Mazās saimniecības ir produktīvākas nekā lielas saimniecības, atrod pētījumu

Researchers from the Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay (IIT Bombay) and the University of Hyderabad conducted a study and found that productivity in India’s semi-arid tropics depends less on farm size and more on access to inputs, credit and markets. The study involved analyzing data from 1975 to 2014 and examining changes in three waves over a 40-year period.

The researchers found that small farms were indeed more productive, especially in the early years (1975-84), citing more intensive family labor, more attention, and the addition of more fertilizer per unit compared to larger landowners. The 1960s have shown that smaller farms are generally more productive than large farms in terms of yield per acre. However, the new study shows that even in those early years, the productivity scale was not as tilted toward small farms as previously thought.

The results show that the inverse farm size-productivity relationship, in which productivity declines as farm size increases, was never as pronounced in the semi-arid regions of India. As agrarian distress arose in these regions, the productivity advantage of small farms was reversed in later years (2009-2014).

“Smallholders continue to play a key role in food security and rural stability, but they are increasingly vulnerable due to monocropping and high input costs. To strengthen the capacity of smallholders, there is a need to improve their access to appropriate technologies, affordable credit and reliable extension services,” says Prof. Sarthak Gaurav from Shailesh J. Mehta School of Management, IIT BOBAY and COTHOUTORE Research.

The results demonstrate that the agricultural size-productivity relationship is complex, context-dependent, and much weaker than previously thought.

The researchers relied on village-level studies from the International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT) dataset, which covers more than four decades from 1975 to 2014. According to the researchers, this database is considered

The ICRISAT data are primarily from three representative zones: Akola, Solapur and Mahabubnagar. The researchers explain that the unique agroecological and institutional conditions here make it an ideal setting to understand how productivity patterns changed in response to delayed but significant agricultural transitions.

According to the researchers, they combined household and cultivation data across all survey waves and also used external sources, including data compiled by the India Meteorological Department (IMD), to fill in gaps.

The researchers recommend prioritizing improvements in the collective capacity of smallholders to access markets and inputs. A second recommendation is to help smallholders organize into collectives or producer groups so they can pool resources, adopt agroecological practices, and negotiate better prices.