Manufacturing Agrarian Change - Agricultural production, inter-sectoral learning and technological capabilities

Antonio Andreoni

No 11-13, DRUID Working Papers from DRUID, Copenhagen Business School, Department of Industrial Economics and Strategy/Aalborg University, Department of Business Studies

Abstract: The aim of this paper is to investigate how industrial development, manufacturing in particular, has been contributing to agrarian change. In order to address this issue, it analyzes the technical bases and structural specificities – i.e. time and scale constraints – of agricultural production. Technical change in agriculture involves both improvements in organic transformation processes – i.e. biological production – and in the mechanical functions that have to be performed for obtaining a certain output – i.e. agricultural work. The paper shows how in-farm technological capabilities building as well as inter-sectoral learning are necessary in order to acquire and adapt biological-chemical innovations and mechanical technologies. The analysis of agrarian technical change – both in-farm learning and inter-sectoral learning – is developed by integrating peasant studies with evolutionary approaches to economic development. The relationship between agrarian change and manufacturing development is highly context specific, thus comparative historical analysis is adopted in order to shed light on the abovementioned processes of learning. Building on the analysis of technological change in agriculture, the last part of the paper will focus on those transformative policies such as innovative ‘extension services’ which facilitate inter-sectoral learning and, in turn, allow the emergence of inter-sectoral commons. This concept identifies that specific bundle of technological capabilities which concentrate in certain areas of strong inter-sectoral interdependence as a result of inter-sectoral learning.

JEL-codes: O31 O33 Q12 Q16 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2011
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-agr
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)

Downloads: (external link)
https://wp.druid.dk/wp/20110013.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:aal:abbswp:11-13

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in DRUID Working Papers from DRUID, Copenhagen Business School, Department of Industrial Economics and Strategy/Aalborg University, Department of Business Studies
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Keld Laursen ().