Productivity Growth and Convergence in Crop, Ruminant and Non-Ruminant Production: Measurement and Forecasts

By C. Ludeña, Thomas W. Hertel, Paul V. Preckel, K. Foster, A. N. Pratt. GTAP Working Paper, 2006

167 citations recorded by the source corpus.

There is considerable interest in projections of future productivity growth in agriculture. Whether one is interested in the outlook for global commodity markets, future patterns of international trade, or the interactions between land use, deforestation and ecological diversity, the rate of productivity growth in agriculture is an essential input. Yet solid projections for this variable have proven elusive – particularly on a global basis. This is due, in no small part, to the difficulty in measuring historical productivity growth. The purpose of this paper is to report the latest time series evidence on total factor productivity growth for crops, ruminants and non-ruminant livestock, on a global basis. We then follow with tests for convergence amongst regions, providing forecasts for farm productivity growth to the year 2040. The results suggest that most regions in the sample are likely to experience larger productivity gains in livestock than in crops. Within livestock, the non-ruminant sector is expected to continue to be more dynamic than the ruminant sector. Given the rapid rates of productivity growth observed recently, non-ruminant and crop productivity in developing countries may be converging to the productivity levels of developed countries. For ruminants, the results show that productivity levels may be diverging between developed and developing countries.

Subfields: Ecology, Economics and Econometrics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/b1d9796754c9c6a2d1786c4dc7b29e6e7d36b11f

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Citations in the corpus

Global trade and environmental impact study of the EU biofuels mandate. (2010, background): “In agriculture, we introduce country and sector specific TFP rates based on estimates from Ludena et al. (2006). It is important to note that no exogenous growth in palm tree yield is assumed due to the lack of data at our disposal.”
Global food waste across the income spectrum: Implications for food prices, production and resource use (2020, methodology): “Usually these patterns of change in adoption rates are modelled through a logistic function (Nin et al., 2004; Ludena et al., 2007; Polson and Spencer, 1991).”
Global food security in 2050: the role of agricultural productivity and climate change (2014, background): “productivity – a measure of the growth in aggregate output relative to an index of all inputs – in both the global crop and livestock sectors actually rose over the past two decades (Ludena et al. 2007; Fuglie 2012).”
Is a slowdown in agricultural productivity growth contributing to the rise in commodity prices (2008, unknown): “Recently, Ludena et al. (2007) used this method to estimate agricultural productivity growth for 116 countries, and found that average annual agricultural TFP growth increased from 0.6% to 1.29% between 1961–1980 and 1981–2000.”
An Updated Look at the Recovery of Agricultural Productivity in Sub-Saharan Africa (2009, unknown): “Growth rates”
The role of international trade in managing food security risks from climate change (2015, background): “Regional TFP growth rates for the crops and livestock sectors are based on adjusted historical estimates from Fuglie (2012) and projections from Ludena et al. (2007).”
Livestock biodiversity and sustainability (2011, background): “Research and interventions mostly focus on commercially relevant production systems, species and breeds (Ludena et al., 2007), while most local breeds are not well characterized and their adaptation to environmental stressors is not well understood.”