IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ags/aaea14/169436.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Land Fragmentation with Double Bonuses -- The Case of Tanzanian Agriculture

Author

Listed:
  • Rao, Xudong

Abstract

Land fragmentation, also known as scattered land holdings, is a common phenomenon in agriculture around the world. In some cases, it has even persisted through government-supported land consolidation programs that aim to improve agricultural productivity. This study evaluates the effect of land fragmentation on agricultural production and hypothesizes that it may be beneficial to farmers by diversifying risk onto separate land plots that usually have heterogeneous growing conditions. Applying a stochastic frontier model to the Tanzania Living Standards Measurement Study (LSMS) data, we find evidence to support the risk-reduction hypothesis and indications that land fragmentation may be conducive to efficiency. This second finding may seem counter-intuitive but is also supported by similar studies. We further argue that accounting for risk preferences that are absent from current framework in future research may help explain the double bonuses of land fragmentation.

Suggested Citation

  • Rao, Xudong, 2014. "Land Fragmentation with Double Bonuses -- The Case of Tanzanian Agriculture," 2014 Annual Meeting, July 27-29, 2014, Minneapolis, Minnesota 169436, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association.
    • Handle: RePEc:ags:aaea14:169436
    DOI: 10.22004/ag.econ.169436
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://ageconsearch.umn.edu/record/169436/files/LandFragmentation_Rao_AAEA2014.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.22004/ag.econ.169436?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
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. K. Hadri & C. Guermat & J. Whittaker, 2003. "Estimating Farm Efficiency in the Presence of Double Heteroscedasticity Using Panel Data," Journal of Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 6(2), pages 255-268, November.
    2. Tan, Shuhao & Heerink, Nico & Kruseman, Gideon & Qu, Futian, 2008. "Do fragmented landholdings have higher production costs? Evidence from rice farmers in Northeastern Jiangxi province, P.R. China," China Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 19(3), pages 347-358, September.
    3. Battese, George E. & Coelli, Tim J., 1988. "Prediction of firm-level technical efficiencies with a generalized frontier production function and panel data," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 38(3), pages 387-399, July.
    4. Bellon, Mauricio R & Taylor, J Edward, 1993. ""Folk" Soil Taxonomy and the Partial Adoption of New Seed Varieties," Economic Development and Cultural Change, University of Chicago Press, vol. 41(4), pages 763-786, July.
    5. Anonymous, 1950. "Food and Agriculture Organization," International Organization, Cambridge University Press, vol. 4(1), pages 126-128, February.
    6. Deininger, Klaus & Savastano, Sara & Carletto, Calogero, 2012. "Land Fragmentation, Cropland Abandonment, and Land Market Operation in Albania," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 40(10), pages 2108-2122.
    7. Antle, John M & Crissman, Charles C, 1990. "Risk, Efficiency, and the Adoption of Modern Crop Varieties: Evidence from the Philippines," Economic Development and Cultural Change, University of Chicago Press, vol. 38(3), pages 517-537, April.
    8. Fuwa, Nobuhiko, 2000. "A Note on the Analysis of Female Headed Households in Developing Countries," MPRA Paper 23401, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    9. Federico Belotti & Silvio Daidone & Giuseppe Ilardi & Vincenzo Atella, 2013. "Stochastic frontier analysis using Stata," Stata Journal, StataCorp LP, vol. 13(4), pages 718-758, December.
    10. Anonymous, 1950. "Food and Agriculture Organization," International Organization, Cambridge University Press, vol. 4(3), pages 479-480, August.
    11. Renato Villano & Euan Fleming, 2006. "Technical Inefficiency and Production Risk in Rice Farming: Evidence from Central Luzon Philippines," Asian Economic Journal, East Asian Economic Association, vol. 20(1), pages 29-46, March.
    12. Anonymous, 1950. "Food and Agriculture Organization," International Organization, Cambridge University Press, vol. 4(4), pages 671-672, November.
