Is small beautiful? Links between agricultural mechanization services and the productivity of different-sized farms

Mechanization services, factor allocation, and farm efficiency: Evidence from China†

“…China has experienced a steady increase in crop production although under unfavorable natural resource conditions and labor shortage (Yang et al, 2013). Several recent studies suggest that mechanization is an important driving force for yield growth (Wang, Yamauchi, & Huang, 2016; Yang et al, 2013; Zhang, Yang, & Reardon, 2017) and productivity growth (Qiu, Choy, & Luo, 2022; Sheng & Chancellor, 2019; Yi, Chen, Sheng, & Huang, 2019). As shown in Figure 1, yields of rice, wheat, and maize in China have increased significantly since 1979, so has the total agricultural machinery power (National Bureau of Statistics of China, 2021), although there was a slight decrease in 2016 due to the decrease in the availability of small tractors.…”

“…The results, however, are unclear and even conflicting. While some studies find that mechanization services have negative effects on production efficiency because of increasing supervision costs (Coelli & Battese, 1996; Feder, 1985; Hayami & Otsuka, 1993), others show that mechanization services have either no significant impacts or even positive effects (Deutschmann, Duru, Siegal, & Tjernström, 2019; Luo, 2018; Qiu, Choy, & Luo, 2022). Moreover, the majority of the existing studies use the data at the regional or national level, with little evidence based on micro‐level information, and a few studies have been performed for China.…”

Does Small-Scale Livestock Production Use a High Technological Level to Survive? Evidence from Dairy Production in Northeast-ern Michoacán, Mexico

“…A close relationship was observed between the less technified SSDPU and the family, with a higher percentage of FL use in clusters 3 and 4 (1.27 ± 0.76 and 1.18 ± 0.8, respectively) in relation to cluster 1 (0.67 ± 0.82) (Table 5). The family labour provides these units with greater resilience in the face of diverse socioeconomic situations, since the use of family labour generally represents a low or null opportunity cost, due to not receiving a fixed salary [52,53].…”

“…On the other hand, the implementation of technologies by producers depends on the relative costs between the adoption of such tools, the number of animals and the size of the SSDPU, since they could substitute these technologies with the use of family labour when the land size and production are small [53]. However, when production increases, FL will be not enough and producers will look for technological alternatives to face these changes [60,61]; in other words, the implementation of more technologies corresponds to a greater intensification of SSDPU [60], because it is more profitable [53,62] and the investment is justified [52,60].…”

“…The above is confirmed by the results of the study, where the clusters that least implemented technologies (clusters 3 and 4), have lower numbers of cattle (13.03 ± 5.52 and 13.45 ± 11.48, respectively) with respect to clusters 1 and 2 (33.16 ± 4.3 and 21.95 ± 6.25, respectively) (Table 6) and, as mentioned above, family labour was also higher in clusters 3 and 4. Consequently, producers in these clusters, having lower production, may also employ higher FL for other agricultural or non-agricultural activities [53] inside or outside the SSDPU.…”