Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
mechanical technology. Biological and chemical technology in this context has to
be understood as the whole set of advances that increases the crop output per
unit of land area or that improves the yield of animal products per unit of feed
or per unit of breeding stock, while mechanical technology includes all changes
in the use of mechanical equipment designed to bring about larger output per
worker by increasing the land areas that can be operated per worker. It might be
clear that biological and chemical technology tends to be land-saving and increases
land productivity, whereas mechanical technology is rather labour-saving and
increases labour productivity. Given these two premises, Hayami and Ruttan
(1985)
assume in their model that a process of induced technological innovation
starts in response to a change in relative factor prices: farmers are induced to
search for technical alternatives that save the increasingly scarce factors of
production. So whenever the price of labour increases relative to the price of
land, induced innovation refers to mechanical technology; on the other hand,
whenever the price of land increases relative to the price of labour, induced
innovation refers to biological and chemical technology. If we apply this model to
urban and rural regions, we could assume that - given the fact that land is more
scarce in urban regions than in rural regions - induced processes of land saving
innovations tend to emerge in urban regions, resulting in a higher land productivity
relative to rural regions.
Hypothesis 2
Farming in regions with a relatively high share of employment in
agriculture tends to be less intensive than farming in regions with a
relatively low share of employment in agriculture.
The main idea behind this hypothesis is that economies with a relatively low
share of employment in agriculture tend to be in a further stage of economic
development with relatively high levels of both land and labour productivity. In a
narrow sense, the concept of economic development can be seen as a rise in per
capita income, accompanied by a qualitative change in the production structure
(Szirmai
1994)
. This change usually refers to an increase in the share of the
industrial and services sectors in the gross domestic product (GDP) and a decrease
in the share of the agricultural sector. In a broader concept of economic develop-
ment, social indicators, like life expectancy, literacy, education level, income
distribution, infant mortality, daily calorie intake, the number of hospital beds,
doctors and telephones, rationality, planning, an efficient institutional structure,
democracy etc. are added to the narrow concept (Szirmai
1994)
. These broad
societal changes combined with the change in sectoral employment, in which
abundant agricultural labour is pulled by the industrial and services sector, boost
productivity (Maddison
1982)
.
Hypothesis 3
Farming in LFA tends to be less intensive than farming in non-LFA.
Natural handicaps in LFA, like altitude, slopes and unfavourable soil conditions,
might hamper agricultural production. Labour productivity lags behind as these
areas are more difficult to cultivate than non-LFA and land productivity tends to be
relatively low due to unfavourable physical conditions.
