IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/taf/deveza/v24y2007i2p309-333.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Agricultural efficiency and welfare in South Africa

Author

Listed:
  • Kalie Pauw
  • Scott Mcdonald
  • Cecilia Punt

Abstract

Agricultural and food commodity price declines associated with domestic and international agricultural efficiency gains can have important welfare effects for a country. While food price reductions benefit low-income consumers in particular, they may also cause declines in agricultural employment, leading to some resistance to technological change as a policy goal. The simulations reported here use a South African Computable General Equilibrium model with highly disaggregated food and agricultural sectors to illustrate the various effects of such agricultural efficiency gains. The results suggest that technological advances in agriculture should not be resisted because of their negative impact on agricultural employment; the welfare gains from declining prices are too important, while employment gains in other (growing) sectors are likely to outweigh the loss of agricultural employment. In the face of increasing international efficiency South African agriculture should be encouraged to respond by also increasing its efficiency, despite the negative consequences for employment in the industry, as a failure to do so may be even more detrimental to the poor in terms of overall employment.

Suggested Citation

  • Kalie Pauw & Scott Mcdonald & Cecilia Punt, 2007. "Agricultural efficiency and welfare in South Africa," Development Southern Africa, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 24(2), pages 309-333.
    • Handle: RePEc:taf:deveza:v:24:y:2007:i:2:p:309-333
    DOI: 10.1080/03768350701327236
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/03768350701327236
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1080/03768350701327236?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Özler, Berk, 2007. "Not Separate, Not Equal: Poverty and Inequality in Post-apartheid South Africa," Economic Development and Cultural Change, University of Chicago Press, vol. 55(3), pages 487-529, April.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Carlos Pestana Barros & Emanuel Reis Leão & Nkanga Pedro João Macanda & Zorro Mendes, 2016. "A Bayesian Efficiency Analysis of Angolan Banks," South African Journal of Economics, Economic Society of South Africa, vol. 84(3), pages 484-498, September.
    2. Lin, Yu-Hui & Chen, Dickens & Chang, Ching-Cheng & Hsu, Shih-Hsun, 2010. "The Impacts of Direct Tax Reform on Taiwan's Economy-A Computable General Equilibrium Analysis," Conference papers 332029, Purdue University, Center for Global Trade Analysis, Global Trade Analysis Project.
    3. Becerra-Perez, Luis & Lopez-Reyes, Luis, 2017. "Technical efficiency of corn production in Sinaloa, Mexico," Conference papers 332904, Purdue University, Center for Global Trade Analysis, Global Trade Analysis Project.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Murray Leibbrandt & James Levinsohn, 2014. "Fifteen Years On: Household Incomes in South Africa," NBER Chapters, in: African Successes, Volume I: Government and Institutions, pages 333-355, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    2. Carlos Gradín, 2013. "Race, Poverty and Deprivation in South Africa," Journal of African Economies, Centre for the Study of African Economies, vol. 22(2), pages 187-238, March.
    3. Marisa Fintel & Asmus Zoch & Servaas Berg, 2017. "The Dynamics of Child Poverty in South Africa Between 2008 and 2012," Child Indicators Research, Springer;The International Society of Child Indicators (ISCI), vol. 10(4), pages 945-969, December.
    4. Florent Dubois & Christophe Muller, 2020. "The Contribution of Residential Segregation to Racial Income Gaps: Evidence from South Africa," AMSE Working Papers 2029, Aix-Marseille School of Economics, France.
    5. Dorrit Posel & Michael Rogan, 2016. "Measured as Poor versus Feeling Poor: Comparing Money-metric and Subjective Poverty Rates in South Africa," Journal of Human Development and Capabilities, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 17(1), pages 55-73, February.
    6. Ronelle Burger & Servaas Berg & Sarel Walt & Derek Yu, 2017. "The Long Walk: Considering the Enduring Spatial and Racial Dimensions of Deprivation Two Decades After the Fall of Apartheid," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 130(3), pages 1101-1123, February.
    7. Fiona Tregenna, 2012. "What are the distributional implications of halving poverty in South Africa when growth alone is not enough?," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 44(20), pages 2577-2596, July.
    8. Oyvat, Cem, 2016. "Agrarian Structures, Urbanization, and Inequality," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 83(C), pages 207-230.
    9. Tregenna, F., 2009. "The Relationship Between Unemployment and Earnings Inequality in South Africa," Cambridge Working Papers in Economics 0907, Faculty of Economics, University of Cambridge.
    10. Nicola Branson, 2009. "Re-weighting the OHS and LFS National household Survey Data to create a consistent series over time: A Cross Entropy Estimation Approach," SALDRU Working Papers 38, Southern Africa Labour and Development Research Unit, University of Cape Town.
    11. Thurlow, James, 2006. "Has trade liberalization in South Africa affected men and women differently?," DSGD discussion papers 36, International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI).
    12. Kaus, Wolfhard, 2013. "Conspicuous consumption and “race”: Evidence from South Africa," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 100(1), pages 63-73.
    13. Sheona Shackleton & Marty Luckert, 2015. "Changing Livelihoods and Landscapes in the Rural Eastern Cape, South Africa: Past Influences and Future Trajectories," Land, MDPI, vol. 4(4), pages 1-30, November.
    14. Zack Zimbalist, 2017. "Breaking down rural and urban bias and interrogating spatial inequality, evidence from South Africa," Development Policy Review, Overseas Development Institute, vol. 35, pages 246-269, October.
    15. Hassine, Nadia Belhaj, 2015. "Economic Inequality in the Arab Region," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 66(C), pages 532-556.
    16. Carlos Gradin, 2015. "Poverty and Ethnicity among Black South Africans," The European Journal of Development Research, Palgrave Macmillan;European Association of Development Research and Training Institutes (EADI), vol. 27(5), pages 921-942, December.
    17. Marisa von Fintel & Asmus Zoch, 2015. "The dynamics of child poverty in South Africa between 2008 and 2012: An analysis using the National Income Dynamics Study," Working Papers 05/2015, Stellenbosch University, Department of Economics.
    18. Rocco ZIZZAMIA & Vimal RANCHHOD, 2020. "Earnings inequality over the life-course in South Africa," Working Paper 98ced6cc-3016-49dc-a2b6-b, Agence française de développement.
    19. Steven F. Koch & Gauthier Tshiswaka-Kashalala, 2008. "Tobacco Substitution and the Poor," Working Papers 200832, University of Pretoria, Department of Economics.
    20. Florent Dubois & Christophe Muller, 2022. "Residential segregation matters to racial income gaps: Evidence from South Africa," AMSE Working Papers 2205, Aix-Marseille School of Economics, France.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:taf:deveza:v:24:y:2007:i:2:p:309-333. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Chris Longhurst (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.tandfonline.com/CDSA20 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.