The World Development Report 2008, released by the World Bank on October 19, 2007, has discussed various facets of agriculture in regard to its role as a means of development. This is acknowledgement of the fact that agriculture has an important role to play in poverty alleviation especially in the developing world. Agriculture has not been accorded proper attention as an effective development strategy in the third world countries, who tried to imitate the development strategies of the industrial countries with the result that agriculture sector was put on the backburner. With this report, focus has shifted back on agriculture as a vehicle for poverty alleviation.

The report highlights three pathways for rural households to break the vicious circle of unending poverty. These pathways are farming, rural labour market and migration from rural areas.

The first pathway for moving out of poverty for the rural households is through agriculture farming. Farming pathway is, however, more relevant to the cultivators and farmers who own reasonable acreage of land. In case of Pakistan, distribution of land is highly skewed. This situation has two important implications: firstly, farming pathway for moving out of the poverty trap is limited to a minority of rural households. Secondly, market orientation of the farming households, who are otherwise engaged in subsistence farming, will be possible only through diversification of their farming activities

In order to effectively use the farming pathway for poverty alleviation, it is imperative that an enabling environment is created for the rural farmers to improve productivity of their land and diversify their crops. Policies need to be fashioned in a way that market orientation of the farmers is enhanced through human capital endowments. Effective policies need to be formulated for increasing quality of land, decreasing land concentration, enhancing technical capacity of the rural people, widening scope and outreach of insurance schemes and facilitating access of small farmers to formal credit. Investment in education, rural infrastructure i.e. roads, markets, electricity and irrigation etc is a pre-requisite for bringing agriculture to the market.

Labour pathway is the second strategy discussed in the World Development Report for making use of agriculture for development. This strategy aimed at poverty alleviation implies that income earning from the non-agriculture sector be increased so that the people who do not own lands are absorbed in non-farm activities to earn their livelihood. To make this pathway an effective tool for poverty reduction, it is imperative that policies are oriented towards non-farm occupations in the rural area. Enhancing off-farm activities and increasing occupational diversity is the key in this regard.

The third pathway for poverty alleviation discussed in the report is migration. There are two types of migrations i.e. permanent migration from the rural to the urban areas and migration to other countries of the world and temporary seasonal migration. Rural to urban migration within a country adds to the problems of a country, so policy makers need to evolve development strategies that minimise the flow of rural people to the urban areas on permanent basis. To overcome this problem, employment opportunities should be created in the rural areas through the labour pathway.As regards migration from the native country to the outside world, it is acknowledged that this migration was used as a development strategy in some of the developing countries who encouraged their people to migrate. In 1970s, a large number of Pakistanis migrated to the Middle East to earn their livelihoods. The remittances sent by these people have played a very vital role in the development of our country. These remittances also contributed towards poverty reduction in rural areas as migration offers an effective pathway out of poverty for such people as well as their family members who stay back home. The World Development Report (2008) quotes:“In Pakistan remittances from temporary migrants have a large impact on agricultural land purchases and returning migrants are more likely to set up a non-farm business”.

The World Development Report categorises the countries of the world into agriculture economies, transforming economies and urban economies. Pakistan has been placed into transforming economies.

The report offers ‘differentiated approach’ to transform agriculture into a vehicle of change and development. This approach calls for different policy prescriptions for these three types of economies. For example, in transforming economies like Pakistan, the most important element, as pointed out in the report, is reduction of rural-urban income disparities and stubbornly high rural poverty. It further stresses the need of political and macroeconomic stability in order to enable agriculture to play its effective role in the development. To top it all, agriculture policies should be comprehensive in nature aimed at achieving such objectives as establishment of efficient markets, accelerating small land holders’ entry into agriculture markets and improving livelihood and food security in subsistence agriculture. The efforts to improve the lot of the rural poor should aim at generating employment and enhancing the skills of the poor to enable them to seize emerging opportunities for moving out of poverty trap.

when most of the economies of the world enjoy the industrial revolution the underdeveloped ecnomies also trying to follow their footprints by focusing more on industrial development rather than their basic area of expertise agriculture.
now developed countries have come to realize that they will not be able to developed with indutustries in the long run because of shortage of oil, climatic change, wastages, utilitities etc etc.
now they talk in the long run only agriculture sector will be able to provide job opportunities, reducing poverty, providing food items etc etc.
therefore pakistan has to focus on its agriculture sector more seriously.