IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/ags/jlaare/54549.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Labor Pains: Valuing Seasonal versus Year-Round Labor on Organic Farms

Author

Listed:
  • Lohr, Luanne
  • Park, Timothy A.

Abstract

Although organic farm activities seem to demand year-round employees, seasonal workers dominate the organic labor market. We use the elasticity of complementarity to assess input substitutability and predict adjustments. Farm size and farm workers are complementary inputs. Incentives that encourage farmers to expand employment of year-round and seasonal workers raise the marginal product and rates of return to organic acreage in relative wage payments. A commitment to local sales reduces organic farm incomes. A shift to local sales leads to decreased use of seasonal workers but at higher wages, with smaller adjustments in the wages of year-round workers.

Suggested Citation

  • Lohr, Luanne & Park, Timothy A., 2009. "Labor Pains: Valuing Seasonal versus Year-Round Labor on Organic Farms," Journal of Agricultural and Resource Economics, Western Agricultural Economics Association, vol. 34(2), pages 1-16, August.
    • Handle: RePEc:ags:jlaare:54549
    DOI: 10.22004/ag.econ.54549
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://ageconsearch.umn.edu/record/54549/files/JARE_Aug09__06R_pp316-331.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.22004/ag.econ.54549?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. McBride, William D. & Greene, Catherine R., 2008. "The Profitability of Organic Soybean Production," 2008 Annual Meeting, July 27-29, 2008, Orlando, Florida 6449, American Agricultural Economics Association (New Name 2008: Agricultural and Applied Economics Association).
    2. Kennedy, Peter E, 1981. "Estimation with Correctly Interpreted Dummy Variables in Semilogarithmic Equations [The Interpretation of Dummy Variables in Semilogarithmic Equations]," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 71(4), pages 801-801, September.
    3. Zvi Griliches & Jacques Mairesse, 1995. "Production Functions: The Search for Identification," NBER Working Papers 5067, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    4. Foster, Andrew D & Rosenzweig, Mark R, 1995. "Learning by Doing and Learning from Others: Human Capital and Technical Change in Agriculture," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 103(6), pages 1176-1209, December.
    5. Jacques Mairesse & Jordi Jaumandreu, 2005. "Panel‐data Estimates of the Production Function and the Revenue Function: What Difference Does It Make?," Scandinavian Journal of Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 107(4), pages 651-672, December.
    6. Ariel Dinar & Giannis Karagiannis & Vangelis Tzouvelekas, 2007. "Evaluating the impact of agricultural extension on farms' performance in Crete: a nonneutral stochastic frontier approach," Agricultural Economics, International Association of Agricultural Economists, vol. 36(2), pages 135-146, March.
    7. Dennis Tao Yang, 1997. "Education in Production: Measuring Labor Quality and Management," American Journal of Agricultural Economics, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association, vol. 79(3), pages 764-772.
    8. I. Fraser & W. Horrace, 2003. "Technical Efficiency of Australian Wool Production: Point and Confidence Interval Estimates," Journal of Productivity Analysis, Springer, vol. 20(2), pages 169-190, September.
    9. Kim, H Youn, 2000. "The Antonelli versus Hicks Elasticity of Complementary and Inverse Input Demand Systems," Australian Economic Papers, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 39(2), pages 245-261, June.
    10. Ackerberg, Daniel & Lanier Benkard, C. & Berry, Steven & Pakes, Ariel, 2007. "Econometric Tools for Analyzing Market Outcomes," Handbook of Econometrics, in: J.J. Heckman & E.E. Leamer (ed.), Handbook of Econometrics, edition 1, volume 6, chapter 63, Elsevier.
    11. H. Youn Kim, 2000. "The Antonelli Versus Hicks Elasticity of Complementarity and Inverse Input Demand Systems," Australian Economic Papers, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 39(2), pages 245-261, June.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Mannaf, Maksuda & Wheeler, Sarah Ann & Zuo, Alec, 2023. "Global and Local Spatial Spill-Overs: What Matters Most for the Diffusion of Organic Agriculture in Australia?," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 209(C).

