Nicholas E. Rada

Resources, Policies, and Agricultural Productivity in Sub-Saharan Africa

Agricultural productivity in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) remains low and is falling farther behind other regions of the world. Although agricultural output growth in the region has accelerated since the 1990s, this has been primarily due to resource expansion rather than to higher productivity. Yet there is evidence that agricultural productivity growth has improved in some countries. Enhanced productivity is correlated with investments in agricultural research, wider adoption of new technologies, and policy reforms that have strengthened economic incentives to farmers. Many of the technological improvements have come from the Consultative Group for International Agricultural Research (CGIAR) centers. Benefits from the CGIAR in SSA are estimated to be over

Government Policy and Agricultural Productivity in Indonesia

6 for each

Policy, Technology, and Efficiency of Brazilian Agriculture

1 invested. Returns to national agricultural research are also robust, at least for large countries. But overall investment in agricultural research has remained low, and increases in research capacity will likely be necessary to significantly accelerate agricultural growth in the region. Other constraints to agricultural productivity include government policies that reduce earnings in the farm sector, the spread of the HIV/AIDS virus, and armed conflict within and between countries.

Hired‐labor demand on Chinese household farms

We focus on the agricultural productivity implications of the complex of investment, price, and research policies the Indonesian government has employed since the end of the Green Revolution. In particular, we employ a new 1985--2005 provincial panel dataset together with a stochastic output distance frontier framework to examine how government policies have affected the nations agricultural productivity, decomposing it into its technical progress and efficiency components. Governments primary contributions to technology growth have come through price and trade policies rather than public research. Most technology growth, however, appears to be due to informal technology diffusion. Copyright 2010, Oxford University Press.

Assessing Brazil’s Cerrado agricultural miracle

The Brazilian agricultural sector has been transformed from a traditional system of production with low use of modern technologies to a world agricultural leader. That transformation occurred as the country moved away from import-substitution policies—which nurtured domestic industrial development at the expense of agriculture—toward market-oriented policy reforms. These reforms included openness to foreign trade and foreign investment and the use of new technologies, which led to a new growth pattern. To evaluate that transformation, the authors use agricultural censuses spanning 1985-2006 to characterize Brazilian total factor productivity growth, decomposing that growth into technical and effi ciency changes. This report presents the fi ndings of a study that focuses on the effect of Brazil’s science and technology investments and other public policies on farm production. The fi ndings indicate that agricultural research benefi ts have been most rapidly adopted by the most effi cient farms, widening the productivity gap between these farms and average farms. That gap, however, has been narrowed through other public policies, such as rural credit and infrastructure investments, that favor average producers.

Agricultural policy and productivity: evidence from Brazilian censuses

Purpose - The present article presents a first-look into the hired-labor market in Chinese household farms using data from a national household survey conducted by the Research Center for the Rural Economy (RCRE) at Chinas Ministry of Agriculture. More specifically, the purpose of this paper is to evaluate the scale and dispersion of Chinas farm-household hired laborers among 15 commodities, and test whether market factors influence labor-hiring decisions – an expectation of a well-functioning labor market. This research contributes to the literature concerned with the labor constraints facing Chinese household farms, especially those producing seasonal commodities. Design/methodology/approach - An econometric approach is employed to assess whether Chinese farms that hire labor are responding to market factors using two repeated cross-sections (2006, 2007) of household survey data collected by the Research Center for Rural Economy at Chinas Ministry of Agriculture. Findings - The paper finds hired labor use on very small-scale farms is surprisingly prevalent, in contrast to previously published data. The regression results suggest that labor hiring by Chinese farm households, irrespective of farm size, responds strongly to market signals and resource constraints – more labor will be hired when the wage is lower, when output is higher, and among families with fewer family members available to farm work. And the response is particularly robust for wheat, rice, and maize, whose prices are predominant determinants of the food price index. Research limitations/implications - This paper is limited in its time-series dimension and data availability. Despite those limitations, the results hold implications for further understanding Chinas nascent labor market and the level to which market factors have impacted rural farm households. Originality/value - Focusing on the as-of-yet unstudied market for hired labor on Chinese household farms, the present article makes a contribution by showing that hiring of labor in Chinese agriculture is much more prevalent than previously thought. It suggests that Chinese farm-households are responding to certain labor-market factors and that the household response does not weaken as the largest farms are omitted from the model, suggesting that even small farms are heeding market signals.