Publications > Cahiers (English)> N° 33, 4th term 1994

• [Oyster farmers and biologists, the one's nature and the other's], Véronique Van Tilbeurgh
• Turkish agriculture under structural adjustment : a general equilibrium analysis,
  Erol H. Cakmak and A. Erinc Yeldan Cakmak
• [Productivity increases in some French agricultural sectors and their distribution], Jean-Pierre Butault, Nathalie Delame, Jean-Marc Rousselle
• Total factor productivity for nonhomothetic, nonseparable, multiple output technologies :
  A new approach and evidence for US agriculture, Robert D. Weaver and Atsushi Chitose
• Estimating the demand for farm operating and term credit, Alfons Weersink,
  Marcel J. Vanden Dungen, Calum G. Turvey

Ostréiculteurs et biologistes : la nature des uns et des autres
[Oyster farmers and biologists, the one's nature and the other's]

Véronique Van Tilbeurgh (ATER, Université de Versailles, Saint-Quentin, 23, rue du Refuge, 78035 Versailles cedex)

In : Cahiers d'Economie et Sociologie Rurales, n° 33, 1994, pp 5-31

Abstract : This study analyses the link between scientific knowledges on the one hand, and other knowledges, bred from the practical growing of oysters. The way that the biologists and the oyster farmers built separately their own image of the object around which revolves their activity, the oyster, has been particularly studied. Oyster has flourished along the French coast since the end of the XIXth century in spite of numerous difficulties. During that time, the oyster farmers have always approached pragmatically the conception and the development of this shell breeding. However, since the early seventies repeated epizooties destroyed the stock and caused some damage to regional economics. Then the IFREMER (Institut français de recherche pour l'exploitation de la mer French Institute for sea research) set up research projects in attempt to stop these diseases. The gathering of this body of knowledges brought to the definition of production standards, in the form of local trade rules. Facing these were, and still are, the knowledges of the oyster farmers. Through analysis of their links, two different types of knowledge, the scientific and the pratical one, were integrated into the same study. This confrontation allowed to distinguish the characteristics of the one's knowledges in the light of the other's. Therefore, in a first time, practical and scientific knowledges are exposed to the size of practitioner's oyster farm through the study of one particular group making by the Cancale's oyster farmers (Bretagne), and for the second, by each oyster's scientific approach. After describing both approaches, the object of this article is to build relations between the one's oyster and the other's around the two notions of space and time before studying knowledges' transfers. This last analysis could reveal the strategic goals for acquiring some scientific knowledges inside the two groups by comparing the appropriation mechanisms, in the oyster farmer's case at least, to the purchase of any other good. All these process were then linked to a more global question about the sociological meaning of a knowledge.

Key-words : oyster farmer, biologist knowledges, scientific knowledge, practical knowledge.

Turkish agriculture under structural adjustment : a general equilibrium analysis

Erol H. Cakmak and A. Erinc Yeldan Cakmak (Departemnt of economics, Bilkent University, 06533 Bilkent, Turkey)

In : Cahiers d'Economie et Sociologie Rurales, n° 33, 1994, pp 33-53

Abstract : The economic effects of the post-1980 Turkish reform program on the agricultural sector are analysed using a two-level quantitative analysis : A CGE model of the domestic economy at the macro level is supplemented with a micro level, multi-market, multi-regional model of the agricultural sector. The modelling exercises investigate the burden of adjustment faced by the rural economy during the 1980s, and analyse the medium term consequences of a massive program of public investment known as the Southeastern Anatolia Project. The modelling analysis shows that the Turkish reform program relied heavily on a worsening income distribution and increased agricultural taxation and reveals that there was a significant trade-off between food security and the export promotion targets.

Key-words : CGE modelling, agricultural sector modelling, structural adjustment, Turkey..

Formation et répartition des gains de productivité dans l'agriculture française. Analyse par produit
[Productivity increases in some French agricultural sectors and their distribution]

Jean-Pierre Butault, Nathalie Delame, Jean-Marc Rousselle (INRA ESR, 14, rue Girardet, 54042 Nancy)

In : Cahiers d'Economie et Sociologie Rurales, n° 33, 1994, pp 55-72

Abstract : A lot of studies concern the measurement of the productivity growth of the whole agricultural sector. These analyses are often limited because the evolution of the conditions of production are very different according to the products. This paper aims at analysing the generation and the distribution of productivity increases in some French agricultural sectors (soft wheat, corn, greenhouse vegetables, fruits, cattle, sheep, milk, pig, and poultries), between 1979 and 1991. First, a simple econometric model is used to build the different products accounts, from the French RICA (FADN). Then, volumes, prices and productivity indexes are calculated for these products and the surplus accounting method is applied to study how the productivity increases are distributed. The results show that the conditions of the generation and distribution of productivity increases are very different according to the sectors. In the cereals sector, the productivity increases are more important than in the animal sector. A large part of the drop of the prices for this animal sector comes, in fact, from the productivity increases of the crops sector which are transmitted by the prices of the intermediate consumptions (animal feedstuff). One of the interest of the surplus accounting method consists in allowing to study these relations between the different sectors and it may be used to follow the effects of the CAP reform.

Key-words : accounts by agricultural products, productivity increases, surplus accounting, prices variations.

Total factor productivity for nonhomothetic, nonseparable, multiple output technologies : A new approach and evidence for US agriculture

Robert D. Weaver and Atsushi Chitose (Department of agricultural economics, Pennsylvania State University, University Park, Pennsylvania 16802 Etats-Unis)

In : Cahiers d'Economie et Sociologie Rurales, n° 33, 1994, pp 73-95

Abstract : This paper examines the measurement of total factor productivity for unrestricted technologies. The concept of relative total factor productivity (RTFP) is introduced for technologies which are nonhomothetic, nonseparable in inputs and outputs, and affected by nonneutral forms of disembodied technical change. Theoretical results establish estimates of total factor productivity are biased when based on technologies which are misspecified using restrictions of constant returns to scale, input-output separability, and complete factor variability. Econometric implementation allows measurement of RFTP when economic choices face quasi-fixity of factor flows. Estimates of RTFP are presented for US agriculture and compared with those based on restrictions employed by Jorgenson and Griliches using the index number approach. Results indicate that estimates based on RTFP are substantially smaller in magnitude than those based on TFP and implemented subject to the Jorgenson and Griliches restrictions.

Key-words : total factor productivity, non homothetic technologies, non constant return-to-scale, quasi-fixed factors.

Estimating the demand for farm operating and term credit

Alfons Weersink, Marcel J. Vanden Dungen, Calum G. Turvey (Department of Agricultural Economics and Business, University of Guelph, Guelph, Ontario, Canada N1G 2W1)

In : Cahiers d'Economie et Sociologie Rurales, n° 33, 1994, pp 97-116

Abstract : Relationships between the demand for credit (both operating and long term) and other inputs in agriculture were evaluated for the US cornbelt states using a system of difference equations in a partial adjustment framework. Excess demand for long term debt was found to decrease demand for variable inputs including operating credit. Increases in the cost of operating credit were found to decrease demand for variable inputs and increase demand for quasi-fixed inputs. The opposite effects were generally found for changes in the cost of long term credit lending support to the hypothesis that subsidized interest rates become capitalized into asset prices.

Key-words : operating credit, term credit, demand, dynamics.