Productivity
continues to be the engine of growth in agriculture.
The dominant source of economic growth for
the aggregate economy has usually been growth in inputs to
production. Agriculture turns out to be one of the few exceptions:
productivity growth dominates input growth. Output growth
equals the sum of contributions of the factors of production
(capital, land, labor, intermediate inputs) and growth in
productivity. Agricultural productivity growth averaged 1.68
percent from 1948 to 1999. However, the net contribution of
all inputs to growth in output was less than one-tenth of
one percentage point per year. Thus, growth in total factor
productivity has been responsible for almost all of agriculture’s
output growth since World War II, an impressive record.
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