Download or read book An Examination of Labor Productivity and Labor Efficiency on Kansas Farms written by and published by . This book was released on 2008 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The objective of this thesis is to examine differences in labor efficiency and to find what is driving those differences among Kansas farms. The results provide a quantified understanding of the variation in labor productivity and labor efficiency relating to three categories of variables: farm characteristics, financial performance, and specialization. This research uses regression estimates from a data set of 1,145 Kansas farms to quantify how farm characteristics are related to labor productivity and labor efficiency. There are two main models. Labor productivity, expressed as value of farm production divided by the number of workers, is regressed on three categories of variables: farm characteristics, financial performance, and specialization. Labor efficiency, expressed as labor costs divided by value of farm production, is also regressed on the same categories of variables. The research found that farm size, managerial ability, and age were the most influential and significant variables in the labor productivity model. Farm size, managerial ability, and land tenure were the most influential and significant variables in the labor efficiency model. Farm size is a variable important to both models, and when evaluated at $100,000 of VFP, labor productivity has a value of 152,122 and a labor efficiency value of 0.271 (all else constant). When evaluated at a VFP of $500,000, labor productivity and labor efficiency improve to values of 217,914 and 0.246, respectively.

Download or read book Productivity Growth Convergence and Distribution Dynamics in the Kansas Farm Sector written by Amin William Mugera and published by . This book was released on 2009 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This study applies recent advances in nonparametric techniques to investigate growth in labor productivity and convergence in the Kansas farm sector for a panel of 564 farms for the period 1993-2007. The study seeks to answer two questions: First, what are the sources of labor productivity growth in the farm sector and second, is there evidence of convergence or divergence in the growth rate of labor productivity across farms? Following Kumar and Russell (2002), the nonparametric production frontier approach is used to decompose the growth in output per worker into three components: efficiency change, technical change, and capital deepening. Kernel density estimation methods are used to investigate the evolution of the entire distribution of labor productivity and the effects of each of those three growth components on the evolution of the distributions over the sample periods, 1993-07, 1993-02, and 1996-05. Cross-sectional regression methods (ordinary least square, partial linear model, and smooth coefficient model) are later employed to test for convergence in labor productivity growth and the contribution of each of the components to the convergence process. The study yields the following results. First, capital deepening and technical change are the main sources of labor productivity growth. Efficiency change is a source of regress in productivity growth. Second, technical change is not neutral. Third, the distribution of labor productivity in the farm sector has remained unimodal. Capital deepening and technical change are the main factors contributing to labor productivity distributions. Fourth, despite no evidence of technological catching-up, efficiency change and capital deepening contributed to convergence in the growth rate of labor productivity during the entire sample period. Technical change contributes to productivity disparity in the 1993-07 period. The contribution of technical change in the 1993-02 and 1996-05 periods are mixed with evidence of both convergence and disparity. Finally, the results for the 1993-07 period support the existence of a positive relationship between the annual growth in technical change and initial level of capital-labor ratio, suggesting that technology is embodied in capital accumulation.

Download or read book Labor Standards and Efficiency Estimation of Farms in the Kansas Farm Management Association written by Cody Holland and published by . This book was released on 2012 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The objectives of this thesis are to examine the labor requirements of Kansas crop and livestock enterprises and farms and the connection between labor efficiency and productivity, and other important farm characteristics including farm size and type. The derived labor requirements are compared to current KFMA labor requirements. Enterprise summary reports and a five year whole-farm panel data set from 1,016 Kansas Farm Management Association (KFMA) farms are used in the analysis. Whole-farm labor requirements are computed with and without an adjustment for managerial and overhead cost. Individual regressions will be estimated to determine the effects that farm size, type, region and profit margin have on labor requirements. The estimation results suggest that many of the current labor requirements still in use are accurate. However, there are enterprises with labor requirements that need updating. When the newly estimated requirements are compared to the previous KFMA requirements, 14 enterprises have lower labor requirements. Irrigated alfalfa showed the greatest decrease in labor required when compared to the previous standard, decreasing from 3.85 hrs/acre to 1.70 hrs/acre. Regression estimation results indicated that whole farm labor standards that were corrected for un-allocated overhead and managerial costs appear to be a more accurate representation of farm labor requirements.

