrace how we have used our academic and activist careers to promote agriculture as an instrument for development. We show how access to assets, the design of agrarian institutions, the creation of income opportunities for rural households, and understanding their behavioral responses can lead to successful modernization of agriculture and its transformation toward farming systems, value chains, and local rural nonfarm economies instrumental for development. We encourage younger colleagues to pursue and fulfill this mission by combining analytical rigor, attention to behavior, commitment to activism, and a long-term vision of the development process.