Feeding the World An Economic History of Agriculture, 1800-2000 [Paperback]

In the last two centuries, agriculture has been an outstanding, if somewhat neglected, success story. Agriculture has fed an ever-growing population with an increasing variety of products at falling prices, even as it has released a growing number of workers to the rest of the economy. This book, a comprehensive history of world agriculture during this period, explains how these feats were accomplished.

Feeding the Worldsynthesizes two hundred years of agricultural development throughout the world, providing all essential data and extensive references to the literature. It covers, systematically, all the factors that have affected agricultural performance: environment, accumulation of inputs, technical progress, institutional change, commercialization, agricultural policies, and more. The last chapter discusses the contribution of agriculture to modern economic growth. The book is global in its reach and analysis, and represents a grand synthesis of an enormous topic.

Giovanni Federicois Professor of Economic History at the European University Institute. He has written extensively on Italian and comparative economic history, with special attention on agriculture, trade, and trade policy. He is the author ofAn Economic History of the Silk Industryand the coauthor ofThe Growth of the Italian Economy, 1820-1940. InFeeding the World, Giovanni Federico considers agricultural development over the past 200 years an outstanding success story. . . .Feeding the Worldwill be of great interest to economists, development specialists and policymakers, and all economic historians should read it. Methodologically, it is an excellent example of a quantitative economic history, grounded in theory but sensitive to empirical realities worldwide. Substantively, it provides an essential context for understanding economic development over the past 200 years on a global scale. ---Mark Overton,Times Higher Education Suppleml#8