For more than a century, government policies have grossly distorted resource use in agriculture, both within and between countries. Earnings from farming in many developing countries have been depressed by a prourban bias in own-country policies as well as by governments of richer countries...

For more than a century, government policies have grossly distorted resource use in agriculture, both within and between countries. 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...

This chapter begins with a brief summary of the long history of national distortions to agricultural markets. It then outlines the methodology used to generate annual indicators of the extent of government interventions in markets, details of which are provided in Anderson and appendix A. A...