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ECONOMISTS have been frustrated in attempting to establish realistic food production targets for development programs in low income countries by considerable uncertainty about estimates of future food consumption. To reduce some of this uncertainty, an investigation was made of a number of factors influencing food consumption. This paper reports on the effect of the movement of population from rural to urban areas on the income elasticity of demand for retail food. In estimating future food consumption, an equation given by Ohkawa is generally accepted. It states that the rate of increase in the consumption of food is the sum of the rate of population growth plus the product of the rate of per capita income growth and the income elasticity of demand for food (d = p + gn).1 Consideration of the data needed for this equation focuses attention on estimates of the income elasticity of demand for food. Little progress has been made since World War II in increasing the reliability of food elasticity estimates for use in projections in low income countries.

R EDUCING underemployment of labor in the agricultural sector of the economy is generally regarded as one of the most fruitful approaches to the amelioration of the low-income problem in underdeveloped areas of the world. Knowledge of the schedule of marginal productivity of labor in agriculture, and particularly of the regional variation in that schedule, is of critical importance in making decisions concerning the desirability of developing additional employment opportunities, in choosing the form such employment opportunities might best take, and in planning the location of such opportunities once decided upon. In this paper, we suggest a modification of the traditional model in labor productivity theory, test a portion of the hypothesis presented against certain empirical data and draw some implications of practical significance from the model and data presented.