Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
UK. The results in this table reveal that agricultural employment has a positive
effect on the agricultural output in almost every country (for Portugal this variable
does not have statistical significance). The productivity of the labor force has a
positive effect in Spain and a negative influence in France and Portugal.
In Table 5.2 the results suggest that the agricultural output is, also, influenced by
the rural population (% of total population) in Spain, by the exports of goods and
services (% of GDP) in France and Ireland, fossil fuel energy consumption (% of
total) in Italy, and GDP per capita (current US$) in the UK.
The problems related with the lack of independent variables remain for Italy.
Maybe, in future studies it will be possible to test other variables, not considered in
this study.
Conclusions
A previous review of literature revealed that there are many determinants for
agricultural output with diverse sources, namely, economic, social, environ-
mental, and biological. Considering the importance of farming for the eco-
nomic performance of countries, this original study is an important
contribution towards the understanding of agricultural economic determi-
nants in some of the European Union countries, namely those with greater
dimension and those that had financial help from International Institutions,
such as Portugal, Ireland, and Greece.
The data analysis reveals that the economic problems of countries such as
Portugal and Greece have lasted for some time. For example, Portugal has
suffered some difficulties in agricultural productivity, through the excess in
farming employment, compared to other European countries, and in the
number of people in urban agglomerations compared to rural areas. On the
other hand, Portugal has more forest area and less pollutant emissions,
namely from the agricultural sector. Both, Portugal and Greece, suffered
problems derived from inflation and interest rates for lending.
Sometimes, it is difficult to understand how these differing countries can
have the same economic rules and similar common policies, without other
instruments of control. Maybe, it will be possible to find somewhere in time, a
common steady state, after several mechanisms for catching up, but until now
this continues to be difficult to discover how.
The econometric results show that the original Cobb-Douglas model,
namely in agricultural productivity and employment, explains the near total-
ity of the evolution for farming output in the several countries considered.
Only the models associated with Spain, France, Ireland, Italy, and the UK
needed to be complemented with some economic, social, and environmental
variables.
There are yet some questions that need more specific analysis, which may
prove to be an interesting opportunity for future research, namely in trying to
(continued)
 
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