Is There a Farm-Size Productivity Relationship in African Agriculture? Evidence from Rwanda

Ali, Daniel Ayalew ; Deininger, Klaus

World Bank, Washington, DC

关键词: ADVERSE EFFECTS;    AGRICULTURAL DEVELOPMENT;    AGRICULTURAL ECONOMICS;    AGRICULTURAL GROWTH;    AGRICULTURAL LAND;   

DOI  :  10.1596/1813-9450-6770
RP-ID  :  WPS6770

学科分类：社会科学、人文和艺术（综合）

来源: World Bank Open Knowledge Repository

【 摘 要 】

Whether the negative relationshipbetween farm size and productivity that is confirmed in alarge global literature holds in Africa is of considerablepolicy relevance. This paper revisits this issue andexamines potential causes of the inverse productivityrelationship in Rwanda, where policy makers consider landfragmentation and small farm sizes to be key bottlenecks forthe growth of the agricultural sector. Nationwide plot-leveldata from Rwanda point toward a constant returns to scalecrop production function and a strong negative relationshipbetween farm size and output per hectare as well asintensity of labor use that is robust across specifications.The inverse relationship continues to hold if profits withfamily labor valued at shadow wages are used, but disappearsif family labor is rather valued at village-level marketwage rates. These findings imply that, in Rwanda, labormarket imperfections, rather than other unobserved factors,seem to be a key reason for the inverse farm-sizeproductivity relationship.