Value Added in Agriculture as a Regional Development Strategy

Abstract

The World Bank describes China as a ‘low income economy’, whereas it calls the USA a ‘high income economy’ (and in between are the middle- and upper-middle income economies.) In recent years, economic growth in China has been impressive, but it is still a relatively poor country, with employment focused on the primary sector in general, and on the food and fibre-producing agriculture element in particular. The USA, in contrast, is a rich country where conspicuous change is more likely to come in terms of productivity shifts than in terms of employment shifts. The primary sector is a small employer and it plays a very different role in the US development agenda from that in the Chinese development agenda.