Those who study global poverty and ways to reduce it face a perennial set of questions: Do advances in knowledge, research, and technology make a real difference in the lives of poor people? What effect does research have on the poor?

What is the future of food? Everyone agrees that feeding the world in the decades ahead will require substantial increases in crop yields. But how we get there has become a remarkably contentious question because of biotechnology.

The authors assess the role various strategies can play in augmenting global food supplies and combating hunger.They attempt to defuse the contentious debate surrounding the development and spread of genetically modified (GM) foods, which, they ar

Genetically modified (GM) food crops have inspired increasing controversy over the past decade. By the mid-1990s they were widely grown in the U.S., Canada, and Argentina, but precautionary regulations continue to limit their use elsewhere.

Agricultural research and development has stimulated enormous increases in agricultural productivity in the twentieth century.

Solving the poverty problem in low-income countries requires rapid growth in output, income, and employment. An effective way to realize such growth is raising productivity in the large agriculture sector.

The Philippine growth experience may be described as a case of agriculture-led development that failed.

"The faster agriculture grows, the faster its relative size declines." That quotation from The Economics of Agricultural Development (Mellor 1966) still captures the essence of agricultural growth and its causal relationship to the structural tran

How agriculture grows, the pace at which it grows, and the impact it has on growth of the nonagricultural sector, on poverty and urbanization, and on the quality of the physical environment are highly complex issues.

Punjab has achieved remarkable growth since independence and is now the richest state of India. This growth and prosperity are primarily the result of Punjab's adoption of new technology in agriculture.

As a perusal of Colombia's economic history makes clear, agriculture has been central to the economy's generally satisfactory performance.

The most striking characteristic of Argentina's economic history in the twentieth century is the sharp decline in its growth performance.

Agricultural growth in Thailand from the Second World War until about 1980 was dominated by a massive expansion in the land area under cultivation.

Kenya is an exciting case for those who suspect that agriculture has powerful linkages with the rest of the economy. Over the period 1965-87 Kenya's agricultural production consistently surpassed the average for Sub-Saharan Africa.

Costa Rica is a relatively small country (50,000 square kilometers) with a population of only 2.7 million inhabitants.

Over the past four decades Taiwan's economy has experienced significant structural change.

Economic development and structural transformation are dynamic processes in which sectoral interactions are numerous and multidirectional.