Download or read book Is There a Farm Size Productivity Relationship in African Agriculture Evidence from Rwanda written by Daniel Ayalew Ali and published by . This book was released on 2014 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Whether the negative relationship between farm size and productivity that is confirmed in a large global literature holds in Africa is of considerable policy relevance. This paper revisits this issue and examines potential causes of the inverse productivity relationship in Rwanda, where policy makers consider land fragmentation and small farm sizes to be key bottlenecks for the growth of the agricultural sector. Nationwide plot-level data from Rwanda point toward a constant returns to scale crop production function and a strong negative relationship between farm size and output per hectare as well as intensity of labor use that is robust across specifications. The inverse relationship continues to hold if profits with family labor valued at shadow wages are used, but disappears if family labor is rather valued at village-level market wage rates. These findings imply that, in Rwanda, labor market imperfections, rather than other unobserved factors, seem to be a key reason for the inverse farm-size productivity relationship.

Download or read book Is There a Farm size Productivity Relationship in African Agriculture written by Daniel Ayalew Ali and published by . This book was released on 2014 with total page 46 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Whether the negative relationship between farm size and productivity that is confirmed in a large global literature holds in Africa is of considerable policy relevance. This paper revisits this issue and examines potential causes of the inverse productivity relationship in Rwanda, where policy makers consider land fragmentation and small farm sizes to be key bottlenecks for the growth of the agricultural sector. Nationwide plot-level data from Rwanda point toward a constant returns to scale crop production function and a strong negative relationship between farm size and output per hectare as well as intensity of labor use that is robust across specifications. The inverse relationship continues to hold if profits with family labor valued at shadow wages are used, but disappears if family labor is rather valued at village-level market wage rates. These findings imply that, in Rwanda, labor market imperfections, rather than other unobserved factors, seem to be a key reason for the inverse farm-size productivity relationship.

Download or read book The relationship between farm size and efficiency in south african agriculture written by Johan Van Zyl and published by World Bank Publications. This book was released on 1995 with total page 56 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Revisiting the Farm Size Productivity Relationship Based on a Relatively Wide Range of Farm Sizes written by Milu Muyanga and published by . This book was released on 2020 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This paper revisits the inverse farm size-productivity relationship in Kenya. The study makes two contributions. First, the relationship is examined over a much wider range of farm sizes than most studies, which is particularly relevant in Africa given the recent rise of medium- and large-scale farms. Second, we test the inverse relationship hypothesis using three different measures of productivity including profits per hectare and total factor productivity, which are arguably more meaningful than standard measures of productivity such as yield or gross output per hectare. We find a U-shaped relationship between farm size and all three measures of farm productivity. The inverse relationship hypothesis holds on farms between zero and 3 hectares. The relationship between farm size and productivity is relatively flat between 3 and 5 hectares. A strong positive relationship between farm size and productivity emerges within the 5 to 70 hectare range of farm sizes. Across virtually all measures of productivity, farms between 20 and 70 hectares are found to be substantially more productive than farms under 5 hectares. When the analysis is confined to fields cultivated to maize (Kenya's main food crop) the productivity advantage of relatively large farms stems at least partially from differences in technical choice related to mechanization, which substantially reduces labor input per hectare, and from input use intensity.

Download or read book The Inverse Farm Size Productivity Relationship written by Sara Savastano and published by . This book was released on 2019 with total page 20 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The inverse farm size pro ...

Download or read book Land consolidation specialization and household diets Evidence from Rwanda written by del Prete, Davide and published by Intl Food Policy Res Inst. This book was released on with total page 43 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Despite rapid population growth, increasing land pressure and urbanization, farmers in Sub-Saharan Africa have not intensified their production in a sustainable manner and farming systems remain predominantly subsistence-oriented. Unsurprisingly, developing countries are directing large shares of their agricultural budgets to programs that actively promote crop intensification and the development of more commercially-oriented agricultural systems. Rwanda’s Crop Intensification Program (CIP), launched in 2007, is one such example. However, despite its apparent success in raising production of several priority crops, there are legitimate concerns about the food and nutrition security implications for households that are encouraged to consolidate their land, specialize in their production, and increasingly rely on markets for their food needs. Using recent household survey data and a propensity score matching difference-in-differences method, we find that participation in land consolidation activities had ambiguous consumption effects: it positively impacted on consumption of roots and tubers, but had a negative effect on meat, fish and fruits consumption and the potential availability of vitamin B12 in participants’ diets. This calls for a review of CIP implementation practices to enhance the program’s food and nutrition security outcomes, with improvements in market functioning and market access being potential starting points.

