PRODUCTION ECONOMICS AND THE MODERNIZATION OF TRADITIONAL AGRICULTURES

A traditional agriculture operates in a relatively static physical, economic and cultural environment and as a consequence becomes relatively well adjusted to that environment. Modernization of agriculture occurs when substantial and continuing change in the decision-making environment provides incentives to make new farming decisions. Farming then becomes dynamic as farmers attempt to reach constantly shifting points of equilibrium. Agricultural production economics in low income countries has been too much applied to a search for disequilibria within the given static environment and not enough to the possibilities and results of deliberately changing that environment.