Introduction
Paris, France | 14-15 December 2015
Against the backdrop of growing global food demand and pressures on natural resources (e.g. land and water), including from climate change, increasing the growth of agricultural productivity has become a policy priority in several countries. To this end, productivity measured in a way that accounts for undesired outputs and for non-market inputs from nature would provide important additional insights.
Conventional productivity measures often only account for those inputs and outputs for which there are market transactions, while the role of the environment in production is not taken into account. This omission can be a source of systematic bias in productivity calculations and can contribute to incorrect interpretations of the results and subsequent policy conclusions. A comprehensive total factor productivity (TFP) indicator that accounts for the use of natural resources and production of undesirable environmental outputs is needed. But the task in measuring inter-country agricultural environmentally-adjusted total factor productivity (EATFP) is challenging. The output of the Workshop was to receive concrete guidelines from experts as to which data and methods should be used in order to calculate traditional TFP and EATFP for the aggregate agricultural sector for OECD and some non-OECD countries.
The key objectives of the expert workshop were twofold:
- Assess available data and methodologies to calculate Total Factor Productivity (TFP) for the aggregate agricultural sector for OECD and some non-OECD countries (e.g. China, Brazil, India, etc.) from 1990-onwards in order to derive TFP indicator which will be based on comparable method and data and which can be easily updated.
- Assess available data and methodologies to calculate Environmentally Adjusted Total Factor Productivity (EATFP) for the aggregate agricultural sector for as many as possible countries from 1990-onwards.
Documents and presentations
Sessions
Session 1: Setting the scene: Objectives of the workshop and expected outcomes
- Productivity Measurement at the OECD – An Overview, Paul Schreyer
- Overview of the Workshop, Dimitris Diakosavvas
Session 2: Data availability, quality and measurement of factors of production (capital, land and labour)
- How the SEEA Experimental Ecosystem Accounting framework can be used for growth accounting and productivity analysis?, Carl Obst
- How the FAO’s capital stock database can be used for productivity analysis, Sangita Dubey
- Capital as a factor of production in agriculture: measurement and data, Yu Sheng
- Valuation of agricultural land within the system of national accounts, Jennifer Ribarsky
- Methods of calculating land input in TFP calculations – The case of India, Nilabja Ghosh
- Measuring and valuing operator (holder) labour services in the AAFC production account for Canadian agriculture, Sean Cahill
- Discussant, Isabelle Piot-Lepetit
Session 3: Methodological issues and approaches to calculate inter-country agricultural Total Factor Productivity
- Market efficiency and index numbers: Is there a “price” to pay for cross-country productivity comparison?, Sheng Yu
- Measuring TFP in the EU28: methodological and data challenges, Koen Mondelaers
- An approach of measuring TFP within European agriculture, Jean-Pierre Butault
Session 4: Assessing the feasibility of applying the growth accounting approach to calculate inter-country agricultural EATFP
- Environmentally adjusted multifactor productivity: Methodology and empirical results for OECD and G20 Countries, Ivan Hascic
- Thinking about productivity accounting in the presence of by-products, Robert G. Chambers
- Green productivity in agriculture - A critical synthesis, Timo Kuosmanen
Session 5: Accounting for environmentally-related outputs and inputs in agricultural TFP measurement – Data and methodological challenges
- Traditional and Environmental Agricultural Total Factor Productivity in OECD Countries, Vincent Hoang
- An adjusted measure of agricultural TFP with GHG emissions as a by-product of agricultural production, Alejandro Nin Pratt
- Modelling Cumulative Effects of Nutrient Surpluses in Agriculture: A Dynamic Approach to Material Balance Accounting, Timo Kuosmanen
- Measuring Dynamic Eco-efficiency under the By-Production of Undesirable Output, Alfons Oude Lansink
- Environmentally-adjusted total factor productivity: the case of carbon footprint - An application to Italian FADN farms, Silvia Coderoni
- Measurement of Environmentally Adjusted Agricultural Total Factor Productivity Using the Malmquist-Luenberger Index in Korea, Chang-Gil Kim
- Discussant, Raushan Bokushev
Session 6: Round table discussion – Where we go from here?
- Summing up, Alison Burrell
- Concluding Comments from the OECD Secretariat, Paul Schreyer
Relevant publications
- Ball, V. Eldon, Sun Ling Wang and Richard Nehring, Productivity and Economic Growth in U.S. Agriculture.
- Brandt, N., P. Schreyer and V. Zipperer (2014), Productivity Measurement with Natural Capital and Bad Outputs, OECD Economics Department Working Papers, No. 1154, OECD Publishing, Paris.
- Brandt, N., P. Schreyer and V. Zipperer (2013), Productivity Measurement with Natural Capital, OECD Economics Department Working Papers, No. 1092, OECD Publishing, Paris.
- Chambers, G. Robert and Simone Pieralli, Weather and technical change as sources of measured US agricultural productivity growth.
- OECD/Eurostat (2015), Eurostat-OECD Compilation guide on land estimations, Eurostat, Luxembourg.
- OECD (2014), Green Growth Indicators for Agriculture – A Preliminary Assessment, OECD Green Growth Studies, OECD Publishing, Paris.
- OECD (2014), Green Growth Indicators 2014, OECD Green Growth Studies, OECD Publishing, Paris.
- OECD (2013), OECD Compendium of Agri-environmental Indicators, OECD Publishing, Paris.
- OECD (2001), Measuring Productivity, OECD Publishing, Paris.
Contact
For further information on this workshop please contact the Trade and Agriculture Directorate (OECD).