TECHNOLOGICAL CHANGE AND COMMERCIALIZATION IN AGRICULTURE: The Effect on the Poor

Do the economic gains brought by technological innovation andcommercialization in agriculture work their way through to thepoor? The prevailing optimistic view is that they do. But thisview is not universal: some hold that these forces for changecan interact with, or even induce, institutional and marketfailure, with adverse consequences for the poor. Adherents of the pessimistic view point to real-world instancesin which the poor have failed to reap the benefits, or evenhave lost, from the technological change or commercialization.Where these effects have occurred we find that they are mostlyattributable to inelastic demand or adverse institutional features;often, when technology or commercialization has been blamedfor the decline in income of the poor, other—not necessarilyconnected—policies have in fact been responsible for thedamage. This article contends that the optimistic view is, by and large,correct: normally, technology and commercialization stimulateagricultural growth, improve employment opportunities, and expandfood supply—all central to the alleviation of poverty.The evidence does not offer much encouragement to an extensionof this view—that through "social engineering" the benefitsfrom technology and commercialization can easily be targetedtoward the poor; the limited opportunities for such targetingshould of course be seized.