Fertile ground for innovation and growth
Since the 1970s, agricultural research has helped reduce poverty in developing countries by raising farm incomes, creating employment for farm workers, reducing the price of food, and fueling economic growth. Yet, despite massive evidence of significant impact, support for agriculture and agricultural research declined dramatically from the early 1990s onward.

Recent developments have helped restore this sector to its rightful place on the international development agenda. The most dramatic and significant was the global food price crisis of 2008, which forced poor consumers to pay an unbearably high cost for years of underinvestment in the improvement of food production.

Another influential event was the publication, just before the food crisis fully emerged, of the World Bank's World Development Report 2008: Agriculture for Development. Noting that 75% of the developing world's poor live in rural areas and depend mostly on agriculture, the report offers a timely and convincing argument that this sector is a "vital development tool" for reducing extreme poverty.

In coming to grips with the extraordinary heterogeneity of developing country agriculture, the report outlines a set of strategies for fostering growth in what it describes as "agriculture’s three worlds."

In "agriculture-based" economies, most of which are in sub-Saharan, the report calls for major new efforts to boost the productivity of smallholder farming. This, it says, offers the best option for spurring growth and overcoming poverty. The authors cite several recent successes, such as widespread adoption of new bean and cassava varieties, as grounds for optimism about the prospects for agricultural growth.

For the "transforming" economies that are typical of Asia, the report argues, a central challenge is to reduce widening disparities between rural and urban incomes through labor-intensive, high-value agriculture. In the "urbanizing" countries of Latin America, the report emphasizes new opportunities for smallholder farmers to profit from stronger links with modern food markets and from the provision of environmental services.

To some extent, encompasses all three of agriculture's worlds and thus provides fertile ground for science-based innovations aimed at reducing poverty globally.