Estimación y análisis de la Productividad Agrícola en Colombia - Núm. 47, Julio 2018 - Revista Ecos de Economía: A Latin American Journal of Applied Economics - Libros y Revistas - VLEX 798246097

Estimación y análisis de la Productividad Agrícola en Colombia

AutorManuel I. Jiménez, Philip Abbott, Kenneth Foster
Páginas4-37
Ecos de Economía: A Latin American Journal of Applied Economics | Vol. 22 | No. 47 | 2018
Research Article
MEASUREMENT AND ANALYSIS OF AGRICULTURAL
PRODUCTIVITY IN COLOMBIA
Estimación y análisis de la Productividad
Agrícola en Colombia
Manuel I. Jiméneza, Philip Abbottb, Kenneth Fosterc
Abstract
Tremendous agricultural potential in Colombia has gone untapped for decades
due to: i) civil strife and the criminal drug trade; ii) uncertain property rights; iii)
inadequate infrastructure; iv) lack of innovation and technological development; v)
lack of funding, vi) lack of investment; and vii) misallocation of resources within
the sector. Proof of this is the relatively lower growth of the value of Colombia’s
agriculture versus other countries in the region during the agricultural prices
booms (FAO, ). This paper analyzes whether Colombia’s weak agricultural
performance was due to low productivity growth rather than input accumulation.
Using econometric specifications, this paper finds that Colombia’s agricultural
productivity grew on average between .% and .% annually from  and
. This growth was mainly driven by livestock and poultry productivity, which
grew between .% and .%, while crop productivity grew between % and .%.
Likewise, this paper finds biased technical and scale eects whenever the models are
able to test their presence. In addition, it finds evidence that Colombia’s agricultural
productivity growth was aected by changing economic circumstances. These
results are significant for post-conflict rural investment because they provide
information about the returns on future government investment options in the
rural sector of Colombia.
Resumen
Colombia dejó de explotar su gran potencial agrícola por décadas debido a: i) el
intenso conflicto armado y el narcotráfico; ii) la gran incertidumbre alrededor de
los derechos de propiedad de la tierra; iii) la falta de infraestructura; iv) la falta de
Keywords: Agricultural
Productivity, Technical Change,
Agricultural Growth, Colombia
Palabras clave: Productividad
Agrícola, Cambio Técnico,
Crecimiento Agrícola, Colombia
JEL Classification: D24, O13, O47,
O54
Received: 12/02/2018
Accepted: 25/10/2018
Published: 26/06/2019
a. Department of Agricultural Economics -
Purdue University, United States.
jimene19@purdue.edu
Orcid: 0000-0001-7760-2577
b. Department of Agricultural Economics -
Purdue University, United States.
Orcid: 0000-0001-9726-6232
c. Department of Agricultural Economics -
Purdue University, United States.
Orcid: 0000-0003-4571-8334
ISSN 1657-4206 e-ISSN 2462-8107 Vol. 22 No. 47 PP. 4-37 DOI: 10.17230/ecos.2018.47.1
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Ecos de Economía: A Latin American Journal of Applied Economics | Vol. 22 | No. 47 | 2018
Measurement and analysis of agricultural. Productivity in Colombia
innovación y desarrollo tecnológico en el sector; v) la falta de financiamiento; vi) la baja inversión; y
vii) la mala distribución de los recursos productivos. Muestra de ello es el bajo crecimiento del valor de
su producción agropecuaria frente a otros países de la región durante los recientes auges de precios
agrícolas (FAO, ). Este artículo analiza si el pobre desempeño de la agricultura colombiana se
debe al bajo crecimiento de su productividad o al bajo ritmo de acumulación de sus inventarios. Así,
usando métodos econométricos, se encuentra que la productividad agropecuaria de Colombia creció
en promedio entre un .% y un .% anual durante  y . Mas específicamente, se encuentra
que este crecimiento fue impulsado, principalmente, por la productividad ganadera y avícola que creció
entre un .% y un .% en este período, pues la productividad agrícola tan sólo creció entre un % y
un .%. Igualmente, se encuentra evidencia de crecimiento tecnológico sesgado y efectos a la escala
de producción, en todos los casos en los que los modelos econométricos permitieron evaluar esto.
Además, se encuentra evidencia de que el crecimiento de la productividad agropecuaria de Colombia
fue afectado por las cambiantes condiciones económicas en el país. Todos estos resultados, sin duda,
son clave para la inversión rural en esta nueva etapa del posconflicto, al proveer información sobre
los posible retornos que obtendría Colombia de dicha inversión pública en el sector rural.
1. Introduction
Tremendous agricultural potential in Colombia has gone untapped for decades due to a myriad of
factors, including: i) civil strife and the criminal drug trade; ii) uncertainty regarding property rights;
iii) inadequate infrastructure; iv) lack of innovation and technological development; v) lack of access
to funding, vi) lack of investment; and vii) misallocation of resources within the sector (COMPITE,
; Clavijo, Vera & Fandiño, ; Junguito, Perfetti, & Becerra, ; and Reina, Zuluaga, Bermúdez
& Oviedo, ). Government policies have allocated economic and development eorts to urban
and industrial areas (e.g. financial, mining and utilities) rather than rural agricultural areas, where
insurgent forces have often taken refuge (Junguito et al., ). It was generally the case that when
agricultural policies were implemented, they were done so with short-term goals in mind (SAC, ).
With recent advances toward peace between the Colombian government and insurgents as well as
less incidences of drug traicking in the country, Colombia is poised for renewed public and private
