Reforms, Globalization, and Endogenous Agricultural Structures

Johan Swinnen

No 52802, 111th Seminar, June 26-27, 2009, Canterbury, UK from European Association of Agricultural Economists

Abstract: In this paper I draw lessons from two quasi-natural experiments (the transition process in former Communist countries and the rapid globalization of food chains) on the optimality of farms and agricultural structures more generally. I argue that (a) the farm structures that have emerged from the transition process are much more diverse than expected ex ante; (b) this diversity is to an important extent determined by economic mechanisms which are influenced by initial conditions (eg technology) and reform policies; (c) non-traditional farm structures have played an important role during transition since they were optimal to address the specific institutional and structural constraints imposed by the transition process; (d) there is more diversity than often argued in the farms that are integrated in global food chains; (e) endogenous institutional (contracting) innovations in food chains may lock existing farm structures in a long-run institutional framework; and (f) indicators based on farm structures are not a good measure of welfare effects of the globalization of food chains.

Keywords: Agribusiness; Agricultural and Food Policy; Community/Rural/Urban Development (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 40
Date: 2009-08-20
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-agr and nep-tra
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (18)

Downloads: (external link)
https://ageconsearch.umn.edu/record/52802/files/2.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Reforms, globalization, and endogenous agricultural structures (2009)
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:eaa111:52802

DOI: 10.22004/ag.econ.52802

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in 111th Seminar, June 26-27, 2009, Canterbury, UK from European Association of Agricultural Economists Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by AgEcon Search ().