La spécialisation des exploitations agricoles : changements techniques et prix des facteurs

Abstract

The process of specialisation of French farms : technical changes and input price trend. For decades, the French agricultural sector has been characterised by farm specialisation and concentration. The competitive equilibrium with a finite number of farms is the framework to analyse the changes in scale and scope economies and their consequences on the respective competitiveness of specialised and diversified farms. This theoretical approach shows how the input price trend may explain the farm specialisation process through these technical changes. Accordingly, the empirical analysis deals with the dissociation of the animal and vegetal production lines, observed in the French farms. According to our theoretical framework, the specialisation process was mainly linked to the relative increase of the labour price compared to the other input prices. Up to 1987, the specialisation permitted the substitution of labour by other inputs at the sector level. In the same time, this input substitution at the farm level was higher in surviving diversified farms than in specialised farms. As a consequence, specialisation would not have induced more labour savings at the sector level after 1987, and the specialisation process has been stopped since.