Revisiting the Farm Size‐Productivity Relationship Based on a Relatively Wide Range of Farm Sizes: Evidence from Kenya

By M. Muyanga, T. Jayne. American Journal of Agricultural Economics, 2019

146 citations recorded by the source corpus.

This paper revisits the inverse farm size-productivity relationship in Kenya. The study makes two contributions. First, the relationship is examined over a much wider range of farm sizes than most studies, which is particularly relevant in Africa given the recent rise of medium- and large-scale farms. Second, we test the inverse relationship hypothesis using three different measures of productivity including profits per hectare and total factor productivity, which are arguably more meaningful than standard measures of productivity such as yield or gross output per hectare. We find a U-shaped relationship between farm size and all three measures of farm productivity. The inverse relationship hypothesis holds on farms between zero and 3 hectares. The relationship between farm size and productivity is relatively flat between 3 and 5 hectares. A strong positive relationship between farm size and productivity emerges within the 5 to 70 hectare range of farm sizes. Across virtually all measures of productivity, farms between 20 and 70 hectares are found to be substantially more productive than farms under 5 hectares. When the analysis is confined to fields cultivated to maize (Kenya’s main food crop) the productivity advantage of relatively large farms stems at least partially from differences in technical choice related to mechanization, which substantially reduces labor input per hectare, and from input use intensity.

Subfields: General Agricultural and Biological Sciences, Soil Science

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/82d5a78a025fece086459d01d3b77abb8de8b4ec

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In General Agricultural and Biological Sciences

1. M. Muyanga
2. T. Jayne
3. W. Anseeuw
4. Ayala Wineman
5. A. Chapoto
6. Hosaena Ghebru
7. C. Ragasa
8. A. Chapoto

In Soil Science

1. M. Muyanga
2. T. Jayne
3. Hosaena Ghebru
4. W. Anseeuw

Citations in the corpus

• Are medium‐scale farms driving agricultural transformation in sub‐Saharan Africa? (2019, background): “…(0–5 ha) vs. medium-scale (5–100 ha) farms in Kenya using relatively large samples shows a distinct advantage to medium-scale farms in three alternative measures of productivity including TFP, net value of agricultural output per hectare, and agricultural labor productivity (Muyanga & Jayne, 2019).”