Predator or prey? Effects of farm growth on neighbouring farms

Franziska Appel and Alfons Balmann

EconStor Open Access Articles and Book Chapters, 2023, vol. 74, issue 1, 214-236

Abstract: We provide explorative insights on how farms which manage strong and successful growth affect farms in their neighbourhoods through spatial competition for land. The study is based on an exploratory analysis of repeated framed experiments within the business game FarmAgriPoliS (Appel & Balmann, Ecological Complexity, 40, 2019). In particular, we analyse the spatial influences of different behavioural clusters of farm managers. Our analysis finds that farms which manage strong growth substantially affect the development of farms in a spatial neighbourhood of some 10 km. Although the influence on the neighbourhood decreases with distance, the functional correlations of farm growth as well as exits are neither linear nor exponential, but eventually rather wave-like. We further discuss the spatial interdependence of farms and the related overlaps of the predator–prey phenomenon with the phenomena of farms' path dependency and agricultural structural change. We conclude that along with farmers' strategies and their abilities, the characteristics of their neighbours and the distances between neighbouring farms also determine who is ‘predator’ and who is ‘prey’.

Keywords: agent-based participatory experiments; behavioural experiments; business management game; farm growth; farm size; Germany; path dependency; spatial interaction; structural change (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C15 C99 D22 Q12 Q15 Q24 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:zbw:espost:268298

DOI: 10.1111/1477-9552.12503

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