Land tenure and farm management efficiency: the case of paddy and cinnamon production in customary land areas of Sumatra

This study attempts to identify the impacts of land tenure institutions on the efficiency of farm management based on a case study of lowland paddy (rice) and upland cinnamon production in customary land areas of Sumatra. While the traditional joint-family ownership system is found to exist in paddy land, more individualised ownership systems are widely observed in upland areas. Yet, we found no statistical evidence that residual profit per unit of land is affected by land tenure institutions in either the lowlands or uplands, indicating that the prevailing land tenure institutions are equally conducive to efficient farm management.     

Land Tenure,Tenure Security and Farm Efficiency: Panel Evidence from the Philippines

This article tests the relationships among formalised property rights, land tenure contracts and productive efficiency in farming. Using four rounds of panel data from 230 rice farms in the Philippines, we measure the effects of land tenure arrangements on farm efficiency using a stochastic production frontier model. We test for the allocative efficiency of observed land rental markets. We also test how land tenure security affects farmers' investment decisions. Results suggest that, despite the presence of formalised titles, the rental market remains inefficient at allocating land. In contrast, the unformalised tenure contracts used by farmers appear to provide tenure security.     

FARM TENURE AND FARMING PRACTICE

The performance of wholly owned, wholly rented and mixed tenure farms in the Farm Management Survey sample for England and Wales is compared on a range of criteria, controlling farm size and type. Mixed tenure farms are found to perform noticeably better than ‘pure’ tenure types. Possible explanations for inter-tenure differences in performance are reviewed under the headings of capital provision, farmer motivation and resource mobility. Evidence from the FMS and from interviews with 48 farmers provide only weak support for hypotheses relating performance to capital endowments, the ‘spur’ of market rents or asset appreciation. Findings on changes in farm size and tenure, however, suggest that tenure could be determined by, rather than being a determinant of, farm performance.     

Market and Other Factors Affecting Farm Specific Production Efficiency in Pig Production in Vietnam

ABSTRACT

In developing country production environment, farm production efficiency is often measured in terms of on-farm resources and producer characteristics. In this paper we postulate that input and output market related factors also influence farm production decisions hence its efficiency. Stochastic frontier production function was used to assess technical efficiency and its determinants including input and output market variables for a sample of 1962 pig farms in Vietnam with data collected in 1999. There are significant differences in production behavior and efficiency level between the North and the South, among farms producing different breeds, between mixed and specialized farms, between household and commercial farms, and among producers located in different agro-ecological regions. Access to better output market, land size, herd size, and education of household head significantly reduced inefficiency, while access to government supplied inputs, age of household head, female headed households and family supplied crude feeds significantly increased inefficiency in both the regions. The direction of influence on efficiency differs between the two regions for access to credit, proportion of output sold at market rather than at farm gate and family labor supply. Generally, market related factors had more consistent influence on production efficiency in the South of Vietnam where the experience of market economics is longer compared to the North. Policy actions on providing better extension, more timely access to better quality inputs through the private sector, making credit more easily accessible to smallholders and opportunity to sell output at better priced secondary markets are expected to increase productivity and reduce inefficiency.     

Farm productivity in Rwanda: effects of farm size,erosion, and soil conservation investments

This paper examines the effects of farm size, soil erosion, and soil conservation investments on land and labor productivity and allocative efficiency in Rwanda. There were several key results. First, there is a strong inverse relationship between farm size and land productivity, and the opposite for labor productivity. For smaller farms, there is evidence of allocative inefficiency in use of land and labor, probably due to factor market access constraints. Second, farms with greater investment in soil conservation have much better land productivity than average. Those with very eroded soils do much worse than average. Smaller farms are not more eroded than larger farms, but have twice the soil conservation investments. Third, land productivity benefits substantially from perennial cash crops, and the gains to shifting to cash crops are highest for those with low erosion and high use of fertilizer and organic matter. Program and policy effort to encourage and enable farmers to make soil conservation investments, to use fertilizer and organic matter, and to participate in cash cropping of perennials will have big payoffs in productivity. Land markets that allow smaller farmers to buy land could also increase aggregate productivity.     

Examining the relationship between farm size and productive efficiency: a Bayesian directional distance function approach

Achieving sustainable food security and increased farm income will depend on how efficient production systems are in converting available inputs to produce outputs. Using data from Malawi, we estimate a Bayesian directional technology distance function to examine the relationship between farm size and technical efficiency. Our results support the existence of an inverse relationship between farm size and productive efficiency, where small farms are more efficient than large farms. On average, farms exhibit inefficiency levels of 60%, suggesting that productivity could be improved substantially. Improving productive efficiency and food security will require farms to operate in ways where the size of cultivated area is matched by nonland production inputs such as labor, fertilizer, and improved seeds. The results highlight the need for policies that could incentivize farmers to adopt productivity‐enhancing technologies and, where possible, to allocate excess land to lease markets.     

