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Cost-Size Relationships and Traditional Farmers' Economic Behavior*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 April 2015

G. R. Soltani
G. R. Soltani*
Affiliation:
Department of Agricultural Economics, Pahlavi University, Shiraz, Iran Department of Food and Resource Economics, University of Florida, Gainesville, Florida
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Extract

The degree of peasant response to innovations and prices has been a point of controversy among development economists. Some writers suggest that cultural and institutional factors restrain appropriate production adjustments. Others maintain that peasants in traditional agriculture respond rapidly to market incentives and are fairly efficient in allocating their resources among production altneratives. The approach and kind of data employed in testing these hypotheses have, to a large extent, contributed to this controversy.

Most empirical works relate variations in output and acreage to changing prices without considering climatic conditions as a contributing factor. It should be noted that for most crops, variation in output depends mainly on climatic conditions and fixed factors such as operator's labor and other traditional inputs.

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of Agricultural and Applied Economics , Volume 8 , Issue 2 , December 1976 , pp. 151 - 156
Copyright
Copyright © Southern Agricultural Economics Association 1976

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Footnotes

*

The field work of this research was financially supported by the Agricultural Research Center, Pahlavi University, Shiraz, Iran. The reviewers' comments and suggestions are also acknowledged and appreciated.

References

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