Farm size and the quality and quantity of jobs—Insights from Nigeria

IF 6.8 1区经济学 Q1 AGRICULTURAL ECONOMICS & POLICY

Food Policy Pub Date : 2024-10-01 DOI:10.1016/j.foodpol.2024.102731

Olayinka Aremu, Anna Fabry, Eva-Marie Meemken

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Abstract

Debates on the role of farm size for farm productivity and economic development are longstanding in agricultural and development economics. However, the link between farm size and achieving decent work and full employment—Sustainable Development Goal 8—remains unexplored, despite many African countries facing huge unemployment challenges alongside important changes in farm sizes. This paper addresses this gap by focusing on Nigeria’s labor-intensive tomato sector and using unique primary data from a matched farm-to-worker survey. We analyze the relationship between farm size and both the quantity and quality of jobs, which has never been studied before, employing multivariate regression analysis. Additionally, we account for factors that commonly differentiate larger and smaller farms, including technology use, market arrangement, crop diversification, and the reliance on seasonal versus casual labor. Our findings reveal a trade-off: smaller farms offer more jobs per hectare, while larger farms offer better jobs (i.e., higher wages and some non-monetary benefits). We conclude that neither larger nor smaller farms fully align with all dimensions of decent work and full employment, highlighting the need for greater policy and research focus on the employment quality versus quantity dilemma.

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农场规模与工作岗位的质量和数量--来自尼日利亚的启示

在农业和发展经济学中，关于农场规模对农场生产力和经济发展的作用的辩论由来已久。然而，尽管许多非洲国家在农场规模发生重大变化的同时也面临着巨大的失业挑战，但农场规模与实现体面工作和充分就业（可持续发展目标 8）之间的联系仍未得到探讨。本文以尼日利亚的劳动密集型番茄产业为研究对象，利用农场与工人匹配调查的独特原始数据，填补了这一空白。我们采用多元回归分析法，分析了农场规模与工作岗位数量和质量之间的关系，这是以前从未研究过的。此外，我们还考虑了通常区分大型农场和小型农场的因素，包括技术使用、市场安排、作物多样化以及对季节工和临时工的依赖。我们的研究结果揭示了一种权衡：较小的农场每公顷提供更多的工作岗位，而较大的农场提供更好的工作岗位（即较高的工资和一些非货币福利）。我们的结论是，无论是规模较大还是规模较小的农场，都不完全符合体面工作和充分就业的所有方面，这凸显出需要在政策和研究方面更加关注就业质量与数量的两难问题。

本文章由计算机程序翻译，如有差异，请以英文原文为准。

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来源期刊

Food Policy 管理科学-农业经济与政策

CiteScore

11.40

自引率

4.60%

发文量

128

审稿时长

62 days

期刊介绍： Food Policy is a multidisciplinary journal publishing original research and novel evidence on issues in the formulation, implementation, and evaluation of policies for the food sector in developing, transition, and advanced economies. Our main focus is on the economic and social aspect of food policy, and we prioritize empirical studies informing international food policy debates. Provided that articles make a clear and explicit contribution to food policy debates of international interest, we consider papers from any of the social sciences. Papers from other disciplines (e.g., law) will be considered only if they provide a key policy contribution, and are written in a style which is accessible to a social science readership.