Distortionary Agricultural Policies: Their Productivity, Location and Climate Variability Implications for South Africa During the 20th Century

Jan Greyling, Philip Pardey and Senait Senay

No 330158, Staff Papers from University of Minnesota, Department of Applied Economics

Abstract: During the first half of the 20th century, the policy stance towards South African agriculture swung from suppression to support. More recently, the agricultural support policies were eliminated. Using newly constructed, long-run (1918-2015) data concerning maize production, yield and average price, we show these switching agricultural policy regimes had significant production, productivity, and climate risk implications for the maize sector. At its peak, this policy-induced movement reduced maize productivity by between 7.9 and 15.3 percent. The removal of the distortions coincided with a contraction in the total area planted to maize, but some spatial productivity perturbations still persist.

Keywords: Agricultural and Food Policy; Crop Production/Industries (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 43
Date: 2023-01-31
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-agr, nep-dev, nep-env and nep-his
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://ageconsearch.umn.edu/record/330158/files/G ... ies_Sth%20Africa.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:umaesp:330158

DOI: 10.22004/ag.econ.330158

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Staff Papers from University of Minnesota, Department of Applied Economics Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by AgEcon Search ().