Talk:Agricultural productivity/Archives/2013

IMHO

Sentences, such as -- "To ignore the complex functions provided by a farm is thought by many to turn agricultural production into a commodity." -- require sources. Generally, this article even after some editing, suffers from a confusing style. This article needs to be rewritten by someone who knows more about the topic as well as its related facts. Bluestripe 00:07, 22 March 2007 (UTC)

IMHO

I agree with all the above plus....the whole key to agricultural productivity whether measuring current values or attempting to increase it (something every farmer is constantly striving to do) is it's level of what the article here refers to technology use. But to leave it simplistically at "technology" is not helpful at all.

In agricultural productivity (and just about every other sector of productivity) technology means 95% of the time a machine or some sort of hardware (and more and more the software to control it). And current productivity of any system is a 95% of time a function of its overall level of mechanization, sophistication of that hardware, physical size/economies of scales applied in the areas of agriculture production, irrigation, nutrient delivery, crop protection, harvest, storage, processing and transportation. There are a few processes and improved technologies that are not machine based that can improve productivity.... HYV/GMOs systems rice intensification come to mind.

In the west improved productivity is coming from what farmers and engineers are calling precision agriculture or the use of technologies like information system/computers, GPS controlled tractors, remote sensing, etc. to refine and maximize inputs, cut waste and improve sustainability. In the developing world it might simply mean the move from a ox drawn plows based on 1000s of years old designs to moldboard/disc plows or cultivators or even better simple but effective zero till seed drills. Working in international agricultural development I am amazed and appalled when the economists (who like this article think of technology very abstractly) who are in control the various donors call out for programs to improve farmers productivity but continue to simply finance research or supply programs for improved seeds, fertilizers, or build another very wasteful surface irrigation canal (wasteful at least here in the eastern gangetic plains). (UTC)

Productivity

May be the topic of agricultural productivity is too broad. From an economic perspective the approach to measuring productivity of the article is fine, though may be not as clear as it could... and clearly non technical. Talking about productivity is talking about total factor productivity and the article does that.

We can also be talking about history of technology trying to map from introduction of techniques, machinery, etc... to increases of agricultural output but that is a whole new article, partially orthogonal to what it is done here.

I agree that the article can be very much improved

Structure of the article

I would suggest to change a little bit the structure of the article to be more organized and thorough... may be each section could be covered by anyone that had proficiency on that particular field. I throw a tentative partial structure o some topics I would find interesting:

1. Measuring productivity in agriculture. Here we could cover different ways of measuring productivity and the methodological problems.

2. Agriculture productivity and economic growth and development. Covering the role of productivity increases on development, growth, structural change (industrialization), poverty/wealth of nations...

3. Sources of productivity increase. The role of technology and institutions on the productivity increases.

4. Agricultural productivity and the environment.

Potential refs

From [1], which I removed because it was mostly just a dump of redundant info without concern for the current information already in the article: --Ronz (talk) 17:03, 21 November 2011 (UTC)

• Dharmasiri, L.M. (2011), “Measuring Agricultural Productivity Using Average Productivity Index (API)” Sri Lanka Journal of Advanced Social Studies, Publication of the NCAS, Sri Lanka.
• Shafi, M. (1984), Agricultural Productivity and Regional Imbalances, Concept publishing company, New Delhi.

My opinion

This article (in its current state) is weird. It looks like someone pushing an issue or their own advice or something. I can't explain it. Looks a little bit like an essay on agriculture in general. But the only information i think we need to keep from it which regards agricultural productivity is:

for economists: agricultural productivity is measuring production of an agricultural good + estimating its value on the market, which = an indication of its profit-making potential.

for farmers: the term agricultural productivity means first the ability (for themselves or their community) to survive on the agricultural goods they produce. [perhaps list here the agricultural products mentioned in the article which the community can use, e.g. food (crops, dairy & meat), hides, manure, etc]

the part about it being a better idea to produce a variety of products instead of just specialising in one product (eg crops) is interesting information, but i'm not sure it belongs here. Any ideas on how to incorporate it into this article, or perhaps another one? KZF 14:20, 29 December 2006 (UTC)

Suggested Modifications

1. The Graph on the right doesn't label the vertical axis - I don't know what it means. Is it tonnes of wheat per U.S. resident? Tonnes of wheat per U.S. farmer? Per dollar spent on inputs? World population? World farmers?

2. Present information on several factors:

• Total production
• Total production over how much airable land
• Total production given population changes
• Total production vs. GDP
• Total production per unit of expense
• Total production per cost of invested capital
• Total production per farmer

All of these (plus more that I probably haven't thought of at the moment) provide a great way to be able to understand the changes in agricultural productivity as compared to other changes in the economy. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 66.93.172.5 (talk) 00:30, 14 September 2011 (UTC)