Download or read book Linking Efficiency Profitability and Growth of Kansas Farms written by Cody O'Brien and published by . This book was released on 2017 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The main objective of this analysis was to examine the profitability and efficiency of Kansas farms in order to draw inferences among the profitability, efficiency, and growth of agricultural producers in Kansas. The time period analyzed was 2005 to 2015. Farms in the sample include a mix of 564 crop and/or livestock operations with 11 years of continuous data through the Kansas Farm Management Association data-bank. Efficiency scores were calculated to determine how close each farm was to the production possibilities frontier, or their cost efficiency. Profitability measures, (operating profit margin and return on assets), were obtained for each farm. The profitability dynamics in 2014 and 2015 for these farms changed compared to previous years. Crop farms generated less profits in 2014 and 2015 compared to previous years, and relative profits from average fluctuated more for sampled farms in 2014 and 2015. Farms were also categorized into risk classes. These classifications aim at distinguishing farms that are profitable or not, and their level of solvency, utilizing their net farm income from operations and their debt to asset ratio. Farms are migrating from the low risk classification, showing that Kansas farms are becoming less profitable, but are not transitioning to a higher risk solvency state. These farms will need to focus on utilizing their inputs more efficiently to keep their solvency levels in check. After analyzing persistence in profitability, the results suggest that farms with higher return on assets tend to be more solvent, but farms with higher operating profit margin tend to be less solvent. The analysis also suggests that there might have been persistence in profits in the years prior to 2015. The analysis of relative positioning of farms in terms of return on assets suggests that during 2007-2011 some farms were able to consistently differentiate themselves by generating either below or above normal profits. Some farms were able to become more profitable in 2012 and 2013, while others lagged behind supported by regression results that signaled divergence of profitability levels. The relative positioning analysis for operating profit margin indicates that farms had similar operating profit margins from 2010 through 2014, and divergence occurred in 2015 by farms that were able to differentiate themselves more through the average operating profit margin. Next the efficiencies of the farms were examined. Analysis of the efficiency scores suggests that the cost efficiencies of Kansas farms are not explained by risk classification significantly, but the crop-labor percentage ratio significantly explains the cost efficiency of the farms. The relationship between cost efficiency and profitability measures proved to be the strongest out of the three performance measures due to their correlation. The final step in the analysis was to examine farm characteristics of the top performing farms. Farms were ranked by profitability measurements and the efficiency measure. Variables of interest that were significantly different between the top 25 percent and the bottom 25 percent of farms include total farm assets, value of farm production, crop-labor percentage, crop acres, number of workers, and age of operators.

Download or read book Studies on the Economic Efficiency of Kansas Farms written by and published by . This book was released on 2008 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This study focused on the economic efficiency of Kansas farms. The goal was to investigate factors and how they might affect farms and their economic and production performance. Kansas was selected as the region of study for its large agricultural production and distinctive type of multiple-operation farms. Farms in the sample could produce three outputs, crops, livestock and custom work. Inputs for the farms included measures of capital, labor, land and purchased inputs. Production outputs were measured in bushels and tons; input quantities were computed from input expenditures applying an input price index taken from the US Department of Agriculture in real US dollars. The dataset consisted of a 10-year (1998-2007) panel of 456 multi-output farms belonging to the Kansas Farm Management Association (KFMA). Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) techniques were used to construct a non-parametric efficiency frontier and calculate technical efficiency (TE), allocative efficiency (AE), scale efficiency (SE), and overall or economic efficiency (OE) for each farm and each year. A discretionary input oriented DEA technique was used to assess the effect of capital availability as a farm input and its impact on farms' efficiencies. Efficiency scores in this problem were compared to the farms' scores when the level of debt was accounted for as a farm input. Panel data Tobit analysis was applied to the farms' inefficiency scores to investigate the causality of selected farm characteristics on technical, allocative, scale and overall inefficiencies. For the sampled farms and period, results confirmed that larger farms were more efficient than smaller ones. Farms specializing in livestock products, such as dairy and beef, were reported to be slightly more overall efficient than crop or mixed farms. Some economies of scope were found between custom work operations and crops. Financial structure of the farms was measured using the ratio of total debt to total assets for each farm. According to the results, larger leverage ratios increased all farm efficiencies. The positive effect of debt or capital availability in Kansas farms efficiencies was confirmed. The results of the technical efficiency discretionary DEA model agreed with this finding.

