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Measuring Productivity Change in U.S. Agriculture*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 September 2016

Yao-Chi Lu
Yao-Chi Lu*
Affiliation:
National Economic Analysis Division, ERS, USDA, Oklahoma State University
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Extract

To understand the sources of change in productivity, that appropriate public policy and programs can be developed to increase productivity growth, a reliable and updated measure is needed. The term “productivity” discussed here refers to total factor productivity, or the ratio of value of total agricultural output to that of all inputs used in agricultural production.

The first comprehensive work on the measurement of productivity change in U.S. agriculture was done by Loomis and Barton in 1961. Since then, this index has been updated annually as an offical USDA agricultural productivity index. The weakness of using index numbers lies in the arithmetic formula used. It implies a specific functional form of the production function that may not accurately describe the data. Thus, a need arises to consider an alternative estimate of productivity.

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of Agricultural and Applied Economics , Volume 7 , Issue 2 , December 1975 , pp. 69 - 75
Copyright
Copyright © Southern Agricultural Economics Association 1975

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Footnotes

*

The author wishes to express his appreciation to Drs. Richard Just and Evan Drummond for helpful comments. Thanks are also due to Mr. Don Durost for his assistance in collecting data used in this study. Alternative measurements of agricultural productivity presented in this paper were made by the author as a part of an ERS — Oklahoma State University cooperative research project to project technological change in U.S. agriculture and are not offical USDA measures. The USDA is testing alternative methods including those reported in this paper in its ongoing program of measuring productivity in U.S. agriculture.

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