Productivity and farm size in Australian agriculture: reinvestigating the returns to scale

A positive relationship between farm size and farm productivity is often considered to be largely due to increasing returns to scale in farm production. However, using farm‐level data for the Australian broadacre industry, we found that constant or mildly decreasing returns to scale is the more typical scenario. In this study, the marginal returns to various farm inputs are compared across farms with different sizes. We found that large farms achieved higher productivity by changing production technology rather than increasing scale alone. The results highlight the disparity between ‘returns to scale’ and ‘returns to size’ in the industry, suggesting that productivity improvement among smaller farms can be made through increasing their ability to access advanced technologies, rather than simply expanding their scale.     

Are medium‐scale farms driving agricultural transformation in sub‐Saharan Africa?

This study presents evidence of profound farm‐level transformation in parts of sub‐Saharan Africa, identifies major sources of dynamism in the sector, and proposes an updated typology of farms that reflects the evolving nature of African agriculture. Repeat waves of national survey data are used to examine changes in crop production and marketed output by farm size. Between the first and most recent surveys (generally covering 6 to 10 years), the share of national marketed crop output value accounted for by medium‐scale farms rose in Zambia from 23% to 42%, in Tanzania from 17% to 36%, and in Nigeria from 7% to 18%. The share of land under medium‐scale farms is not rising in densely populated countries such as Kenya, Uganda, and Rwanda, where land scarcity is impeding the pace of medium‐scale farm acquisitions. Medium‐scale farmers are a diverse group, reflecting distinct entry pathways into agriculture, encouraged by the rapid development of land rental, purchase, and long‐term lease markets. The rise of medium‐scale farms is affecting the region in diverse ways that are difficult to generalize. Findings indicate that these farms can be a dynamic driver of agricultural transformation but this does not reduce the importance of maintaining a clear commitment to supporting smallholder farms. Strengthening land tenure security of local rural people to maintain land rights and support productivity investments by smallholder households remains crucial.     

Are preserved farms actively engaged in agriculture and conservation?

This study addresses the question of whether farms enrolled in land preservation programs are actively engaged in agricultural or conservation activities. Data are drawn from an original survey administered to preserved farm owners in the states of New Jersey, Maryland, and Delaware in 2011. “Actively engaged” is defined as investment in conservation projects, buildings, equipment, or irrigation since the land was preserved. Affirmative answers to the survey's investment questions range from a low of 19% for irrigation to a high of 69% for equipment. Special attention was paid to differences between lifestyle farmers and small and large commercial farmers, which are classified using the USDA typology developed in 2000. Regression analysis estimates differences in investment behavior across these groups as well as farm tenure categories, controlling for farm size, program/state location, and demographic variables. Only owners who employ tenants or managers exclusively on their land were found to invest significantly less than the largest professional farmers, and they did so across all four types of investment.This study's findings support preservation goals articulated by legislators and program administrators, because (1) agricultural and land stewardship investments appear to be widespread on preserved farms, partly due to administrators’ preference for larger parcels, (2) there is no evidence that “hobby farmers” are disproportionately attracted to farmland preservation programs – in fact the opposite seems to be true – while those that exist in our sample behave similarly to the largest commercial farmers, (3) although tenant farming is associated in the sample with lower rates of investment, it is less common on preserved farms than on all farms in the three study states. The matter of land tenure, highlighted in this as in other studies, has not yet become a primary focus of either farm-behavioral research or state agricultural policy.     

Tenants’ land access in the rental market: evidence from northern Ethiopia

The purpose of this study is to investigate the allocation efficiency in the tenancy market, and thereby the potential of the market to facilitate operational farm size adjustment that can help land‐poor tenant households to transform into smallholder commercial farms. We analyzed three rounds of balanced panel data for the production seasons 2005–2006, 2009–2010, and 2014–2015 collected from 320 smallholder farms in Tigrai region in northern Ethiopia. Random effects dynamic probit and tobit models are used to assess how land‐poor tenants’ access and extent of access to land are affected by state dependency (earlier participation in the market), kinship ties, climate shocks, and legal restrictions. The results indicate that state dependency and kinship ties with the landholder had strong positive effects on participation and intensity of participation. Climate shocks significantly affected the intensity of participation of tenants already in the rental market. Tenants’ overall access to rented land had not improved from 2005–2006 to 2014–2015. The amount of land accessed by those already in the market was insufficient for them to become commercial farmers. The important policy implication is that orchestrated interventions at community level are needed to reduce transaction costs and thereby improve land access of entrepreneurial tenants.