Rural Development and Agricultural Growth in Indonesia, the Philippines and Thailand

Abstract

Rural Development and Agricultural Growth in Indonesia, the Philippines and Thailand. Edited by Takamasa Akiyama and Donald F. Larson. Washington, D.C.: World Bank 2004. Pp. 558. This book provides a comprehensive review of rural development and agricultural growth in Indonesia, the Philippines, and Thailand. Factors that have influenced agricultural development in these countries were identified and discussed. A cross-country analysis was presented using a multidisciplinary approach. The authors compared and explained in reasonable detail how differences in ecology or geography, institution, political structures or regimes, economic policies, rates of protection, and export intensity could have affected agricultural developments in these three Southeast Asian countries over the last few decades. It is of interest to note that favourable government or political regimes and economic policies that encouraged exports, trade liberalization, structural transformation, cropping diversification, and more value adding in agriculture, have inter alia, rendered growth in Thailand to surpass that of Indonesia and the Philippines. This point is well substantiated by the data and empirical evidence presented by various authors in this book. In general, the importance of agriculture in these developing countries is well elaborated. In what follows, instead of providing an overview or summary of its content, I will attempt to present several suggestions that may make the book a little more informative. First, I concur with the authors that rural development and agricultural growth are important in developing countries still in their relatively early stages of economic growth. This is the case for Indonesia, the Philippines, and Thailand in the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s. As the economies began to mature, however, value-added activities, manufacturing, and service sectors have become increasingly prominent. Agricultural production has been overtaken by production in the manufacturing and service sectors, as in Thailand. It now constitutes more than 20 per cent of GDP in Thailand. This book consistently claims that agriculture has been a very important production sector. It seems to create an impression, albeit implicitly, that agriculture is more important than other economic sectors. It would be of interest to compare agriculture to other production sectors which also contributed to economic growth in these countries. This is in addition to the issues of food security and poverty reduction, which seem to provide, prima facie, a rationale for rural development. Up to now, most of the authors mentioned that agricultural production is important because it provides an impetus for economic development such as poverty reduction. If this is the argument, one may also claim other production sectors to be of importance. The question now is which sector is more important than the other. To what extent does rural development contribute to GDP growth in these countries? Second, this book seems to place greater emphasis on the primary production sector (e. …