The Role of Export Cropping in Less Developed Countries: Discussion

Abstract

The paper by Hillman is a quite well-balanced representation of the issues with respect to the role of agricultural exports in development. It is a concise restatement of existing problems containing little policy advice for the future. It may be a useful survey piece to the nonspecialist, but there is little new for development or trade economists. In this respect the title is misleading. I kept waiting for the paper to focus on export cropping. Of course, it really does not. A more appropriate title would be Export Orientation versus Selfsufficiency in the Agriculture of Developing Countries: A Survey of Issues. The paper is more notable for what it does not say than for what it says. Accordingly, most of my comments will focus on these aspects. The main criticism of the paper is that it is a survey of what has happened and of past issues. It is long on diagnosis and short on prescription. Critical issues in agricultural development and questions that confront economists are: what is the correct valuation of agricultural output, and what advice can we provide developing countries? These are difficult questions to answer. Hillman seems to favor agricultural export-led policies. But the preconditions for this to be effective, as he states, are that growth in industrialized countries must continue at a rapid pace through the 1980s and that market access must be increased. Neither of these preconditions are projected to obtain in the 1980s. Economic growth in industrialized countries throughout the 1980s is projected to fall below the sluggish levels of the 1970s (see World Bank), and many observers in their most optimistic moments see at best a constant level of protection for agriculture during the 1980s. Thus, the question arises as to how agricultural exportoriented policies possibly could help developing countries. One possible alternative for developing countries is to look toward increased inter-de-