The Conditions of Agricultural Growth: The Economics of Agrarin Change under Population Pressure
This book sets out to investigate the process of agrarian change from new angles and with new results. It starts on firm ground rather than from abstract economic theory. Upon its initial appearance, it was heralded as "a small masterpiece, which economic historians should read—and not simply quote"—Giovanni Frederico, Economic History Services.\ The Conditions of Agricultural Growth remains a breakthrough in the theory of agricultural development. In linking ethnography with economy,...
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Written by a Danish economist who spent many years as a researcher and consultant for the UN, this classic text analyzes the adoption of labor-intensive agricultural technologies in primitive and developing societies. Rather than seeing traditional communities as transformed by the introduction of technologies from outside, Boserup focuses on the internal pressure of population growth as the primary driver of agricultural developments. This reprint of the 1965 text features a new introduction by Virginia Deane Abernethy (Vanderbilt U.). Annotation ©2006 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR
\ From the Publisher“This is a stimulating, even provocative book which should cause many social scientists and agriculturalists to revise, expand, or at least re-examine their views of the processes of agricultural change… The book is a new signpost along important roads of scholarship. It may be either accepted or refuted in whole or in part; it cannot be ignored.” —Clarence W. Olmstead, Economic Geography “This essay… [is] a most formative work in the theory of agricultural change. In it Mrs Boserup lifts the theory of agricultural development out of the rut of sterile discussion of land use and tenure, and sets it within an illuminating dynamic framework, which reveals the irrelevance of old squabbles by raising neglected but fundamental issues… Mrs Boserup writes with great rigour, economy and clarity.” —Charles M. Elliott, The Economic History Review “Bosserup’s theory derives agricultural development in many pre-industrial societies from population growth: “population growth is here regarded as the independent variable which in its turn is a major factor determining agricultural developments”… A steadily increasing population within a given land area necessitates new agricultural techniques and more intensive land use in order to feed the expanding population… [Boserup] has justly brought attention to population growth as an essential factor in any model of societal development. This is a point frequently overlooked by anthropologists.” —Charles Sheffer, American Antiquity “It is always a pleasure to see a potent and useful text made more available, and Boserup’s quondam revolutionary work is just that… Boserup’s argument reversed the standard doctrine that in basic agrarian societies ‘agricultural development controls population growth’ and instead argued that population growth would determine agricultural development… Throughout, the argument is kept beautifully succinct. The points of contention are clearly indicated, leaving the reader free to develop counter arguments and add interpretation as the argument is developed; which makes for that rare object, an excellent, thought-provoking, teaching text.” —John F. Loder, Journal of Tropical Ecology "a classic in the development literature." —Education in Science and Technology "essential reading in the context of the generally gloomy debate on the effects of population growth on poverty and the status of the environment." —Development Policy Review\ \
