New Evidence Points to Robust but Uneven Productivity Growth in Global Agriculture

Abstract

This article is drawn from Productivity Growth in Agriculture: An International Perspective, edited by Fuglie, Wang, and Ball. It is a review of agricultural productivity around the world, with an analysis of prices, population, and productivity over the past 50 years. In developing and transition countries, agricultural productivity growth has been found to be strong over the past 10 years. Developed countries have also experienced robust agricultural total factor productivity growth, though it is now slowing in many countries.

Brazil's Agricultural Total Factor Productivity Growth by Farm Size

“…Over the past twenty years, Brazil has achieved one of the world's fastest agricultural total factor productivity (TFP) growth rates (Fuglie and Wang, 2012). Recent evidence also suggests that the productive efficiency of Brazil's farmers continues to improve.…”

Leveraging total factor productivity growth for sustainable and resilient farming

“…Over the past 60 years, global agricultural output grew by 2-2.5% per annum with the primary driver initially being input intensification [10,18,19]. The global shift toward TFP growth became evident in the industrialized countries in the 1970s and in developing countries, especially Brazil and China, in the 1990s and 2000s [11,20]. Agricultural TFP growth has also been associated with changes in relative resource use, as technological change has typically been "biased": labor-saving, sometimes land-saving, but also fertilizer-using and pesticide-using [21,22].…”

The Non-Linear Relation between Governance and Efficiency: Evidence from Agriculture

“…Subash and Roy (2011) focused on the impacts of good governance on small farm's system in Asia and Oceania. Fuglie and Wang (2013) showed that agricultural efficiency of developed countries was higher than developing countries. Beckmann and Boger (2004) analyzed the effects of contract enforcement in transition agriculture.…”

“…Recently, the relationship between good governance and agricultural productivity has received attention among scholars (Lio and Liu, 2008;Bayyurt and Yilmaz, 2012;Fuglie and Wang, 2013;Siudek and Zawojska, 2014 ). Kaufmann et al (2006a) improved governance indicators which are voice and accountability, political stability and violence, government effectiveness, regulatory quality, rule of law, control of corruption in order to measure quality of the governance or in other words to measure the trustability of the system.…”