investment in agriculture and rural communities. This agreement may well improve the environment
of agricultural investment, and the return of combatants and others to rural activities means not only
a greater labor supply, but also that agriculture must play a key role in future national development.
The results presented in this paper have the potential to inform better policies toward rural and
agricultural development in Colombia in the post-conflict era.
The value of Colombia’s agricultural production grew by only % during the agricultural commodity
price booms of -, relative to its average growth from -. In contrast, the value of
global agricultural production expanded by %, and much greater growth occurred in other Latin
American countries: .% in Chile, .% in Argentina, .% in Brazil and .% in Peru (FAO, ).
We analyze the relatively weak performance of Colombia’s agriculture and evaluates whether it was
due to a low productivity growth rather than a lack of input accumulation. Our general hypothesis
1 Colombia has been suffering from the following Dutch Disease symptoms: i) a real misalignment of the exchange rate, which oscillated
around 15-20% in recent years; ii) an overall economy largely supported by non-tradeable sectors (60% of Colombia’s overall GDP); iii)
a premature de-industrialization process (i.e. industry GDP reduced its importance in Colombia’s overall GDP from 23% in the 1970s to
14% in the 2000s); iv) pronounced export concentration of commodities (close to 70% of total exports); and v) high NAIRU rate of close
to 10% (Clavijo et al., 2013).
2 The national government of Colombia recently signed a peace agreement with one of its largest armed groups, Las Fuerzas Armadas
Revolucionarias de Colombia (FARC), after more than 50 years of intense conflict.
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Measurement and analysis of agricultural. Productivity in Colombia
is that deep structural problems, suggested by low productivity growth rates, prevented Colombia’s
agriculture from exhibiting the higher growth of the commodity prices booms.
Previous investigations suggest that over recent decades Colombia’s agriculture has exhibited
stagnant growth of between .% and % per year (World Bank, ), mainly due to the structural
problems mentioned above. Likewise, Colombia’s agriculture has been subject to many distortions
due to agricultural policy design and administration which limited the country’s competitiveness
(Anderson and Valdés, ). Moreover, public expenditure on Colombia’s agriculture has represented
just .-.% of overall GDP since the late s, while this figure has reached % in other emerging
markets and % in developed countries (Junguito et al., ). These deep structural problems leading
to slower agricultural sector growth have varied over time due to political and economic circumstances
leading to variations in both productivity growth and input accumulation.
In contrast, prices received by Colombian farmers increased by % in  and % in 
relative to average prices from - according to the Producer Price Index (PPI) calculated
by the Departamento Administrativo Nacional de Estadística (DANE, ). Accordingly, Colombia’s
farmers surely experienced the eects of high global commodity prices seen in  and . Then,
farmers were exposed to incentives to increase both their productivity and input use. However,
the aforementioned structural problems seem to have prevented Colombia from reaching a higher
standard of agricultural performance.
Colombia’s agricultural productivity has rarely been analyzed in the economics literature, and the
techniques used to measure its agricultural productivity have been inconsistent (Atkinson, ; Avila
et al., ; Ludena, ; Pfeier, ; USDA, ). Most of these studies have relied on accounting
methods, employing untested assumptions rather than econometric estimation, and substituting
data from neighboring countries for missing Colombian data. Likewise, these studies did not reach
a consensus and are essentially incomparable because they address dierent time periods, employ
dierent data sources, and/or employ contradictory underlying assumptions.
One contribution of this paper is that it econometrically measures Colombia’s agricultural
productivity growth, both aggregated and disaggregated for crop and livestock production during
the period -. We employ three commonly used econometric specifications to analyze the
robustness of results to alternative specifications and their associated underlying assumptions about
technology, etc. One of these is a Translog Cost function model that allows for the investigation of bias
in technical change and scale eects, as well as providing confidence intervals for the productivity
estimates (Antle and Capalbo ). The other two specifications are the Cobb-Douglass and the CES
production technologies. A second contribution is that this paper assembles a current and complete
Colombia dataset that does not feature data substitution from neighboring countries. Thus, this
study assesses how Colombia’s agricultural productivity growth has changed over time relative to
varying policy regimes and economic circumstances. To this aim, we conduct a historical analysis
of Colombia’s agriculture from - that models six key structurally dierent time periods,
during which economic conditions and policy regimes strongly influenced agricultural productivity
growth (see Table ).
3 Productivity growth is defined as the increase in output attributable to technical change (Domar, 1961; Jorgenson and Griliches, 1967;
Solow, 1957).

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