Labor constraints on choosing profitable products for part-time farmers in Swiss agriculture

Laure Latruffe () and Stefan Mann ()

No 200803, Working Papers SMART - LERECO from INRA UMR SMART

Abstract: Based on a conceptual framework, we develop the hypothesis that part-time farmers invest in less profitable products than full-time farms, due to the necessary minimum labour requirements which entering and running profitable production processes require. Descriptive statistics for Swiss farms show some indications for this hypothesis, like a much lower total revenue and lower agricultural income of part-time farms, despite a comparable value of the farm’s assets. A regression analysis for the period 1996-2005 confirms that Swiss part-time farms tend to focus on products with low labour profitability. This may explain why part-time farming in Switzerland is less developed than in most other European countries, and raises the question whether part-time farming offers a solution for structural change process in small-structured agricultural systems affected by imperfections on factor markets.

Keywords: farms; part-time; profitability; Switzerland (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q12 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2008
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations Track citations by RSS feed

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.rennes.inra.fr/smart/Media/Working-papers/WP08-03 (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: http://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:rae:wpaper:200803

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Papers SMART - LERECO from INRA UMR SMART
Contact information at EDIRC.
Series data maintained by Anne Chauvel ().