IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/taf/ragrxx/v62y2023i1p49-60.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Farm size and productivity: smallholder dairy production in Eswatini

Author

Listed:
  • Jan C. Greyling
  • Bandile Banele Mdluli
  • Beatrice Conradie

Abstract

In response to the 2015 paper by Henderson published In Journal of Agricultural Economics, this case study of dairy farmers in Eswatini, this case study of dairy farmers in Eswatini tests the explanatory power of two hypotheses to explain the inverse relationship between farm size and productivity. To this end, we fit a stochastic frontier production function with inefficiency effects. We find that dairy farmers who use hired labour are significantly less efficient than those who use own and family labour. This supports the labour market imperfections hypothesis. To test the technical efficiency hypothesis, we segment our sample into small, medium and large farmers based on the number of cows in milk. We find that small farmers are the most efficient (78.5%), followed by medium (75.9%) and large (75.1%) farmers, but the differences are not statistically significant. This supports Henderson's finding that differences in efficiency affect productivity but not enough to disqualify labour market imperfections as the principal explanation for the inverse relationship.

Suggested Citation

  • Jan C. Greyling & Bandile Banele Mdluli & Beatrice Conradie, 2023. "Farm size and productivity: smallholder dairy production in Eswatini," Agrekon, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 62(1), pages 49-60, January.
    • Handle: RePEc:taf:ragrxx:v:62:y:2023:i:1:p:49-60
    DOI: 10.1080/03031853.2023.2176896
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/03031853.2023.2176896
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1080/03031853.2023.2176896?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.

    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:ragrxx:v:62:y:2023:i:1:p:49-60. 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.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using 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/ragr20 .

    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.