Van Zyl, J., Vink, N. and Fenyes, T.I., 1987. Labour-related structural trends in South African maize production. Agric. Econ., 1: 241-258.The substitution of capital goods, including new technology, for land and labour has played an important role and has influenced the structure of Sout African agriculture.Farm labour-related trends in the summer rainfall grain-producing area of South Africa are considered. The amount of labour used, the remuneration of labour, the substitution of capital for labour and productivity trends are analyzed. Growth rates were obtained by fitting exponential functions with time as independent variable. The decline in the number of farm employees per 1000 hectares under cultivation since 1970 probably resulted from mechanization and thus capital-labour substitution in maize production, especially in harvesting. Tax concessions on new capital improvements, the subsidization of agriculture in general and the increasing rate of urbanization contributed to this trend.The scarcity of capital relative to unskilled labour, which has been reinforced by policy measures favouring capital intensity (capital formation has increased by 4.0% per annum between 19.50 and 1980, compared with an increase of O. 71% per annum in the number of farm employees in the same period); this implies that corrective policy changes are required to improve the present distorted situation.This will enable the commercial agricultural sector of South Africa to playa more meaningful role in the socio-economic development of the whole subcontinent.
2) STRUCTURAL IMBALANCES IN AN ECONOMY can be defined as a non-Pareto allocation of resources between industries or groups of industries (McCarthy, 1988). With regard to agriculture, such imbalances may involve a less than optimal resource allocation between agriculture and the rest of the economy, and between subsectors of the agricultural economy, with resultant symptoms of inefficiency and inequality. In this paper it is argued that inefficiency and inequality are caused by a lack of fair or equitable access to resources and markets in agriculture. The nature of restrictions to access for certain subsectors of South African agriculture is then demonstrated briefly, and this is followed by a description of the extent of inefficiency and inequality in the sector. This latter aspect is described in terms of structural imbalances be-tween agriculture and the rest of the economy, between the commercial and subsistence sectors of agriculture, and within commercial and subsistence agriculture respectively. Consideration is given to land tenure and the ownership of assets, distribution of income, labour utilization and production performance.
Van Zyl, J., Vink, N. and Fenyes, T.I., 1987. Labour-related structural trends in South African maize production. Agric. Econ., 1: 241-258.The substitution of capital goods, including new technology, for land and labour has played an important role and has influenced the structure of Sout African agriculture.Farm labour-related trends in the summer rainfall grain-producing area of South Africa are considered. The amount of labour used, the remuneration of labour, the substitution of capital for labour and productivity trends are analyzed. Growth rates were obtained by fitting exponential functions with time as independent variable. The decline in the number of farm employees per 1000 hectares under cultivation since 1970 probably resulted from mechanization and thus capital-labour substitution in maize production, especially in harvesting. Tax concessions on new capital improvements, the subsidization of agriculture in general and the increasing rate of urbanization contributed to this trend.The scarcity of capital relative to unskilled labour, which has been reinforced by policy measures favouring capital intensity (capital formation has increased by 4.0% per annum between 19.50 and 1980, compared with an increase of O. 71% per annum in the number of farm employees in the same period); this implies that corrective policy changes are required to improve the present distorted situation.This will enable the commercial agricultural sector of South Africa to playa more meaningful role in the socio-economic development of the whole subcontinent.
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