A World without Farmers ? The Lewis Path Revisited

Bruno Dorin, Jean Charles Hourcade () and Michel Benoit-Cattin ()
Additional contact information
Jean Charles Hourcade: CIRED - centre international de recherche sur l'environnement et le développement - Cirad - Centre de Coopération Internationale en Recherche Agronomique pour le Développement - EHESS - École des hautes études en sciences sociales - AgroParisTech - ENPC - École nationale des ponts et chaussées - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique
Michel Benoit-Cattin: Cirad - Centre de Coopération Internationale en Recherche Agronomique pour le Développement

Working Papers from HAL

Abstract: This paper questions the Lewis Path perspective of a "world without agriculture" which underpins the "structural transformation" paradigm of "modern growth." It shows that the Lewis Path is only one of four potential structural paths, and that half of the world's population is spiralling into a "Lewis Trap" with more farmers and an increasing income gap between them and other workers. After showing how land constraints and the productivity dynamics outside agriculture might prevent this population from switching to a Lewis Path, it delineates the condition of an alternative path that would not transfer the disparity problem to cities.

Keywords: Agriculture; Productivity; Development; Structural transformation; Poverty; Agro-Ecology; Productivité; Développement; Transformation structurelle; Pauvreté; Agro-Ecologie (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2013-04
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-agr, nep-his and nep-pke
Note: View the original document on HAL open archive server: https://hal.science/hal-00866413v1
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (8)

Downloads: (external link)
https://hal.science/hal-00866413v1/document (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: A World without Farmers ? The Lewis Path Revisited (2013)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:hal:wpaper:hal-00866413

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Papers from HAL
Bibliographic data for series maintained by CCSD ().