@article {2608,
	title = {HISTORICAL REVIEW OF AGRICULTURALEFFICIENCY STUDIES},
	journal = {CAIRN Research Network},
	year = {2013},
	abstract = {Traditional growth and development theories have demonstrated how efficient allocation of\&nbsp;resources in all economies depends on economic efficiency in the agriculture sector. Historically,\&nbsp;the agriculture sector has been supplying productive resources to other sectors in the economy asits productivity and efficiency improves over time. This report takes a comprehensive and\&nbsp;historical look at the literature on agriculture efficiency from 1950 to 2011, while focusing on the\&nbsp;various methodologies used and important results relevant for agricultural policy formulation.\&nbsp;The review revealed that overtime the complexity of method used to examine agricultural\&nbsp;efficiency has increased from simple index numbers and econometric analysis to complex nonparametric\&nbsp;and parametric analysis. The overall results indicated that farms are generally\&nbsp;technically and scale inefficient. Smaller farms are less efficient than big farms because large\&nbsp;farms tend to adopt new technology faster than smaller farms due to their relative better access to\&nbsp;credit, information, and other scarce resources. Technical efficiency is related to economic\&nbsp;factors, environmental conditions, locations, size of local market, and agricultural policies.\&nbsp;However, in general, the level of farm inefficiencies have been reducing as new and better farm\&nbsp;practices have been implemented over time. Farmers{\textquoteright} education level has positive and significant\&nbsp;impact on farm level efficiency. Organic farmers on the average are more efficient than\&nbsp;conventional farmers. Most importantly, different econometric specification led to different\&nbsp;results. For policy purposes the results from the studies shed light on the importance ofimprovement in extension services and increased access to credit and other resources as critical\&nbsp;components of agricultural policy options to make farms, particularly the small ones, more\&nbsp;technically and scale efficient. The results also demonstrate the importance of implementingagricultural policies that pays attention to other farm characteristics such as location and type of\&nbsp;farms.},
	author = {Alexander Bilson Darku and Stavroula Malla and Kien C. Tran}
}
