Culture and Agriculture

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From an paper via MR: 

This study shows that China’s wheat and rice regions have different cultures. China’s rice regions have several markers of East Asian culture: more holistic thought, more interdependent self-construals, and lower divorce rates. The wheat-growing north looked more culturally similar to the West, with more analytic thought, individualism, and divorce. Furthermore, Table 4 presents an instrumental variable regression instrumental variable regression showing that climatic suitability for rice significantly predicts all of the cultural variables in this study, which suggests that reverse causality is unlikely.

Unresolved questions: 

There are still unresolved questions with the rice theory. For example, studies can test whether irrigation is central to the effect of rice by comparing paddy rice with dryland rice cultures, which grow rice without irrigation. Studies can also explore how rice differences persist in the modern world, whether through values, institutions, or other mechanisms.

An obvious follow up can be to explore violence (homicies) within those cultures.  

Agricultural productivity in Argentina and Brazil

The graph is from a new paper by Mendali, Ames, & Gunter (February, 2013). The conclusions:

The agricultural sector in both Brazil and Argentina is competitive in the world market. In the early 1970s, there was little difference in both countries’ agricultural production. However, over time differences have been increasing. The annual growth rate in agriculture is much higher in Brazil than in Argentina. The results of this study shows that TFP change in Brazilian agriculture has a positive trend where as the agricultural sector in Argentina experiences a negative trend in TFP. More importantly, the change in TFP accelerated in Brazil in mid 1980s after the agricultural reform took place. However, around the same time period, agricultural TFP in Argentina started decelerating more intensely. Surprisingly, efficiency change in Argentina’s agriculture is almost stagnant over the sample period, and it was facing technical regress from mid-1980s to mid-1990s. Argentina has a very strong agricultural background with the capacity to produce many crops, most notably the ability to produce a large amount of wheat and soybeans. But the policy background of its government has been very different from that of Brazil. Argentina’s policy focuses on taxing its agricultural sector in order to subsidize other economic sectors. Argentina is sharply contrasted with Brazil by the lack of policies designed to promote agriculture and capture the growth potential of this export oriented sector.

The title of the paper is "Total Factor Productivity in Brazil’s and Argentina’s Agriculture: A Comparative Analysis." 

HT: Maximo Rossi. 

Food Price Index, 1970 - 2010

The graph is from the paper "Agriculture and development: A brief review of the literature" by Dethiera and Effenbergerb (Economic Systems, June 2012 - a 2011-draft is here). I had a post about this paper before. It seems that the most important issues to discuss regarding agriculture will be: subsidies, especially in developed countries; how to increase agricultural productivity, especially in Sub-Saharan Africa; genetically modified varieties; and institutional constraints. Tyler Cowen's recent article has had a huge resonance regarding food, agriculture, and hunger.

Agriculture and development

Tyler Cowen mentions in this podcast (about his book An Economist gets lunch) the importance of research in agriculture in developing countries. 

Research on agriculture matters because it can lead to improved productivity, which is essential to counteract the high volatility in food prices - which has happened often recently leading to social instability. 

Source of graph.

This paper published in the new number of Economic Systems (March 2102) provides an excellent review of the literature on agriculture and development. The discussion on the Green Revolution possibilities, especially for Africa, is very good as well as the discussion on the new approaches in rural development. The article also talks about the role of the government in the provision of public goods in agriculture (such as funding research and building rural infrastructure), it also emphasises the role of the private sector and possible public-private collaborations. The review of the literature is quite complete since the early developments in mid-twnetieth century to date (e. g. the work of Nobel Laureate Theodore Schultz). 

From the abstract:

It discusses in turn the role played by agriculture in the development process and the interactions between agriculture and other economic sectors; the determinants of the Green Revolution and discuss the foundations of agricultural growth; issues of income diversification by farmers; approaches to rural development; and finally issues of international trade policy and food security which are at the root of the crisis in agricultural commodity volatility in the past few years.

From page 45:

In poor countries, agricultural growth has a huge capacity to reduce poverty. Due to this potential, improving productivity in the agricultural sector in developing countries is critical and an essential step to reach the Millennium Development Goals. Some 75 percent of today‘s poor living in rural areas would benefit massively from higher incomes in agriculture. Moreover, agriculture also has the potential to generate economic growth in developing economies that depend to a large extent on this sector, for example in many Sub-Saharan African countries. But this presupposes major increases in productivity that depend on a range of factors—new technologies and their adoption; farm size and access to land; overcoming environmental challenges—for which we do not have ―silver bullet‖ solutions. The most difficult challenges are institutional and are related to market failures, missing markets and property rights.

See the full draft here (Jan 2012). 

Mali graph of the day - the good news

I am sorry to disappoint if you were expecting a graph related to the recent coup or the Tuareg occupation of the north. This is actually good news:

The graph shows the increase in agricultural production in south Mali. The performance is outstanding. Mali has gone from being "a food deficit country to a bread basket." According to a recent paper by Foltz, Aldana, and Laris (February 2012) the increase in production is due to the adoption of new seeds, but more importantly to the use of fertilizers. The graph is taken from the paper. 

Will Africa have its "green revolution"?

Mr Mushongi’s sponsors, who funded him for two years at a South African university, have a simple if ambitious aim: to follow the example of the “Green Revolution” in Asia in the 1970s, which multiplied crop yields largely through the introduction of new seed types and fertilisers. This year’s famine in east Africa, and the rising food prices on the back of the high price of oil, have heightened the urgency of the quest.

That is from this article by Alec Russell in the FT.