The dogma of agricultural primacy says: agriculture first, cities later. Jane Jacobs in his famous book The Economy of Cities (1969) is a strong proponent of city-primacy: Cities First—Rural Development Later. Could it be always true that rural (agricultural) development follows innovations in the cities and hence a policy of city-primacy than agricultural-primacy to pursue? Is it always true that agricultural productivity lags behind urban productivity? And, could it be that there is no way to increase rural (agricultural) productivity first and city productivity later in the currently developing countries? Is it true that rural development always waits for innovations in fertilizer, seed, pesticides, etc from the urban sector, not from the rural (agricultural) sector itself? Given multitudes of development theories and models, what could be the third-best alternative way for economic transformation in the currently developing countries?
Binary choices of the either-or variety never shed much light. Around the world, 80% of the rural population live near cities. Urban and rural areas enjoy different but complementary assets. Potential linkages cut across, say, agricultural productivity, demography, environment, labor, and public services. Better integration of rural-urban linkages by way of rural-urban partnerships is essential for better socio-economic and environmental performance. Therein lies the third (and only real) way.
The value-chain model links them all; the urban/industrial provides the inputs & markets, the rural provides the labour, management skills, soils and other assets. It is a chain, and a chain once broken at some point malfunctions. No actor in the chain can do without the other
Life starts from the agricultural landscape part of rural landscape, in fact the rural landscape is the origin of civilization. So that the agricultural landscape exists to provide products and services for life in the urban landscape. The agricultural landscape is dominantly part of the rural landscape, and is a provider of landscape services for the urban landscape.
In the history of humanity, to the extent that hunting, fishing, agriculture, and livestock reached the capacity to produce surpluses, they gave rise to the development of cities, which were originally centers of exchange.
With the passing of time, several centuries later, the cities became political-administrative, cultural and scientific centers. In this way, scientific and technological innovations began to arrive from the cities to the countryside.
But agriculture, from the countryside, as a permanent source of value, allowed the growth of cities, sending surplus labor, cheap food and financial surpluses. The city had never sent anything to the countryside, until in the late 1800s, settlers of German origin from the state of Pennsylvania, United States, went to the government to claim the absence of government services (meaning the cities) to the rural area. Derived from this claim, the germs of agronomy schools and research and extension services and agricultural credit arose, which over time became universal in all countries.
With the emergence of the concept of economic development, in the mid-twentieth century, hypotheses arose for the development of countries that had lagged behind based on the use of surplus labor. No theory questioned that the lags were the result of the great advances of the countries that had become centers of the world through processes of savage invasions and conquests, piracy and slave trade.
In these centers of the world, the cities grew to the maximum to such an extent that 98% of their populations live in cities and barely 2% in rural areas. Now, this 98% subsidizes 2% of the rural area and we, the inhabitants of the rest of the world, provide the workforce for this highly productive agriculture.
On the other hand, these developed countries that form the center of the world operate with economic activities with a high environmental impact that pollute the planet. Now they want us, those of us who don't have industries, not to develop and stay in the countryside to keep it clean, activities that we must do with our own resources.
So my friend Melkamu Tadesse Wazza is going to have to do another review of the work of Arthur Lewis, Theodor Schultz, ……., and Ted Trainer, to have a clear answer to your question.
A very good and challenging question is asked by Professor @Melkamu Tadesse Wazza. Currently, the wealth that differentiates developing countries from developed and highly industrialized countries, allows developed countries to give greater importance to urban development, so that the economic resources generated by cities can subsidize production and rural development. The situation is very different in developing countries. I consider that the situation is not resolved considering that it is first, "the country or the city", "rural vs. urban". As has been said, the value chain model links the rural with the urban to reach the market. It is very important that the chain adds value to the product, which is also transferred to the rural area. In developing countries, value added occurs in very few products. Developing countries seem doomed to produce commodities, which they mostly export to industrialized countries. This generates the emigration of people from the countryside to the city, integrating belts of marginalization and poverty. I consider it necessary for developing countries to implement global policies for economic growth and development, which consider the rural and the urban.
Rural development is one of the most effective means to achieve balanced and parallel development in the growth of the various economic sectors and the economic intertwining between them..it is a priority means of agricultural and civil at the same time..because without each of them the other cannot be achieved.
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