Are small farms more performant than larger ones in developing countries?
Where this comes from
- Record sourced from PubMed, PMID 33036970.
- Also identified by DOI 10.1126/sciadv.abb8235 and PMC identifier 7546703.
- Licence recorded as CC BY.
- The licence permits redistribution, so the abstract is shown in full and the full text is available from the publisher.
Abstract
Meta-regressions of around 1000 cases published over the period 1997-2018 suggest that the direction of the relationship between land area and agricultural performance strongly depends on the performance indicator selected. Net value and efficiency indicators show that larger farms tend to be more performant than smallholders, while the simpler but ubiquitous gross output indicators support an inverse relationship (IR). In addition, this study also indicates a decreasing record of IR in the literature over time, regardless of the indicator used. This may be partially explained by improvements in assessment techniques but, more importantly, by agricultural structural changes. Our results invite reconsidering IR as a central assumption when formulating agricultural support in rural development policy.