WHY ARE FARMS GETTING LARGER? THE CASE OF THE U.S

James MacDonald

No 115361, 51st Annual Conference, Halle, Germany, September 28-30, 2011 from German Association of Agricultural Economists (GEWISOLA)

Abstract: Agricultural production continues to shift to larger farms in the U.S. I show that the shift is persistent over time, large, and ubiquitous across commodities. I review theories of farm size, and classify three channels for analysis: 1) scale effects, through technological economies and managerial diseconomies; 2) the roles of relative factor prices and factor shares; and 3) policy and institutions. Finally, I evaluate the empirical evidence on the forces driving structural change, distinguishing between crops and livestock because of important differences in the role of scale economies and coordination, and I offer some directions for the future.

Keywords: Agribusiness (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 48
Date: 2011
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-agr and nep-eff
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

Downloads: (external link)
https://ageconsearch.umn.edu/record/115361/files/MacDonald.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ags:gewi11:115361

DOI: 10.22004/ag.econ.115361

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in 51st Annual Conference, Halle, Germany, September 28-30, 2011 from German Association of Agricultural Economists (GEWISOLA) Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by AgEcon Search ().