Gapminder was founded in 2005 and is a non-profit organisation bringing FACTS to the discussions about development and economic growth - subjects near to our hearts. Click here for a quick link to their About page.
Agrimarkets is fascinated by charts and statistics that so often are able to cut through the chit-chat and help us understand what's really going on. We've just added a page (see page bar above) where we collect and display whatever interesting chart data we come across.
Gapminder Agriculture is based on 700 UN FAO indicators that lets you create charts at will. You can also access the raw data in tabular form.
Here's a chart that took less than a minute to create that answers one important question about agricultural productivity:
The chart shows cereal yields/ha. measured against incomes. It shows conclusively that the rich countries produce more cereals per hectare than the poorer ones.
Another chart gives a hint why:
It shows per capita incomes against the proportion of the labour force working in the agricultural sector. The relatively richer nations have a LOWER proportion of their labour force employed in agriculture because they are able to use available capital (that gets invested in farm technology and agricultural knowledge) instead of unskilled labour (yes, they also subsidise agriculture while insisting that the developing world reduces subsidies - another story).
These charts are great! For a final bit of fun look at these two: the first chart shows the world (by the social measures of life expectancy and child birth) when the Editor of this blog was born in 1949. The gap between the developed and less-developed countries was HUGE!
The second chart shows the same country data for 2010. The difference is nothing less than astonishing.
Two points to note: the massive catch up by the Asian countries and the way Africa has been left trailing. We still have work to do!
Please comment by writing directly to gqb@foodworks.ag. All will be answered.
