Should African Rural Development Strategies Depend on Smallholder Farms? An Exploration of the Inverse-Productivity Hypothesis

In Africa, most development strategies include efforts to improve the productivity of staple crops grown on smallholder farms. An underlying premise is that small farms are productive in the African context and that smallholders do not forgo economies of scale—a premise supported by the often observ...

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Main Authors:	Larson, Donald F., Otsuka, Keijiro, Matsumoto, Tomoya, Kilic, Talip
Format:	Journal Article
Language:	en_US
Published:	Wiley 2015
Subjects:	Agriculture Inverse productivity Farm size Smallholders Technology choice
Online Access:	http://hdl.handle.net/10986/21414

id	okr-10986-21414
recordtype	oai_dc
spelling	okr-10986-214142021-04-23T14:04:02Z Should African Rural Development Strategies Depend on Smallholder Farms? An Exploration of the Inverse-Productivity Hypothesis Larson, Donald F. Otsuka, Keijiro Matsumoto, Tomoya Kilic, Talip Agriculture Inverse productivity Farm size Smallholders Technology choice In Africa, most development strategies include efforts to improve the productivity of staple crops grown on smallholder farms. An underlying premise is that small farms are productive in the African context and that smallholders do not forgo economies of scale—a premise supported by the often observed phenomenon that staple cereal yields decline as the scale of production increases. This article explores a research design conundrum that encourages researchers who study the relationship between productivity and scale to use surveys with a narrow geographic reach in order to produce more reliable results, even though results are better suited for policy decisions when they are based on data that are broadly representative. Using a model of endogenous technology choice, we explore the relationship between maize yields and scale using alternative data. Since rich descriptions of the decision environments that farmers face are needed to identify the applied technologies that generate the data, improvements in the location specificity of the data should reduce the likelihood of identification errors and biased estimates. However, our analysis finds that the inverse-productivity hypothesis holds up well across a broad platform of data, despite obvious shortcomings with some components. It also finds surprising consistency in the estimated scale elasticities. 2015-02-05T23:28:21Z 2015-02-05T23:28:21Z 2013-09-03 Journal Article Agricultural Economics http://hdl.handle.net/10986/21414 en_US Attribution for non-commercial purposes in accordance with Wiley Terms of Conditions http://olabout.wiley.com/WileyCDA/Section/id-817011.html World Bank Wiley Publications & Research Publications & Research :: Journal Article Sub-Saharan Africa
repository_type	Digital Repository
institution_category	Foreign Institution
institution	Digital Repositories
building	World Bank Open Knowledge Repository
collection	World Bank
language	en_US
topic	Agriculture Inverse productivity Farm size Smallholders Technology choice
spellingShingle	Agriculture Inverse productivity Farm size Smallholders Technology choice Larson, Donald F. Otsuka, Keijiro Matsumoto, Tomoya Kilic, Talip Should African Rural Development Strategies Depend on Smallholder Farms? An Exploration of the Inverse-Productivity Hypothesis
geographic_facet	Sub-Saharan Africa
description	In Africa, most development strategies include efforts to improve the productivity of staple crops grown on smallholder farms. An underlying premise is that small farms are productive in the African context and that smallholders do not forgo economies of scale—a premise supported by the often observed phenomenon that staple cereal yields decline as the scale of production increases. This article explores a research design conundrum that encourages researchers who study the relationship between productivity and scale to use surveys with a narrow geographic reach in order to produce more reliable results, even though results are better suited for policy decisions when they are based on data that are broadly representative. Using a model of endogenous technology choice, we explore the relationship between maize yields and scale using alternative data. Since rich descriptions of the decision environments that farmers face are needed to identify the applied technologies that generate the data, improvements in the location specificity of the data should reduce the likelihood of identification errors and biased estimates. However, our analysis finds that the inverse-productivity hypothesis holds up well across a broad platform of data, despite obvious shortcomings with some components. It also finds surprising consistency in the estimated scale elasticities.
format	Journal Article
author	Larson, Donald F. Otsuka, Keijiro Matsumoto, Tomoya Kilic, Talip
author_facet	Larson, Donald F. Otsuka, Keijiro Matsumoto, Tomoya Kilic, Talip
author_sort	Larson, Donald F.
title	Should African Rural Development Strategies Depend on Smallholder Farms? An Exploration of the Inverse-Productivity Hypothesis
title_short	Should African Rural Development Strategies Depend on Smallholder Farms? An Exploration of the Inverse-Productivity Hypothesis
title_full	Should African Rural Development Strategies Depend on Smallholder Farms? An Exploration of the Inverse-Productivity Hypothesis
title_fullStr	Should African Rural Development Strategies Depend on Smallholder Farms? An Exploration of the Inverse-Productivity Hypothesis
title_full_unstemmed	Should African Rural Development Strategies Depend on Smallholder Farms? An Exploration of the Inverse-Productivity Hypothesis
title_sort	should african rural development strategies depend on smallholder farms? an exploration of the inverse-productivity hypothesis
publisher	Wiley
publishDate	2015
url	http://hdl.handle.net/10986/21414
_version_	1764448193798471680

Should African Rural Development Strategies Depend on Smallholder Farms? An Exploration of the Inverse-Productivity Hypothesis

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