Facts and Terms from "Poorer Nations Turn to Publicly Developed Crops" Nature Biotechnology, January 2005, by Joel Cohen, IFPRI Senior Research Fellow (unless other sources cited)
Available Factsheets
Agriculture's Critical Role in the Developing World
- In many developing countries, agriculture is the engine of economic growth, and agricultural growth is the cornerstone of poverty reduction. (World Bank website)
- Agriculture employs nearly one-half of the labor force in developing countries. A high share of rural communities and especially the rural poor are directly or indirectly dependent on agriculture through farming, food processing, fishing, forestry, and trade. (World Bank website)
- In Africa, agriculture accounts for 70 percent of full-time employment, 33 percent of the continent's total gross domestic product (GDP), and 40 percent of its total export earnings. (Ending Hunger in Africa: Only the Small Farmer Can Do It, IFPRI, 2002).
- In South Asia, most of the poor are dependent on agriculture for their livelihoods, as well as their survival. Sixty percent of the South Asian labor force is still involved in agriculture, and agriculture contributes about 25 percent to GDP. (South Asia Initiative, IFPRI website)
- In Latin America and the Caribbean, agriculture and rural economic activities are major sources of employment and are of critical importance in terms of eradicating poverty. More than 30 percent of the labor force work in agriculture. (International Fund for Agricultural Development, Strategy for Rural Poverty Reduction in Latin America and the Caribbean, 2002).
- Increased agricultural productivity enables farmers to grow more food, which can translate into better diets and higher incomes. In Africa, estimates show that a 10 percent increase in the level of agricultural productivity is associated with a 7.2 percent reduction in poverty. In India, a similar increase in agricultural productivity is estimated to decrease poverty by 4 percent in the short run and 12 percent in the long run. (Agriculture, Food Security, Nutrition and the Millennium Development Goals, IFPRI, 2004).
- Currently, African countries spend on average only 0.85 percent of their agricultural GDP on research, a much lower figure than the 2.6 percent averaged by industrialized countries. (Ending Hunger in Africa: Only the Small Farmer Can Do It, IFPRI, 2002).
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