Greenhouse farming and employment: Evidence from Ecuador

Henry Stemmler and Eva-Marie Meemken

Food Policy, 2023, vol. 117, issue C

Abstract: The transforming agri-food sector is an important contributor to employment generation in rural areas of lower-income countries. However, little attention has been paid to the question of how technology affects the quality and quantity of employment in the sector. In this paper, we provide the first empirical evidence of how the rise in greenhouse farming changes labor demand (i.e., the number of employees), using large-scale and nationally representative agricultural survey data from Ecuador between 2014 and 2021 and pseudo-panel as well as event-study estimation techniques. Contrary to fears that more technologically advanced production methods displace large shares of the workforce, we find that greenhouse farming is associated with higher labor demand. Specifically, greenhouse farms hire more female workers and workers on permanent contracts.

Keywords: Greenhouse farming; Technology; Employment; Labor demand; Labor composition (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J21 J23 J43 Q1 Q10 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0306919223000416
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

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:eee:jfpoli:v:117:y:2023:i:c:s0306919223000416

DOI: 10.1016/j.foodpol.2023.102443

Access Statistics for this article

Food Policy is currently edited by J. Kydd

More articles in Food Policy from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().