Open Collections

Coomes, Oliver T.; Barham, Bradford L.; MacDonald, Graham K.; Ramankutty, Navin; Chavas, Jean-Paul

Increased global agricultural output since the 1990s has been largely driven by innovations that raised the use efficiency of labor, land, capital and other inputs—referred to as total factor productivity (TFP) growth. Yet, debates over the future of farming still weigh heavily on models of agricultural land use and socioecological tradeoffs along traditional (partial-factor productivity) growth paths of ‘intensification’ or ‘extensification’. Overlooking the role of TFP in the evolution of global agriculture not only obscures the changing drivers of productivity growth but misses vital linkages with agricultural sustainability and farming system resilience. We describe two pathways for growth—technology-based and ecosystem-based—and link these in a heuristic framework that emphasizes sustainability and resilience outcomes in farming systems. Interdisciplinary research is urgently needed to empirically examine the dynamic interplay of TFP growth, farming system sustainability and resilience. Such insights are needed to transform TFP growth as metric into actionable efforts on farms and beyond.

Text

2019-07-10

Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International

http://hdl.handle.net/2429/70222

Coomes, O. T., Barham, B. L., MacDonald, G. K., Ramankutty, N. & Chavas, J.-P. Leveraging total factor productivity growth for sustainable and resilient farming. Nature Sustainability 2, 22–28 (2019).

Reviewed

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/