¹ Comisión Económica para América Latina y el Caribe (CEPAL), 25 años en la agricultura de América Latina: Rasgos principales (1950–1975) (Santiago: CEPAL, 1978)Google Scholar is a precursor to our study as it also presents a joint vision of the Latin American agricultural sector between 1950 and 1975. The forestry sector does not form part of the study. This sector was very important in some countries and its expansion was highly coordinated with the industrialisation phases of the production process (fundamentally in the pulp and paper industry). It has different dynamics to the agricultural sector, although in cases where deforestation has taken place in order to farm new land there is a clear relationship between the two.

² TFP is the difference between the growth in production and the growth in factors of production; in other words, this measurement of productivity represents efficiency gains or better allocation of resources.

³ Until 2004 the FAO published its data in yearbooks, variously named Production Yearbook (1947–75), FAO Production Yearbook (1976–87) and FAO Yearbook. Production (1988–2004). Data from 1961 are available on FAOSTAT's webpage (http://www.fao.org/faostat/en/#home); FAOSTAT is the FAO's Corporate Statistical Database. Our results depend on the quality of the data derived from the FAO; these have been validated by recent empirical analysis: Gollin, Douglas, Lagakos, David and Waugh, Michael E., ‘Agricultural Productivity Differences across Countries’, American Economic Review, 104: 5 (2014), pp. 165–70CrossRefGoogle Scholar. The Appendix is available at doi.org/10.1017/S0022216X18001141 under the ‘Supplementary materials’ tab.

⁴ See, for example, Carlos Ludena, ‘Agricultural Productivity Growth, Efficiency Change and Technical Progress in Latin America and the Caribbean’, IDB Working Paper Series No. IDB-WP-186 (2010).

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⁷ For example, Kay, Cristóbal, ‘Rural Poverty and Development Strategies in Latin America’, Journal of Agrarian Change, 6: 4 (2006), pp. 455–508CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁸ See the per capita production growth rates for each product type in Serrano, Raúl and Pinilla, Vicente, ‘The Declining Role of Latin America in Global Agricultural Trade, 1963–2000’, Journal of Latin American Studies, 48: 1 (2016), pp. 115–46CrossRefGoogle Scholar, Table 2.

⁹ Authors’ figures, based on data from FAOSTAT.

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¹¹ It is possible to measure only those forms of capital for which there are data on an international scale and for a wide chronological horizon.

¹² Evenson, Robert E. and Gollin, Douglas (eds.), Crop Variety Improvement and its Effect on Productivity. The Impact of International Agricultural Research (Wallingford: CABI Publishing, 2002)Google Scholar. In 1970, 1980, 1990 and 1998 the averages of the utilisation in Latin America of modern crop varieties as a whole were 8, 23, 39 and 52 per cent respectively, as opposed to 13, 43, 62 and 82 per cent in Asia. See Robert E. Evenson, ‘Production Impacts of Crop Genetic Improvement’, in ibid., pp. 447–72.

¹³ Antonio F. D. Avila, Robert E. Evenson, Sanjaya de Silva and F. Afonso de Almeida, ‘Brazil’, in ibid., pp. 409–26.

¹⁴ Robert E. Evenson and Mark Rosegrant, ‘The Economic Consequences of Crop Genetic Improvement Programmes’, in ibid., pp. 473–98.

¹⁵ Fuglie, Keith O., ‘Total Factor Productivity in the Global Agricultural Economy: Evidence from FAO Data’, in Alston, Julian M., Babcock, Bruce Alan and Pardey, Philip G. (eds.), The Shifting Patterns of Agricultural Production and Productivity Worldwide (Ames, IA: Midwest Agribusiness Trade Research and Information Center, 2010), pp. 63–95Google Scholar; Fuglie, Keith O., ‘Productivity Growth and Technology Capital in the Global Agricultural Economy’, in Fuglie, Keith O., Wang, Sun Ling and Ball, V. Eldon, Productivity Growth in Agriculture: An International Perspective (Wallingford and Cambridge, MA: CAB International, 2012), pp. 335–69CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

¹⁶ The estimation of the growth of capital is carried out on the basis of the rates of capital for which we do have data (tractors, fertiliser, livestock units), and involves assuming that the growth in the rates of capital not considered (principally buildings, new seeds and insecticides) was the same as for those for which we do have information.

¹⁷ IFA data are available from https://www.ifastat.org/databases. For more details, see the online Appendix.

¹⁸ del Gatto, Massimo, di Liberto, Adriana and Petraglia, Carmelo, ‘Measuring Productivity’, Journal of Economic Surveys, 25: 5 (2011), pp. 952–1008CrossRefGoogle Scholar. These weightings for the calculation of TFP are not fixed, but are continuous along our sample (1950–2008). They include all of the changes in the quantity of the inputs in the function of production, which change in accordance with their returns; therefore, the effects of the changes are implicitly reflected in the relative prices.

¹⁹ Fuglie, ‘Total Factor Productivity’ and ‘Productivity Growth’.

²⁰ The agricultural production used is the series generated in Table 1. See Table A.1.1 (in the online Appendix) for earlier studies of TFP in Latin America.

²¹ Mexico and Peru, though currently exporters of crude oil, were net importers until 1977 and 1978, respectively.

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²⁷ Rosemary Thorp suggests a chronology of the structural reform measures implemented. Although Chile, Uruguay and Argentina began these reforms (programme of stabilisation, trade liberalisation, financial reform, privatisation, etc.) in the 1970s, the other countries implemented these types of reforms mostly from the beginning of the 1990s. See Thorp, Rosemary, Progreso, pobreza y exclusión. Una historia económica de América Latina en el siglo XXI (Washington, DC: Banco Interamericano de Desarrollo–Unión Europea, 1998)Google Scholar.

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⁷⁹ ‘Sowing pools’ comprise temporary associations of investors in agriculture who lease land, use contractors to sow and reap the seed, then share the profit.

⁸⁰ In almost all products, this growth in production exceeded 1 per cent in per capita terms between 1961 and 2000 (Serrano and Pinilla, ‘The Declining Role’, Table 2). If we compare it with that of other world regions, it is amongst the highest.

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