Assessing the distributional impact of technical change in livestock and grains production in developing countries

This paper outlines a general framework for analysing the distributional impact of commodity and factor price changes on the welfare of disaggregate households. The impact may be decomposed into an average effect and the departures from that average. The latter departures may be attributed to interactions between the commodity price changes and differences in consumption shares, on the one hand, and interactions between factor price changes and differences in factor earnings shares, on the other hand. Differences in consumption shares across households are estimated at the quintile level, using the International Comparisons Project (ICP) database in conjunction with the Deninger Squire database on income distribution. Estimated differences in factor income shares are obtained by combining information on total factor earnings, with observations on income by quintile, and initial estimates of the factor earnings pattern by quintile. Regional price impacts of technological change are estimated using the Global Trade Analysis Project (GTAP) model of global trade. We find that, in the case of Korea, Sri Lanka and Zambia, technological change in grains benefits the poorest house- holds relatively more than a comparable improvement in livestock productivity. The opposite is true in Thailand. With the exception of the Zambia livestock sector, technical progress in either livestock or grains benefits poorer households relatively more than their wealthier counterparts. While this stems primarily from their larger food consumption share, improvements in unskilled wages also play a role

Is agricultural productivity in developing countries really shrinking? New evidence using a modified nonparametric approach

Nonparametric productivity analyses performed to date show that most developing countries are experiencing relatively rapid technical regress in agriculture. We discuss the plausibility of these results and argue that they stem from the existence of biased technical change and the definition of technology used. We reestimate the Malmquist index for a group of developing countries using a different definition of technology and find that most developing countries in our sample are experiencing positive productivity growth with technical change being the main source of this growth

Phosphorus-reducing technologies in swine production

Soil phosphorus levels have increased as swine production has become concentrated. Phosphorus-based manure management regulations for land application have been proposed by policy makers. The objective of this research was to determine benefits/costs of adopting phytase for reducing phosphorus. Results were derived using different manure storage and application systems. Although phytase was a least-cost ingredient, it became profitable when producers were constrained by land. Land requirements were 2 to 5 times greater under a phosphorus application regulation than a nitrogen application regulation

Forest resource depletion, soil dynamics, and agricultural productivity in the tropics

A two-sector dynamic model for agriculture and forestry is proposed. Agricultural yields are a function of the rate of deforestation, the forest stock, and purchased inputs. We examine the impact of changes in the social discount rate, net returns to agriculture, and direct marginal benefits of the forest stock benefits on the optimal deforestation path under the assumption of a quadratic agricultural yield function. Finally, steady-state comparative static analysis is conducted

Bridging the gap between partial and total factor productivity measures using directional distance functions

Technical dependencies as well as data constraints limit our ability to allocate inputs across sectors and hence our ability to measure sectoral productivity. We adapt a directional measure of efficiency to the measurement of sector-specific productivity that does not require allocating all inputs across sectors. Applied to the agricultural sector of a group of countries, the results show important differences in livestock and crops productivity growth. Commonly used partial factor productivity measures for livestock and crops tend to overestimate productivity growth in most developing countries while underestimating it in European countries