Download or read book Farm Size and Productivity written by Douglas Gollin and published by . This book was released on 2018 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "This paper considers the relationship between farm size and productivity. It begins by discussing measurement issues and conceptual issues related to agricultural productivity, including the well-documented difficulty of measuring inputs and outputs in smallholder production systems. The paper then considers the relationship between farm size and productivity, documenting patterns both across countries and within countries. Across countries, there is a weak but positive relationship between farm size and the value of agricultural output per unit of land (i.e. yield). A much stronger positive relationship holds for agricultural output per unit of labour, which is closely correlated with farm size across countries. Within countries, the relationship between farm size and yield is often negative (the widely documented 'inverse farm size-productivity relationship'). However, even within countries, there is typically a strong positive relationship between farm size and labour productivity. The paper concludes by considering the policy implications, if any, of the relationships between farm size and agricultural productivity"--Page 4.

Download or read book The Relationship between Farm Size and Efficiency in South African Agriculture written by Thirtle and published by . This book was released on 2013 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book On Farmsize tenure productivity Relationship and the Irrelevance of Nonexistence Hypothesis written by M. A. Taslim and published by . This book was released on 1988 with total page 108 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Farm Size and Productivity written by Kimberly Langedyk and published by . This book was released on 2001 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Farm Size and Productivity written by Sara Savastano and published by . This book was released on 2017 with total page 25 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This paper proposes a new interpretation of the farm size-productivity relationship. Using two rounds of the Ethiopian Rural Household Survey, and drawing on earlier work on five countries in Sub-Saharan Africa, the paper shows that the relationship between farm size and productivity is neither monotonic nor univocal. Most previous studies that tested the inverse farm size-productivity relationship used ordinary least squares estimation, therefore reporting parameter estimates at the conditional mean of productivity. By expanding these important findings to consider the entire distribution of agricultural productivity, the analysis finds sign switches across the distribution, pointing to a "direct-inverse-direct" relationship. Less productive farmers exhibit an inverted U-shape relationship between land productivity and farm size, while more productive farmers show a U-shape relationship that reverses the relationship. In both cases, the relationship points toward a threshold value of farm size; however, the threshold is a minimum for the less productive farmers and a maximum for the more productive ones. To the left of the threshold, for very small farmers, the relationship between productivity and farm size is positive; for the range of middle farm size, the relationship is negative; and to the right of the threshold, the relationship is direct (positive) again. From a policy perspective, these findings imply that efficiency-enhancing and redistributive land reform should consider farm size in the proper context of the present and potential levels of agricultural productivity. The results and their policy implications underline the relevance of the most recent efforts of the international development community to collect more reliable georeferenced data on farm size and agricultural productivity.

Download or read book The inverse relationship between farm size and productivity in rural Rwanda written by An Ansoms and published by . This book was released on 2008 with total page 34 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Essays on Farm Productivity written by Jacques C. Julien and published by . This book was released on 2020 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Agricultural productivity is critical for the development of many sub-Saharan African (SSA) countries where the farming sector plays a key role in the economy. An important issue concerns evidence of the inverse relationship between farm size and productivity in developing countries, which has been documented over many decades. Despite the accumulated evidence, this relationship, which has been attributed to a variety of factors, remains a puzzle for development economists. This dissertation provides new evidence concerning the inverse relationship (IR) hypothesis by addressing several shortcomings found in the literature and applying state-of-the-art stochastic frontier methods, such as the true random effects model (Greene, 2005a) and a random parameters stochastic frontier (RP-SPF) model (Tsionas, 2002; Greene, 2005b) to account for time-varying inefficiency and unobserved heterogeneity. This dissertation also offers novel analyses concerning agricultural productivity differences between male and female farmers in Malawi, Tanzania, and Uganda using a multiple-step methodology. The analysis focuses on productivity and efficiency gaps as well as on testing land and labor market imperfections for both groups of farmers.

