The developmental role of agriculture has long been recognized in the literature. As a leading sector of most economies in the developing world, agriculture helps facilitate industrial growth and structural economic transformation. Agriculture plays a multidimensional role in the development process, which includes eliciting economic growth, generating employment opportunities, contributing to value chains, reducing poverty, lowering income disparities, ensuring food security, delivering environmental services and providing foreign exchange earnings, among others. Due to the neglect of this sector, development progress has been hindered in a number of countries, which explains why 75 per cent of world poverty is rural and why sectoral income disparities have exploded, as well as why intense food insecurity and environmental degradation have become widespread (World Bank, 2007; Byerlee, de Janvry and Sadoulet, 2009).