Eficiencia y resiliencia: el dilema de los productores agropecuarios en Colombia[Efficiency and resilience: the dilemma of crop and livestock producers in colombia]

This text assesses Colombian crop and livestock efficiency, looking forward to promoting the formulation of public policy for this sector. Since smallholders and agricultural laborers, specially peasants, are seen as underdeveloped, producers in different types of geographic and size conditions are compared, by using Stochastic Metafrontier techniques (SFA) and data from the 2011 Quality of life Survey (ECV). Results indicate that as more production inputs are used, efficiency does not increase. In addition, it was found that as the size of production units grows, these units tend to employ resources more efficiently. Moreover, the greater the distance from the nearest wholesale market, the more inefficient units are. Finally, a critique of the methodologies and theoretical foundations used to characterize small-scale producers in Colombia is presented. This approach attempts to promote the use of less biased efficiency measures, that is, to account for the changing environments the units under analysis affront.