    13. Kawasaki, Kentaro, 2010. "The costs and benefits of land fragmentation of rice farms in Japan," Australian Journal of Agricultural and Resource Economics, Australian Agricultural and Resource Economics Society, vol. 54(4), pages 1-18.
    14. Hadri, Kaddour, 1999. "Estimation of a Doubly Heteroscedastic Stochastic Frontier Cost Function," Journal of Business & Economic Statistics, American Statistical Association, vol. 17(3), pages 359-363, July.
    15. Pollak, Robert A. & Wales, Terence J., 1991. "The likelihood dominance criterion : A new approach to model selection," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 47(2-3), pages 227-242, February.
    16. Kumbhakar, Subal C & Ghosh, Soumendra & McGuckin, J Thomas, 1991. "A Generalized Production Frontier Approach for Estimating Determinants of Inefficiency in U.S. Dairy Farms," Journal of Business & Economic Statistics, American Statistical Association, vol. 9(3), pages 279-286, July.
    17. Jondrow, James & Knox Lovell, C. A. & Materov, Ivan S. & Schmidt, Peter, 1982. "On the estimation of technical inefficiency in the stochastic frontier production function model," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 19(2-3), pages 233-238, August.
    18. Caudill, Steven B & Ford, Jon M & Gropper, Daniel M, 1995. "Frontier Estimation and Firm-Specific Inefficiency Measures in the Presence of Heteroscedasticity," Journal of Business & Economic Statistics, American Statistical Association, vol. 13(1), pages 105-111, January.
    19. Kentaro Kawasaki, 2010. "The costs and benefits of land fragmentation of rice farms in Japan ," Australian Journal of Agricultural and Resource Economics, Australian Agricultural and Resource Economics Society, vol. 54(4), pages 509-526, October.
    20. Heston, Alan & Kumar, Dharma, 1983. "The persistence of land fragmentation in peasant agriculture: An analysis of South Asian cases," Explorations in Economic History, Elsevier, vol. 20(2), pages 199-220, April.
    21. Hung-jen Wang & Peter Schmidt, 2002. "One-Step and Two-Step Estimation of the Effects of Exogenous Variables on Technical Efficiency Levels," Journal of Productivity Analysis, Springer, vol. 18(2), pages 129-144, September.
    22. Shenggen Fan & Connie Chan‐Kang, 2005. "Is small beautiful? Farm size, productivity, and poverty in Asian agriculture," Agricultural Economics, International Association of Agricultural Economists, vol. 32(s1), pages 135-146, January.
    23. Guang Wan & Enjiang Cheng, 2001. "Effects of land fragmentation and returns to scale in the Chinese farming sector," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 33(2), pages 183-194.
    24. Aigner, Dennis & Lovell, C. A. Knox & Schmidt, Peter, 1977. "Formulation and estimation of stochastic frontier production function models," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 6(1), pages 21-37, July.
    25. Anonymous, 1950. "Food and Agriculture Organization," International Organization, Cambridge University Press, vol. 4(2), pages 313-314, May.
    26. Jabarin, Amer S. & Epplin, Francis M., 1994. "Impacts of land fragmentation on the cost of producing wheat in the rain-fed region of northern Jordan," Agricultural Economics, Blackwell, vol. 11(2-3), pages 191-196, December.
    27. Kumbhakar,Subal C. & Lovell,C. A. Knox, 2003. "Stochastic Frontier Analysis," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9780521666633, November.
    28. Soini, Eija, 2005. "Land use change patterns and livelihood dynamics on the slopes of Mt. Kilimanjaro, Tanzania," Agricultural Systems, Elsevier, vol. 85(3), pages 306-323, September.
    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. Mertens, Kewan & Vranken, Liesbet, 2018. "Investing in land to change your risk exposure? Land transactions and inequality in a landslide prone region," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 110(C), pages 437-452.
    2. Mertens, K. & Vranken, L., 2018. "Investing in land to change your risk exposure? Land transactions in a landslide prone region," 2018 Conference, July 28-August 2, 2018, Vancouver, British Columbia 277235, International Association of Agricultural Economists.
    3. Lai, Wangyang & Roe, Brian & Liu, Yumei, 2015. "Estimating the Effect of Land Fragmentation on Machinery Use and Crop Production," 2015 AAEA & WAEA Joint Annual Meeting, July 26-28, San Francisco, California 205280, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association.

