This paper provides an empirical investigation into the long-standing notion of biases of technical change in South African agriculture. The second order cost function is used to derive relative bias measures between labour and machinery. The results suggest that large machinery-using biases in...

All the rate of return estimates, regardless of methodology or the level of aggregation, are entirely consistent and logical. The returns show that the ARC has been extremely successful economically and has followed a sound strategy of exploiting spillovers from foreign R&D systems. However,...

A stochastic frontier production function is defined for panel data on maize producing regions of South Africa. Technical inefficiency effects are assumed to be a function of climatic conditions, time and the terms of trade facing maize producers. The model is derived using nine years of data...

This paper attempts to estimate the effects of some of the changes in the marketing system on the Western Cape Province of South Africa, utilizing a regional linear programming model of the agricultural sector of the region. The model includes supply, demand and production risk, and simulates...

This article evaluates the impact of research and technology development in the wine grape industry in order to determine the rate of return (ROR) to these investments, and to make specific recommendations on funding. The analysis illustrates the applied and adaptive nature of the research...

The paper presents an empirical investigation of the production response of small scale producers of maize and cotton for communal agriculture in Zimbabwe. The error correction model, which employs the concept of cointegration to avoid spurious regressions, is used in the analysis. The factors...

This study is based on two 1991 sample surveys, each of ninety farms, in the predominantly arable region of Chiweshe and in the low rainfall area of Gokwe, where animals are more important. The two samples are reasonably representative of the range of conditions found in the communal areas in...

Some comments are required to put in perspective the results obtained by Ngwenya, Battese and Fleming (1997). In particular, it is necessary to examine their main conclusion that in 1988/89 there was a significant inverse relationship between the technical inefficiency of wheat farmers in the...