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Low agricultural growth and increasing population pressure raise the problem of poverty of a nation. As agriculture is the only mainstay of most of the rural people of nation, there is need to transform traditional agricultural practices to more specialized production, oriented towards the market or other systems of exchange so as to ensure better standard of living.

Agricultural transformation is a process through which a single farm shifts from traditional production system to a highly specialized production system towards market orientation. Agricultural transformation not only creates output for final consumption but also supplies inputs for other manufacturing industries. The process involves a greater dependence on input and output delivery systems and increased integration of agricultural transformation aims to create a market-oriented and internationally competitive agricultural production system through the adoption of new technologies so as to improve the socioeconomic status of the rural masses. It is a broader process in which an increasing proportion of economic output and employment are generated by sectors other than agriculture. In this way, agricultural transformation can be a market-oriented production system through the structural transformation of rural masses which can create integrated rural development.

With this background, an attempt has been made in this book to introduce the concept of agricultural transformation and discuss the efforts made in different countries towards its implementation.