    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. Shukun Wang & Dengwang Li & Tingting Li & Changquan Liu, 2021. "Land Use Transitions and Farm Performance in China: A Perspective of Land Fragmentation," Land, MDPI, vol. 10(8), pages 1-22, July.
    2. Pierre Damien Ntihinyurwa & Walter Timo de Vries, 2021. "Farmland Fragmentation, Farmland Consolidation and Food Security: Relationships, Research Lapses and Future Perspectives," Land, MDPI, vol. 10(2), pages 1-39, January.
    3. Paul, Satya & Shankar, Sriram, 2018. "Modelling Efficiency Effects in a True Fixed Effects Stochastic Frontier," MPRA Paper 87437, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    4. Daniel Ayalew Ali & Klaus Deininger & Loraine Ronchi, 2019. "Costs and Benefits of Land Fragmentation: Evidence from Rwanda," The World Bank Economic Review, World Bank, vol. 33(3), pages 750-771.
    5. Satya Paul & Sriram Shankar, 2020. "Estimating efficiency effects in a panel data stochastic frontier model," Journal of Productivity Analysis, Springer, vol. 53(2), pages 163-180, April.
    6. Efecan, Volkan & Temiz, İzzettin, 2023. "Assessing the technical efficiency of container ports based on a non-monotonic inefficiency effects model," Utilities Policy, Elsevier, vol. 81(C).
    7. Antti Saastamoinen, 2015. "Heteroscedasticity Or Production Risk? A Synthetic View," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 29(3), pages 459-478, July.
    8. Saldias, Rodrigo & von Cramon-Taubadel, Stephan, 2012. "Access to credit and the determinants of technical inefficiency among specialized small farmers in Chile," DARE Discussion Papers 1211, Georg-August University of Göttingen, Department of Agricultural Economics and Rural Development (DARE).
    9. Ntihinyurwa, Pierre Damien & de Vries, Walter Timo, 2021. "Farmland fragmentation concourse: Analysis of scenarios and research gaps," Land Use Policy, Elsevier, vol. 100(C).
    10. Paul, Satya & Shankar, Sriram, 2018. "On estimating efficiency effects in a stochastic frontier model," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 271(2), pages 769-774.
    11. Ajayi, Victor & Weyman-Jones, Tom, 2021. "State-level electricity generation efficiency: Do restructuring and regulatory institutions matter in the US?," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 104(C).
    12. Subal C. Kumbhakar & Christopher F. Parmeter & Valentin Zelenyuk, 2022. "Stochastic Frontier Analysis: Foundations and Advances I," Springer Books, in: Subhash C. Ray & Robert G. Chambers & Subal C. Kumbhakar (ed.), Handbook of Production Economics, chapter 8, pages 331-370, Springer.
    13. Jia, Lili, 2012. "Land fragmentation and off-farm labor supply in China," Studies on the Agricultural and Food Sector in Transition Economies, Leibniz Institute of Agricultural Development in Transition Economies (IAMO), volume 66, number 66.
    14. Federico Belotti & Silvio Daidone & Giuseppe Ilardi & Vincenzo Atella, 2013. "Stochastic frontier analysis using Stata," Stata Journal, StataCorp LP, vol. 13(4), pages 718-758, December.
    15. Mark Andor & Frederik Hesse, "undated". "The StoNED age: The Departure Into a New Era of Efficiency Analysis? An MC study Comparing StoNED and the "Oldies" (SFA and DEA)," Working Papers 201285, Institute of Spatial and Housing Economics, Munster Universitary.
    16. Mark Andor & Frederik Hesse, 2014. "The StoNED age: the departure into a new era of efficiency analysis? A monte carlo comparison of StoNED and the “oldies” (SFA and DEA)," Journal of Productivity Analysis, Springer, vol. 41(1), pages 85-109, February.
    17. Gralka, Sabine, 2018. "Stochastic frontier analysis in higher education: A systematic review," CEPIE Working Papers 05/18, Technische Universität Dresden, Center of Public and International Economics (CEPIE).
    18. Klaus Deininger & Daniel Monchuk & Hari K Nagarajan & Sudhir K Singh, 2017. "Does Land Fragmentation Increase the Cost of Cultivation? Evidence from India," Journal of Development Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 53(1), pages 82-98, January.
    19. Yu, Peiheng & Fennell, Shailaja & Chen, Yiyun & Liu, Hui & Xu, Lu & Pan, Jiawei & Bai, Shaoyun & Gu, Shixiang, 2022. "Positive impacts of farmland fragmentation on agricultural production efficiency in Qilu Lake watershed: Implications for appropriate scale management," Land Use Policy, Elsevier, vol. 117(C).
    20. Salem Gheit, 2022. "A Stochastic Frontier Analysis of the Human Capital Effects on the Manufacturing Industries’ Technical Efficiency in the United States," Athens Journal of Business & Economics, Athens Institute for Education and Research (ATINER), vol. 8(3), pages 215-238, July.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Agricultural and Food Policy; Crop Production/Industries; International Development; Land Economics/Use; Production Economics; Productivity Analysis; Risk and Uncertainty;
    All these keywords.

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    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:ags:aaea14:169436. 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: AgEcon Search (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/aaeaaea.html .

    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.