The development of competitive agro-industries is crucial for creating employment and income opportunities as well as enhancing the quality of and demand for farm products. Agro-industries can have a real effect on international development by increasing economic growth and reducing poverty in both rural and urban areas of developing countries. However, in order to avoid adverse effects to vulnerable countries and people, sound policies and strategies for fostering agro-industries are needed. Agro-Industries for Development highlights the current status and future course for agro-industries and brings attention to the contributions this sector can make to international development. The book includes contributions from agro-industry specialists, academic experts and UN technical agencies, chapters address the strategies and actions required for improving agro-industrial competitiveness in ways that can create income, generate employment and fight poverty in the developing world. This book is a co-publication with FAO and UNIDO.

The world's demand for food is expected to double within the next 50 years, while the natural resources that sustain agriculture will become increasingly scarce, degraded, and vulnerable to the effects of climate change. In many poor countries, agriculture accounts for at least 40 percent of GDP and 80 percent of employment. At the same time, about 70 percent of the world's poor live in rural areas and most depend on agriculture for their livelihoods. 'World Development Report 2008' seeks to assess where, when, and how agriculture can be an effective instrument for economic development, especially development that favors the poor. It examines several broad questions: How has agriculture changed in developing countries in the past 20 years? What are the important new challenges and opportunities for agriculture? Which new sources of agricultural growth can be captured cost effectively in particular in poor countries with large agricultural sectors as in Africa? How can agricultural growth be made more effective for poverty reduction? How can governments facilitate the transition of large populations out of agriculture, without simply transferring the burden of rural poverty to urban areas? How can the natural resource endowment for agriculture be protected? How can agriculture's negative environmental effects be contained? This year's report marks the 30th year the World Bank has been publishing the 'World Development Report'.

The book highlights proceedings from the Berlin 2008: Agriculture and Development conference held in preparation for the World Development Report 2008.

A study prepared by the United Nations University World Institute for Development Economics Research (UNU-WIDER)

Published also in French and Spanish.

This volume of papers from the Eighth World Congress deals with changes in proportions and growth rates of sectors of the economy in relation to economic development. It includes a survey of theories of sectoral balance and studies of structural transformation in the Kuznets traditon.

"The challenges facing agriculture are plenty. Along with the world's growing population and diminishing amounts of water and arable land, the gradual increase in severe weather presents new challenges and imperatives for producing new, more resilient crops to feed a more crowded planet in the twenty-first century. Innovation has historically helped agriculture keep pace with earth's social, population, and ecological changes. In the last 50 years, mechanical, biological, and chemical innovations have more than doubled agricultural output while barely changing input quantities. The ample investment behind these innovations was available because of a high rate of return: a 2007 paper found that the median ROI in agriculture was 45 percent between 1965 and 2005. This landscape has changed. Today many of the world's wealthier countries have scaled back their share of GDP devoted to agricultural R&D amid evidence of diminishing returns. Universities, which have historically been a major source of agricultural innovation, increasingly depend on funding from industry rather than government to fund their research. As Upton Sinclair wrote of the effects industry influences, "It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it." In this volume of the NBER Conference Report series, editor Petra Moser offers an empirical, applied-economic framework to the different elements of agricultural R&D, particularly as they relate to the shift from public to private funding. Individual chapters examine the sources of agricultural knowledge and investigate challenges for measuring the returns to the adoption of new agricultural technologies, examine knowledge spillovers from universities to agricultural innovation, and explore interactions between university engagement and scientific productivity. Additional analysis of agricultural venture capital point to it as an emerging and future source of resource in this essential domain"--

Subsistence production: a sign of market failure. Commercialization cannot be left to the market. Household effects of commercialization. Nutrition effects of commercialization. Policy action needed.

This proceedings book features selected papers from the 9th National Scientific and Practical Conference “Digital Economy: Complexity and Variety Vs. Rationality,” which took place on April 17–18, 2019, in Vladimir (Russian Federation). It presents the latest research in the field of the digital economy, discussing its role in the creation of advantages for the state, entrepreneurship, and society, as well as the emergence of new economic risks. The chapters address the following topics: the importance of economy’s digital modernization, tools for the formation of the digital economy in Russia, specific features and perspectives of digital modernization of the regional economy, an overview of the social consequences of transition to the digital economy, financial components of the digital economy, legal challenges regarding the digital reality for society and state, and the main challenges and threats to the profession of jurisprudence in the context of the digitization of the economy. Intended for representatives of the academic community and researchers interested in the formation of the digital economy and digital society as well as undergraduates, postgraduates, and masters of economic specialties, the book is also a valuable resource for companies that use or wishing to implement digital technologies into their economic practices; and public and government employees involved with monitoring, control, and regulation of the digital economy.

China's agricultural production and food consumption have increased tremendously, leading to a complete evolution of agro-food markets. The book is divided into two parts; the first part reviews the theoretical framework for the 'social construction of the markets,' while the second part presents the implication for the agro-food markets in China.