Drivers & Restraints for Economically Efficient Farm Production

Several studies in agricultural economics have shown that farm production is normally inefficient in comparison to the best practice farming. This implies that more food could be produced with the existing inputs, or that the existing production could be made less costly. During the last two decades, several authors have addressed this question and studied various drivers and restraints for efficient farm production to help farmers develop their businesses and become more successful. Given the on-going debate about insufficient supply of food, and about the need for development of rural firms, a thorough understanding about what drives and restrains efficient agricultural production is still of high importance. Therefore, this book summarises and discusses literature that has investigated reasons for inefficient production, and thus how agricultural production could become more successful. Based on this, the book discusses what aspects need more research in the future to understand what drives and restraints efficient farm production. In particular, the synthesis is based around the following aspects: farm size and its effect on efficiency, farm strategy and its effect on efficiency, farmer managerial capacity and its influence on efficiency, collaboration between farmers and its impact on efficiency, operational managerial practices and their effect on efficiency and, finally, critical success factors and their links with efficiency.