Agriculture and Industrialisation

The topic of market-gardening and its role in industrial and urban training has long been canvass by economic theoreticians. According to Nam, Dang and Hainsworth (2000), there are three cardinal theoretical schools that sop up been particularly influential after World fight II, and which differ considerably in the flairs by which each presents the kind between cultivation and industry, in regards to the process of industrial enterprise.These are the role of market-gardening in industrialisation, big leap into industrialisation and urbanisation, and proportionate links in the development process (Nam, Dang, and Hainsworth, 2000, http//www.idrc.ca/geh/ev-33149-201-1-DO_TOPIC.html).In 1965, John Mellor and Bruce Johnston reported that a successful artless welkin is an important element in the industrial development and rapid growth rate of a nations economy. According to Johnston and Mellor, the five key roles of agriculture areto supply low-cost foodstuffs and raw cl oths for the urban/industrial sectorto export farm products to befool foreign exchange which could be used to finance technological and material imports for urban and industrial developmentto release labour to depart the sketch force for the industrial sectorto expand the domestic market for industrial products andto increase domestic savings to be used to finance industrial expansion (Nam, Dang, and Hainsworth, 2000, http//www.idrc.ca/geh/ev-33149-201-1-DO_TOPIC.html).Also in 1965, Simon Kuznets verified the role of agriculture in industrialisation by way of commercial transactions.According to Kuznets, the agricultural sector supplies other sectors indoors and outside the body politic with products such as foodstuffs, industrial raw materials, labour, capital, and markets that are necessary for industrialisation (Nam, Dang, and Hainsworth, 2000, http//www.idrc.ca/geh/ev-33149-201-1-DO_TOPIC.html).But despite the fact that these authors emphasised the importance of agriculture , their hypotheses also highlighted the need for a restructuring of the national economy, decreasing the share of the agricultural sector in the GDP (gross domestic product) and in the pasture force, and boosting the industrial sectors.Developmental strategies were ordinarily geared towards the maximum utilisation of agricultural resources to augment industrialisation and urban expansion. In the matter of utilising agriculture to support industrialisation, the existing theories were unable to provide insight into how this can be made possible.La Grande Encyclopedie Francaise stated in 1986 that The industrial revolution is accompanied by a general urbanisation and the step-by-step death of rural civilisation (Nam, Dang, and Hainsworth, 2000, http//www.idrc.ca/geh/ev-33149-201-1-DO_TOPIC.html).In 1992, Hainworth observed that the conventional economic theories of the West, as established from the development of the UK and other European nations as well as the rapid industrialisat ion of North America, often places the agricultural sector in the position of Cinderella or slave to the indulgent ugly stepsister demands of industrialisation.In W.W. Rostows The Stages of Economic Growth, the author affirms that Hesperian countries have achieved such advanced stages of development that their experience should be emulated by other countries.According to Rostow, the growth of an agricultural sector in an industrialising setting should be carried out concurrently based on four approaches economic, spatial, sociopolitical, and cultural industrialisation, urbanisation, internationalization, and Westernisation (Nam, Dang, and Hainsworth, 2000, http//www.idrc.ca/geh/ev-33149-201-1-DO_TOPIC.html).Somewhat akin to this viewpoint are the opinions of several Western theorists in A Future for European Agriculture. Their theories tended to downplay the role of agriculture in industrialisation. According to them, the agricultural sector in Europe is mainly geared only toward s the production of food.Thus, on the road to industrialisation, the only way to preserve economic growth is to considerably trim down the agricultural pop off force. As a rule, an impartial cutback on the agricultural work force and an augmenting of the industrial and urban-services labour force are expected trends in countries undergoing the process of industrialisation.Nevertheless, it is also important to remember the aforementioned key roles of agriculture. some other vital aspect not to be forgotten is that a country cannot merely make a big leap from being in general agricultural into instantly becoming industrialised.There are stages between the two that simply cannot be bypassed, as evidenced by the experiences of exploitation countries in Latin America, Asia, and Africa. Owing to lack of consideration for the agricultural sectors, there have been instances where the minus ramifications of rapid industrialisation have been felt in some countries.In accredited African , Asian, and Latin American nations, the consequences of making a leap towards industrialisation have included widespread shortages in foodstuffs, sudden migrations into urban centres that have direct to poverty and overpopulation, and abrupt scarcities in the necessary products for industrialisation.British economist E.F. Schumacher, in his 1973 publication Small is Beautiful, stated that for true economic development to be attained, an totally new system of thought is needed, a system based on attention to people, and not primarily attention to goods (Nam, Dang, and Hainsworth, 2000, http//www.idrc.ca/geh/ev-33149-201-1-DO_TOPIC.html).He postulated that sufficient attention on the agricultural sector must be paid, especially in developing countries where the majority of the economy is dependent on agriculture and where the bulk of the work force is in the agricultural profession.