Asian Models of Agricultural Development and their Relevance to Afrika

This working paper discusses the different Asian experiences of the Green Revolution from the late 1960s to the 1980s in the perspective of earlier developments of agricultural intensification. The intention of the paper is to identify common features and conditions contributing to the considerable success of Asian agriculture over the past 30 years. The authors argue that the Green Revolution must be understood as a broad social and political process, rather than as one driven by the new plant technologies introduced in the 1960s alone.

The different regional “models” of the Asian Green Revolution – Japan and East Asia, South-East Asia and South Asia – are outlined. The authors argue that despite considerable regional variation in historic and other factors, Asian Green Revolutions had a common base: they were all “state driven, market mediated and farmer based”.

Other common features of the Asian Green Revolutions are geo-political contexts that differ markedly from those in contemporary Africa, which may constitute important obstacles to a similar development of African agriculture.