Antipodean agricultural and resource economics at 60: agricultural adjustment

Abstract

Over the last 60 years, Australian and New Zealand agricultural economists have promoted a better understanding of agricultural adjustment pressures and opportunities among farmers and policy makers. They have emphasised that adjustment pressures faced by farmers are linked to economy-wide growth processes and that adjustment problems have been aggravated by past government policies, including closer settlement and measures distorting markets for agricultural outputs and inputs. Economists who argued that provision of adjustment assistance would be preferable to price support policies helped to change the focus of agricultural policy toward facilitating adjustment. When rural adjustment schemes were established in the early 1970s, the case for them was made largely in terms of impediments to efficient adjustment in capital and labour markets. However, the schemes involved elements of 'government failure', especially concessional interest rates. Over the following decades, as economists became increasingly sceptical about market failure rationales, adjustment assistance schemes gradually became decreasingly important. Nevertheless, there is ongoing support for the view that adjustment assistance can sometimes enable less efficient and less equitable polices to be avoided.

Antipodean agricultural and resource economics at 60: Trends in topics, authorship and collaboration

“…On the other hand, papers focusing on cropping were relatively stable in number until the 2000s, when there is an apparently temporary increase. Examining the specific topics of the relevant papers, much of the increase was due to papers related to the ‘bio‐revolution’ (Bates and Edwards ), including genetically modified crops.…”

Antipodean agricultural and resource economics at 60: national and global price‐ and trade‐distorting policies

“…Yet the evidence summarised above shows much reform has been possible during the past three decades, contradicting the view of some that natural resource abundance (including a comparative advantage in agriculture) is a curse rather than a blessing (Anderson 1998‐S4). Even where that reform was accompanied by generous adjustment assistance, such support was time‐bound (Edwards and Bates ). With luck, the emergence of new, lower‐cost social protection mechanisms involving conditional cash e‐transfers might edge governments one more step away from the use of beggar‐thy‐neighbour price‐ and trade‐distorting measures.…”

Comment 2 on ‘Agricultural Adjustment’ by Edwards and Bates

“…A contention in this Comment is that agricultural economists have had more influence than Bates and Edwards () seem to admit. Also, it seems reasonable to take a broader view of adjustment than just adjustment policy as there have been many changes in Australian agriculture, analysed and debated by agricultural economists, that have impacted on the ways in which adjustment has occurred.…”