Charting change in official assistance to agriculture

This article charts trends in official development assistance to agriculture in the 1980s and 90s. It refutes the widely held view that official commitments to agriculture fell during the 1980s, reaching the opposite conclusion by using a more appropriate deflator. However, official development assistance to agriculture did fall in the 1990s-in nominal and real terms. Per capita declines are particularly stark: real levels of agricultural sector funding per capita of population in the least developed countries fell by nearly 50% between 1982 and 1995. The paper considers agriculture's share of total commitments, and the relative importance of different donors and regions in overall agricultural sector funding. (C) 2000 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.