Scale of farming operations and resource use under alternative land tenure arrangements

"In an expanding economy where population is increasing rapidly, the area of land per capita declines and efficient use of natural resources becomes the key to economic growth. Under private ownership, acquisition of rights to use land leads to a mixed pattern of tenure arrangements. Some farmers have legal title to the land they farm and combine capital and labor with it up to the limit of their desires or ability to command the other factors of economic production. Others put their financial resources into working capital such as machinery, equipment, feed, and flocks and herds, and rent land under a wide diversity of arrangements which are distinguished from each other largely by the manner in which rent is paid. Two important non-owner groups of farm operators in the mid-section of the United States are crop-share-cash and livestock-share tenants. Many questions about the relative efficiency of resource use under owner-operation and these types of leases often are raised among farmers and the people who counsel with them. This study was undertaken to develop objective answers to some of these questions. The data for the analysis were obtained by interviewing 160 operators who owned their farms, 177 crop-share cash tenants and 104 livestock-share tenants in the Marshall soils area of Northwest Missouri and the adjoining corners of Iowa, Nebraska and Kansas. The records were summarised to show relationships between type of tenure and such income-influencing factors as size of business, rates of production and efficiency in the use of land, capital and labor. From the economic point of view, efficient use of resource requires that each of the factors of production be used to its full capacity. The records were examined to determine the proportion of operators in each tenure group who had enough land for full use of machinery and family labor. Fourteen output/input ratios were used to determine the relative efficiency of operators in the three tenure groups. The analysis indicated that livestock-share tenants had the lowest equities in their firms, but operated larger, more efficient farm businesses than the other groups. The findings were not conclusive as to whether or not the varying rates of output per unit of input were due primarily to scale of operations, but some of the facts revealed will be helpful to farmers who have questions about the most efficient type of factor control and to the people who counsel with them."--Foreword.

Name thesis:degree_name

Ph. D.

Level thesis:degree_level

Doctoral

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Agricultural economics (MU)

Grantor dc:publisher

University of Missouri--Columbia

Year dc:date.issued

1962

Author dc:creator

• Williams, Dorwin Lavon

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Miller, Frank

Statement dc:rights

• OpenAccess.

Language dc:language.iso

eng, English

DOI

https://doi.org/10.32469/10355/101345

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:mospace.umsystem.edu:10355/101345