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With farms cultivating tens or hundreds of thousands of hectares, Ukraine is often used to demonstrate the existence of economies of scale in modern grain production. Panel data analysis for all the country's farms with more than 200 hectares in 2001-2011 suggests that higher yields and profits are due to unobserved factors at rayon (district) and farm level rather than economies of scale. Productivity growth was driven not by farm expansion but by exit of unproductive and entry of more efficient farms. Higher initial shares of area under farms with more than 3,000 or 5,000 hectares at the rayon level significantly reduce subsequent exit, suggesting that land concentration reduces productivity growth. The paper draws implications for global evolution of farm structures.
Agricultural productivity --- Agriculture --- Crops and Crop Management Systems --- Economic Theory & Research --- Labor Policies --- Land reform --- Market structure --- Political Economy --- Rural Development --- Rural Development Knowledge & Information Systems --- Transition --- Ukraine
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This paper uses a large national household panel from 1999/2000 and 2007/08 to analyze the short-term effects of India's Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme on wages, labor supply, agricultural labor use, and productivity. The scheme prompted a 10-point wage increase and higher labor supply to nonagricultural casual work and agricultural self-employment. Program-induced drops in hired labor demand were more than outweighed by more intensive use of family labor, machinery, fertilizer, and diversification to crops with higher risk-return profiles, especially by small farmers. Although the aggregate productivity effects were modest, total employment generated by the program (but not employment in irrigation-related activities) significantly increased productivity, suggesting alleviation of liquidity constraints and implicit insurance provision rather than quality of works undertaken as a main channel for program-induced productivity effects.
Agricultural Productivity --- Economic Theory & Research --- Gender --- Labor Markets --- Labor Policies --- Macroeconomics and Economic Growth --- Poverty Reduction --- Rural Development --- Rural Poverty Reduction --- Social Protections and Labor
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Although a large literature discusses the productivity effects of land fragmentation, measurement and potential endogeneity issues are often overlooked. This paper uses several measures of fragmentation and controls for endogeneity and crop choice by looking at inherited paddy and wheat plots to show that these issues matter empirically. While crop choice can mitigate effects, fragmentation as measured by the Simpson index increases production cost and fosters substitution of labor for machinery, especially for small and medium farmers. Greater distances between fragments have a smaller effect. Creating opportunities for market-based consolidation could be one step to limit fragmentation-induced cost increases.
Agriculture --- Cost --- Crops and Crop Management Systems --- Economic Theory & Research --- Endogeneity --- Fragmentation --- Inheritance --- Labor Policies --- Land --- Macroeconomics and Economic Growth --- Production --- Rural Development --- Rural Development Knowledge and Information Systems --- Social Protections and Labor
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A large national farm panel from India covering a quarter century (1982, 1999, and 2008) is used to show that the inverse farm size-yield relationship weakened significantly over time, despite an increase in the dispersion of farm sizes. Key reasons are substitution of capital for labor in response to nonagricultural labor demand. Family labor was more efficient than hired labor in 1982-99, but not in 1999-2008. In line with labor market imperfections as a key factor, separability of labor supply and demand decisions cannot be rejected in the second period, except in villages with very low nonagricultural labor demand.
Agricultural-Productivity --- Labor Markets --- Structural Transformation for Growth
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