Download or read book Farm Size and Resource Efficiency on Eastern Kansas Farms written by Dale Alpheus Knight and published by . This book was released on 1967 with total page 56 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book An Examination of Overall Efficiency for a Sample of Kansas Farms written by Kelly D. Bradford and published by . This book was released on 2003 with total page 142 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Gains in Productivity of Farm Labor written by Reuben William Hecht and published by . This book was released on 1950 with total page 136 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book The Relation of Farm Size and Efficiency to Economic Outcomes on Central Kansas Farms written by Dale Alpheus Knight and published by . This book was released on 1968 with total page 62 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Labor Supply and Labor Efficiency on Farms in New York and Northern Pennsylvania 1951 written by Voldemar Vaher and published by . This book was released on 1952 with total page 96 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Resource Returns and Productivity Coefficients in Central and Western Kansas Country Elevators of Modern Construction written by and published by . This book was released on 1957 with total page 44 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Staff Paper written by and published by . This book was released on 2009-06 with total page 48 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Efficiency and Productivity Measurements to Analyze Farm level Impacts from Adoption of Biotechnology Enhanced Soybeans written by Samuel Mahlon Funk and published by . This book was released on 2015 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This study focuses on the productivity and on-farm efficiency impacts of adopting biotechnology enhanced soybeans (BES). Previous research suggests the adoption of BES and subsequent time savings resulted in labor allocation to off-farm employment and reduced on-farm efficiency. Using continuous panel data for 129 farms enrolled in the Kansas Farm Management Association (KFMA) with production and financial crop records from 1993 through 2011 that also provided information on their BES adoption experience, this study provides estimates on the technical efficiency, cost efficiency, and Malmquist productivity indexes (MI) with decompositions into efficiency change (EC) and technical change (TC) to provide insights on the impacts of adopting BES for set of sample farms. Using data envelopment analysis to construct nonparametric efficiency frontiers and measurements assuming constant returns-to-scale (CRS) and variable returns-to-scale (VRS) technologies for the farms, this study provides insights on the impact of yield impacts of BES adoption. A biennial Malmquist productivity index (BMI) is developed to consider estimation of the productivity impacts between BES adopters and non-adopters assuming VRS. This analysis used five input categories: Labor, general, direct inputs, maintenance, and energy; and five outputs: corn, soybeans, sorghum, wheat, and other crops. Tobit regression analysis of the panel of Kansas farms provided evidence of a positive impact from adoption of biotechnology enhanced soybeans on on-farm technical efficiency. Kolmogorov-Smirnov goodness-of-fit distributional hypothesis tests showed significant differences between analyzing the farms under CRS and VRS assumptions. T-tests showed a bias existed when assuming CRS if the true underlying technology was VRS in productivity analysis. However, there was not a strong statistically significant difference between the distributions of productivity measures from the underlying populations of BES adopters and non-adopters in the sample of Kansas farms. A revenue-indirect cost efficiency analysis of the sample farms demonstrated that different conclusions were reached under CRS and VRS when considering the differences in the average of the means of estimated efficiency scores and Tobit regression results considering BES adoption. Assuming CRS resulted in positive marginal effects for adopting BES of 0.017 significant at the 5% level. The marginal effect of BES adoption was not statistically significant under VRS.

Download or read book Productivity and Technical Change written by Renu Kallianpur and published by . This book was released on 1985 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book A National Program of Research for Farm Labor and Mechanization written by Joint Task Force of the U.S. Dept. of Agriculture and the State Universities and Land Grant Colleges and published by . This book was released on 1968 with total page 72 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Kansas Cow calf Production Efficiency written by Hannah Elizabeth Shear and published by . This book was released on 2021 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The beef cattle sector has been, and continues to be, the single largest sector in the Kansas agriculture industry, with cattle and calves generating $8.27 billion in cash receipts in 2017 (KDA 2018). In 2017, Kansas produced nearly 5.69 billion pounds of red meat, or nearly 11 percent of the nation's total (KDA 2018). According to estimates prepared by the Kansas Department of Agriculture, beef cattle farming and ranching has a direct output of approximately $6.3 billion. The cow-calf sector is the beginning of the beef industry; therefore, understanding the factors influencing profitability, efficiency, and structure is very important. The objective of this study is to examine the efficiency of beef cow-calf production in Kansas. Technical, allocative, and scale efficiencies of cow-calf operations are estimated, as well as, analysis on the relationship between input costs and efficiency and profitability and efficiency. Beef cow-calf operations vary considerably in size, available resources, profitability, and the use of technology. The variability in profitability suggests room to improve both production and financial management practices. In addition to estimating efficiency measures of cow-calf operations, the study identifies how marketing strategies (selling calves vs. selling feeders) impacts efficiency. This study contributes to the existing literature by estimating efficiencies for cow-calf producers and identifying production characteristics that impact efficiencies, in addition to, introducing the use of super-efficiency in the cow-calf industry segment. The nonparametric Data Envelopment Analysis approach, along with regression analysis, is used to determine how marketing strategies and production characteristics are correlated with efficiency and profitability. The Kansas Farm Management Association data are used in this analysis with cow-calf producers analyzed in two groups based on their marketing strategy (sells calves or sells feeders). Three years of whole-farm and enterprise data are included in the study, with a total of 240 producers selling calves and 264 producers selling feeders between 2018 and 2020. An input orientation is applied including feed, labor, utilities, and veterinary costs. Output is defined as the gross farm income (in dollars). Producers selling feeders were more technically efficient than those selling calves in both 2018 and 2019; however, in 2020, those that sold calves were slightly more technically efficient on average (0.840) than those that sell feeders (0.830). Technical efficiency was relatively more important than scale and allocative efficiency for both marketing strategies across almost all years (one exception in 2020, with producers marketing calves, where the allocative efficiency correlation coefficient was higher than technical). Technical efficiency was relatively more important in explaining profitability than either allocative or scale efficiency. Regressions indicated that a 0.10 increase in pure technical efficiency increases net income per cow by $96. A 0.10 increase in allocative and scale efficiencies increases net income per cow by $48 and $97, respectively. This suggests that producers that are experiencing low (or negative) levels of profitability should concentrate on adjusting the size of their herd relative to reducing input use per unit of output. Labor costs had the most impact on technical and allocative efficiency, while feed costs had the greatest impact on scale efficiency. Suggesting that producers wanting to impact their efficiency should focus on feed and labor costs.

Download or read book Gains in Productivity of Farm Labor written by Reuben William Hecht and published by . This book was released on 1950 with total page 128 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: