IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/taf/ragrxx/v51y2012i2p1-21.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Agricultural economics: an exoteric or esoteric science?

Author

Listed:
  • N. Vink

Abstract

The main argument in this article is that agricultural economists in South Africa must address at least two fundamental questions, namely: (1) “What is the influence of public policy on the structure of agriculture?” and (2) “What is the influence of the governance of farm businesses on their success from a financial, economic, social and environmental point of view?” These questions have been at the core of the profession of agricultural economics since its beginning, but if agricultural economists want to provide useful answers they will need to revisit the currently dominant paradigm of applied microeconomics. As a profession, agricultural economists have not kept pace with a number of new developments in economics; have ignored the lessons of history; have lost their connection with the everyday realities of farming; and have paid insufficient attention to new developments in systems thinking.

Suggested Citation

  • N. Vink, 2012. "Agricultural economics: an exoteric or esoteric science?," Agrekon, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 51(2), pages 1-21.
    • Handle: RePEc:taf:ragrxx:v:51:y:2012:i:2:p:1-21
    DOI: 10.1080/03031853.2012.695135
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/03031853.2012.695135
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1080/03031853.2012.695135?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
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    More about this item

    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:taf:ragrxx:v:51:y:2012:i:2:p:1-21. 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.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using 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: Chris Longhurst (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.tandfonline.com/ragr20 .

    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.