Seasonality, Capital Inflexibility, and the Industrialization of Animal Production

Jutta Roosen, David Hennessy and Thia Hennessy

Center for Agricultural and Rural Development (CARD) Publications from Center for Agricultural and Rural Development (CARD) at Iowa State University

Abstract: Among the prominent recognized features of the industrialization of animal production over the past half century are growth in the stock of inflexible, or use-dedicated, capital as an input in production and growth in productivity. Less recognized is a trend toward aseasonal production. We record the deseasonalization of animal production in Northern Hemisphere countries over the past 70 years. Using Irish farm-level data, we provide evidence that low seasonality favors laborsaving investments. We also suggest that (a) lower seasonality can be Granger-causally prior to increased productivity, and (b) productivity improvements can be Granger-causally prior to lower seasonality. Process (a) should be more likely earlier in the industrialization process. For U.S. dairy production, our empirical tests find some evidence that process (a) operated early in the twentieth century while process (b) operated in more recent times.

Keywords: capital intensity; dairy sector; Granger-causality; regional production systems. (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2004-12
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.card.iastate.edu/products/publications/pdf/04wp351.pdf Full Text (application/pdf)
https://www.card.iastate.edu/products/publications/synopsis/?p=565 Online Synopsis (text/html)

Related works:
Working Paper: Seasonality, capital inflexibility, and the industrialization of animal production (2004)
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:ias:cpaper:04-wp351

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Center for Agricultural and Rural Development (CARD) Publications from Center for Agricultural and Rural Development (CARD) at Iowa State University Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().