Agriculture, 1910–33

The role of agriculture in an economy is determined by the size and quality of the land and by the extent of the economy’s development. A totally undeveloped economy will be totally dependent upon agriculture. In an advanced economy, such as that of Great Britain in 1910, there was only a minor role for agriculture. South Africa in 1910 lay in between these two extremes. Agriculture was important because it provided a living for the vast majority of the inhabitants; but it had not been the principal factor contributing to the rapid economic growth. It was, in this period, a laggard sector that was pulling down the growth of the economy rather than acting as a leading sector in the way that agriculture was in Japan or had been in England. These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.