Download or read book Farm Size performance Relationship written by and published by . This book was released on 2020 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The report assesses the relationship between land size and performance in the developing world. Farm and plot performance data were gathered through an exhaustive review of mostly peer-reviewed publications over the last 22 years (1997-2018) in English, French and Spanish. Following the screening of the material, a selection of 472 papers was reviewed, creating a pool of over 1100 individual observations or cases. Both specific and general agricultural economics studies using land area as explaining variable in their performance estimates were explored. Three groups of indicators (i.e. gross output, net value and efficiency) were analysed according to area size in an effort to capture global indicators of performance, beyond the too often used partial indicators (e.g. yield or gross value per area). Analyses based on farm data show that there has been a revival of interest on the question particularly on sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) agriculture, given the increased rate of specific literature publications. The review looked for evidence documenting the various possible relationships that could relate the size of an agricultural holding to its performance (i.e. direct, inverse and non-monotonic). The main explanations shaping the size-performance relationship were explored, namely: the contextual rural input market (i.e. labour, land, input, etc.) imperfections but also methodological shortcomings of the existing literature. On the one hand, inverse relationship (IR) is clearly the dominant type of interaction between cropped land area and agricultural performance using the most common performance indicator group used (gross output mainly populated by studies using yield or total value). However, the economic literature has clearly demonstrated that the use of this type of indicator of performance is generally ill-advised in assessing the farm size performance relationship. On the other hand, the less frequent but more global productivity indicator group of "efficiency" and "net values" do not report such a clear-cut relationship. As a matter of fact, cases using "efficiency" performance indicators are more likely to record a direct relationship than IR. Moreover, the emergence of non-monotonic relationships needs to be highlighted showing that the relationship may not be constant. Tests conducted on the existing material clearly associate a number of rural factor market imperfections with the prevalence of the IR. Hence, IR is more likely to be a symptom of imperfections and lack of opportunities for rural labour than an advantage of a given type of farms. In turn, methodological reasons explored also indicate that narrower ranges of farm size in a given study increase the reporting of IR, particularly in SSA and when analysing partial performance indicators. From being an established stylised "fact" in development economics, IR may not be taken for granted because of empirical complexities in accurately assessing it but also because there is evidence that such a relationship depends on the performance indicator analysed. Hence, IR may not necessarily be considered systematic, continuous, stable through time, irreversible or universal. From a broader development intervention perspective, and based on the review results, the recommended performance indicators (i.e. net value and efficiency) show that larger farms tend to be more performant than the smaller farms. However, this does not suggest the abandonment of smallholders by policy as there are both critical economic and social justifications for the direct improvement of the living conditions of a large share of the population in most of the developing world. It rather advocates a revisited and expanded development role for medium sized ones.

Download or read book The Relationship Between Farm Size and Productivity in South African Commercial Agriculture written by Godfrey Ndala Tshilumbay and published by . This book was released on 1997 with total page 90 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Heterogeneity Measurement Error and Misallocation written by Douglas Gollin and published by . This book was released on 2019 with total page 61 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Standard measures of productivity display enormous dispersion across farms in Africa. Crop yields and input intensities appear to vary greatly, seemingly in conflict with a model of efficient allocation across farms. In this paper, we present a theoretical framework for distinguishing between measurement error, unobserved heterogeneity, and potential misallocation. Using rich panel data from farms in Tanzania and Uganda, we estimate our model using a flexible specification in which we allow for several kinds of measurement error and heterogeneity. We find that measurement error and heterogeneity together account for a large fraction - as much as ninety percent -- of the dispersion in measured productivity. In contrast to some previous estimates, we suggest that the potential for efficiency gains through reallocation of land across farms and farmers may be relatively modest.

Download or read book The Role of Smallholder Farms in Food and Nutrition Security written by Sergio Gomez y Paloma and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2020-01-01 with total page 253 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This open access book discusses the current role of smallholders in connection with food security and poverty reduction in developing countries. It addresses the opportunities they enjoy, and the constraints they face, by analysing the availability, access to and utilization of production factors. Due to the relevance of smallholder farms, enhancing their production capacities and economic and social resilience could produce positive impacts on food security and nutrition at a number of levels. In addition to the role of small farmers as food suppliers, the book considers their role as consumers and their level of nutrition security. It investigates the link between agriculture and nutrition in order to better understand how agriculture affects human health and dietary patterns. Given the importance of smallholdings, strategies to increase their productivity are essential to improving food and nutrition security, as well as food diversity.