Colin Thirtle

The Impact of Research-Led Agricultural Productivity Growth on Poverty Reduction in Africa, Asia and Latin America

Twenty percent of the world population, or 1.2 billion live on less than

Agricultural Productivity Growth and Poverty Alleviation

1 per day; 70% of these are rural and 90% in Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa. Research led technological change in agriculture generates sufficient productivity growth to give high rates of return in Africa and Asia and has a substantial impact on poverty, currently reducing this number by 27 million per annum, whereas productivity growth in industry and services has no impact. The per capital cost of poverty reduction by means of agricultural research expenditures in Africa is

Can GM-technologies help the poor? The impact of Bt cotton in Makhathini Flats, KwaZulu-Natal

144 and in Asia

TOTAL FACTOR PRODUCTIVITY AND THE EFFECTS OF R&D IN AFRICAN AGRICULTURE

180, or 50 cents per day, but this is covered by output growth. By contrast, the per capita cost for the richer countries of Latin America is over

Multi-Factor Agricultural Productivity, Efficiency and Convergence in Botswana, 1981-1996

11,000.

Total factor productivity in South African agriculture, 1947‐91

How important is agricultural growth to poverty reduction? This article first sets out the theoretical reasons for expecting agricultural growth to reduce poverty. Several plausible and strong arguments apply - including the creation of jobs on the land, linkages from farming to the rest of the rural economy, and a decline in the real cost of food for the whole economy - but the degree of impact is in all cases qualified by particular circumstances. Hence, the article deploys a cross-country estimation of the links between agricultural yield per unit area and measures of poverty. This produces strong confirmation of the hypothesised linkages. It is unlikely that there are many other development interventions capable of reducing the numbers in poverty so effectively.

Induced Innovation in United States Agriculture, 1880–1990: Time Series Tests and an Error Correction Model

Abstract The results of a two-year survey of smallholders in Makhathini Flats, KwaZulu-Natal show that farmers who adopted Bt cotton in 1999–2000 benefited according to all the measures used. Higher yields and lower chemical costs outweighed higher seed costs, giving higher gross margins. These measures showed negative benefits in 1998–99, which conflicts with continued adoption, but stochastic efficiency frontier estimation, which takes account of the labor saved, showed that adopters averaged 88% efficiency, as compared with 66% for the nonadopters. In 1999–2000, when late rains lowered yields, the gap widened to 74% for adopters and 48% for nonadopters.

Agricultural R&D, technology and productivity

This paper calculates multilateral Malmquist indices of total factor productivity (TFP) for agriculture in 47 African countries, for the period 1961-91. The average rate of TFP growth was found to be 1.27 per cent, which is higher than expected, given the pessimistic nature of much of the literature. There is some evidence of convergence in productivity levels, as the countries with low starting levels grew more rapidly. Population pressure on the land also appears to be a major explanation of faster growth, as has been suggested by Boserup and by Hayami and Ruttans induced innovation hypothesis. However, fitting deterministic and stochastic frontier models shows that the effect of agricultural R&D on TFP growth is also positive and significant.

TECHNOLOGICAL CHANGE AND THE PRODUCTIVITY SLOWDOWN IN FIELD CROPS: UNITED STATES, 1939-78

Abstract This paper applies the sequential Malmquist index to calculate multi-lateral, multi-factor productivity (MFP) indices for agriculture in the 18 districts and the commercial sector of Botswana from 1981 to 1996. The MFP index grew at an average rate of 1.7% per annum, led by the regions that specialize in livestock, which grew at well over 3% per annum. This growth was powered by technological change at 4% per year, but offset by technical efficiency falling at 2.4% per annum, as the commercial sector and the better regions exploited new technologies and infrastructure, whereas the less productive areas fell further behind the best practice frontier. Thus, convergence tests show that the gap between the more productive and the poorer regions widened.

Productivity Growth and Convergence in Asian and African Agriculture

Indices of total factor productivity (TFP) measure aggregate output per unit of aggregate input, providing a guide to the efficiency of agricultural production. This article outlines the relationship between production functions and TFP indices. Then, an index is constructed for South African agriculture for the period 1947‐91. The index shows that TFP grew at an average rate of 1,3 per cent per annum. However, TFP growth has increased since the reforms of the early 1980s. Since capital has been more realistically priced relative to labour, greater productivity growth has gone together with increasing employment, which must have improved social welfare.