THE GROWTH OF WORLD AGRICULTURAL PRODUCTION, 1800–1938

Giovanni Federico

A chapter in Research in Economic History, 2004, pp 125-181 from Emerald Group Publishing Limited

Abstract: World population has increased six-fold in the last two centuries, and thus agricultural production must have grown as well. The last fifty years of this increase are covered by the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) production series. This article aims to push our quantitative knowledge back in time as far as possible. It reviews the scattered evidence on agricultural production in the first half of the 19th century, estimates a yearly series of output for the main countries since 1870, and puts forward some guesstimates on trends in the rest of the world. In the long run, agricultural production has increased more than population. Growth has affected all continents, even if it has been decidedly faster in both the countries of Western Settlement and in Eastern Europe, than in Asia or in Western Europe. It was faster before World War I, a veritable golden age for world agriculture, than in the inter-war years. The composition of production has changed as well, with an increase in the share of livestock products.

Date: 2004
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.101 ... d&utm_campaign=repec (text/html)
https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.101 ... d&utm_campaign=repec (application/pdf)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers

Related works:
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:eme:rehizz:s0363-3268(04)22003-1

DOI: 10.1016/S0363-3268(04)22003-1

Access Statistics for this chapter

More chapters in Research in Economic History from Emerald Group Publishing Limited
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Emerald Support ().