One of the best things about advances 
in agricultural productivity
is that they tend to spur 
industrial revolutions.
Consider Indonesia, the country's economy 
has had its ups and downs
but overall, over the last few decades
it has emerged as an industrializing 
exploiting nation.
The industrializing processes 
of the 1980s
were in fact preceded 
by about 15 years
of strong gains 
in agricultural productivity.
During the 1970s, about 
50 million Indonesians
left poverty without the aid 
of export-oriented industry.
This was because of agriculture.
For instance, between 1968 and 1985, 
yields for rice,
which is the staple food in Indonesia, 
rose by about 80%,
and total rice production grew almost 
three times faster than population growth.
In 1974, Indonesia was the largest 
rice importer in the world.
By 1984, the country 
was self-sufficient in rice.
Indonesia's green revolution was based 
in small farmers,
it was mediated through markets, 
and the state played an important role
in making available to farmers,
high yielding fertilizer responsive 
rice varieties.
Japan, Taiwan, and South Korea all have 
broadly similar histories in this regard.
That is, their processes 
of industrialization were preceded by
significant productivity gains 
in agriculture.
These market developments were supported 
by their governments through
building the right kinds 
of infrastructure,
rural education, and in general 
supporting and encouraging
research and development in agriculture,
in addition to the more general role 
of those governments
in creating a stable 
economic environment.
Agricultural growth helps boost 
industrialization in a few ways.
For one thing, the more productive 
is agriculture,
the easier it is for some workers 
to shift from farms
to factories in larger cities.
Furthermore, agriculture 
produces a surplus
and this mobilizes domestic savings,
which can be used to finance investment
as indeed was the case in the East Asian 
economic miracles.
Finally, there may be 
an intangible effect,
a country which has 
some success in agriculture
starts to believe it can have 
economic success more generally.
Interestingly, Japan, Taiwan, 
and South Korea
all engaged in significant programs 
of land reform
in the periods leading up 
to their industrialization.
Basically, land was taken 
away from landlords
and given to smaller farmers and tenants.
Cause and effect are hard 
to disentangle here,
but it seems that this may have boosted 
agricultural productivity
and it also may have contributed 
to a general sense of fairness
and helped the later democratization 
of these countries.
There was now a greater chance 
that these countries would have
a stable middle class.
Overall, information on these topics 
is fairly diffused and spread out.
You could try David Henley, "The Agrarian 
Roots of Industrial Growth,"
or just Google, "East Asian 
miracle agriculture"
to get to some good sources.
