Higher productivity among large farms is often assumed to be a result of increasing returns to scale. However, using farm-level data for the Australian broadacre industry, it was found that constant or mildly decreasing returns to scale is more typical. On examining the monotonic change in...

type="main" xml:id="ajar12063-abs-0001" <p>A positive relationship between farm size and farm productivity is often considered to be largely due to increasing returns to scale in farm production. However, using farm-level data for the Australian broadacre industry, we found that constant or mildly...</p>

Agricultural productivity growth has been strong relative to other sectors in the Australian economy, and relative to the agricultural sectors of other developed countries. However, as commonly observed among other developed economies, growth in productivity in the broadacre sector of Australian...