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Park, Timothy A., 2008. "Evaluating Labor Productivity in Food Retailing," Agricultural and Resource Economics Review, Northeastern Agricultural and Resource Economics Association, vol. 37(2), pages 1-13.
    2. Aida Caldera, 2010. "Innovation and exporting: evidence from Spanish manufacturing firms," Review of World Economics (Weltwirtschaftliches Archiv), Springer;Institut für Weltwirtschaft (Kiel Institute for the World Economy), vol. 146(4), pages 657-689, December.
    3. Daniel Graham & H. Kim, 2008. "An empirical analytical framework for agglomeration economies," The Annals of Regional Science, Springer;Western Regional Science Association, vol. 42(2), pages 267-289, June.
    4. Jaumandreu, Jordi & Mairesse, Jacques, 2006. "Using price and demand information to identify production functions," MPRA Paper 1247, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    5. Markus Eberhardt & Christian Helmers, 2010. "Untested Assumptions and Data Slicing: A Critical Review of Firm-Level Production Function Estimators," Economics Series Working Papers 513, University of Oxford, Department of Economics.
    6. Alessandro Borin & Michele Mancini, 2016. "Foreign direct investment and firm performance: an empirical analysis of Italian firms," Review of World Economics (Weltwirtschaftliches Archiv), Springer;Institut für Weltwirtschaft (Kiel Institute for the World Economy), vol. 152(4), pages 705-732, November.
    7. Doraszelski, Ulrich & Jaumandreu, Jordi, 2006. "R&D and productivity: Estimating production functions when productivity is endogenous," MPRA Paper 1246, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    8. Sonia Laszlo, 2005. "Self-employment earnings and returns to education in rural Peru," Journal of Development Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 41(7), pages 1247-1287.
    9. Mion, Giordano & Jacob, Nick, 2020. "On the productivity advantage of cities," CEPR Discussion Papers 14644, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    10. Rangkakulnuwat, Poomthan & Wang, H. Holly & Ahn, Sung K., 2007. "The inverse imported factor demand system in Thailand: A cointegration analysis," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 94(3), pages 402-407, March.
    11. Bronwyn Hall & Jacques Mairesse, 2006. "Empirical studies of innovation in the knowledge-driven economy," Economics of Innovation and New Technology, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 15(4-5), pages 289-299.
    12. Dobbelaere, Sabien & Kiyota, Kozo & Mairesse, Jacques, 2015. "Product and labor market imperfections and scale economies: Micro-evidence on France, Japan and the Netherlands," Journal of Comparative Economics, Elsevier, vol. 43(2), pages 290-322.
    13. Khanna, Rupika & Sharma, Chandan, 2018. "Testing the effect of investments in IT and R&D on labour productivity: New method and evidence for Indian firms," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 173(C), pages 30-34.
    14. Sabien Dobbelaere & Jacques Mairesse, 2013. "Panel data estimates of the production function and product and labor market imperfections," Journal of Applied Econometrics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 28(1), pages 1-46, January.
    15. Micheels, Eric T. & Nolan, James F., 2016. "Examining the effects of absorptive capacity and social capital on the adoption of agricultural innovations: A Canadian Prairie case study," Agricultural Systems, Elsevier, vol. 145(C), pages 127-138.
    16. Ugur, Mehmet & Trushin, Eshref & Solomon, Edna & Guidi, Francesco, 2016. "R&D and productivity in OECD firms and industries: A hierarchical meta-regression analysis," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 45(10), pages 2069-2086.
    17. Montresor, Sandro & Vezzani, Antonio, 2015. "The production function of top R&D investors: Accounting for size and sector heterogeneity with quantile estimations," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 44(2), pages 381-393.
    18. Seebens, Holger, 2008. "One size fits all? Female Headed Households, Income Risk, and Access to Resources," 2008 International Congress, August 26-29, 2008, Ghent, Belgium 43609, European Association of Agricultural Economists.
    19. Yang, Dennis Tao & An, Mark Yuying, 2002. "Human capital, entrepreneurship, and farm household earnings," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 68(1), pages 65-88, June.
    20. Stern, David I., 2008. "Derivation of the Hicks Elasticity of Substitution from the Input Distance Function," MPRA Paper 12414, University Library of Munich, Germany.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Labor and Human Capital;

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:ags:jlaare:54549. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: AgEcon Search (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/waeaaea.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.