Summary. In reviewing the variety of country experiences, we find that most of them support, but some undermine or modify, the pro-agriculture position. Most cases support the pro-agriculture position that sustained agricultural development makes a major positive difference. However, the polar view is refuted. Agriculture is not the major contributor in countries where trade, aid, remittances, foreign direct investment, and so on can provide the main sources of foreign exchange and investment. However, even in these cases, investing in agriculture was rightly deemed necessary so that agricultural backwardness would not constitute a bottleneck to overall growth and broad-based development. The “squeeze agriculture” position is convincingly refuted, as China’s repeated attempts to squeeze agriculture before 1979 amply show. To date, there is no successful case of the “squeeze agriculture” approach. This approach has exacerbated rural poverty and urban squalor, thus undermining instead of building broad-based and sustainable industrialization and wealth.