Agriculture and land in Southeast Asia

Referring to the historical process of agricultural development and industrialization that occurred in the West, the economist Theodore Schultz boldly claimed in 1951, in an article entitled “The Declining Economic Importance of Agricultural Land,” that the role of agricultural income diminishes relative to the growth of national income and that, through the introduction of new technology and improved knowledge, agricultural productivity can be improved to overcome the diminishing returns to land. He wrote,