Inverse Farm Size-productivity Relationship : A Test Using Regional Data across Two Time-points

Abstract

The debate on farm-size productivity relationship continues to attract the scholars even today. This study wishes to carry on the arguments advanced in this debate to the pre-liberalisation period on a set of farmers in an underdeveloped region. The region is known to have successful tradition of land reforms and opening up avenues of rural governance and decentralisation. Yet liberalisation policies that are concomitant on the broader aspect of globalisation have led to substantial changes in the pattern of resources utilisation by the different types of farmers. Big farmers gained substantially in the reform process while the poor lost their ground. Without some support in the public policy they may not be able to subsist in an increasingly liberalised economy.