When economic growth is characterised by a slow rise in the demand for food and rapid growth in farm relative to non-farm productivity, it is understandable that agriculture in a closed economy declines in relative terms as that economy develops. But why should agriculture decline in virtually...

The development of genetically modified (GM) agricultural products requires new policies to manage potential food safety and environmental risks. The policy positions taken to date on GM foods by the United States and the European Union are very different. The US has few restrictions on...

A decline in governmental distortions to agricultural and other trade since the 1980s hascontributed to economic growth and poverty alleviation globally. But new modeling resultssuggest that has taken the world only three-fifths of the way towards freeing merchandisetrade, and that farm policies...

The rapid growth of the Chinese economy during the 1980s was accompanied by an equally rapid shift in China's comparative advantage towards light manufactures, such as textiles and clothing, at the expense of agriculture. If that economy were to resume the economic reform process that was...

For decades, earnings from farming in many developing countries have been depressed by a pro-urban bias in own-country policies, as well as by governments of richer countries favouring their farmers with import barriers and subsidies. Both sets of policies reduced global economic welfare and...