In this article, we discuss whether there was a single Latin American pattern of agricultural growth between 1950 and 2008. We analyse the sources of growth of agricultural production and productivity in ten Latin American countries. Our results show that the differences between these countries are too large to establish a single pattern for this region. However, certain common trends may be observed, such as the growing importance of labour productivity as a component of agricultural production growth and the increasing relevance of total factor productivity as a component of agricultural labour productivity growth.

This article is the first of its kind to offer a quantitative estimation of the evolution of Latin American agricultural production and productivity between 1950 and 2008. It also uncovers the extent to which the increases in production were due to increases in factors of production or to efficiency gains. Our findings reveal that efficiency gains made a rather modest contribution to the substantial increase in production, although their role became increasingly large over time and were highly significant between 1994 and 2008. Capital was the most important productive factor in explaining increases in output.