View article

There is growing interest by development scholars to revisit the inverse farm size-productivity (IR) hypothesis to guide policy on land and agricultural development strategies. However, it is remarkable that existing empirical studies, particularly in sub Saharan Africa (SSA), have been derived from data with few farms outside the zero to ten-hectare range, yet their findings have been extrapolated beyond this range. Moreover, the definition of productivity has mainly been limited to yield or other land productivity measures to explore this highly contested hypothesis. Using data from Zambia, this study addresses these shortcomings and explores the reasons for potential differences in productivity within and between farm size categories, so as to provide practical guidance for relevant policy formulation. Results from our carefully constructed measures of productivity--accounting for all production costs including less commonly considered costs such as family labor and fixed costs--reveal that the farm size-productivity relationship is not uniform across the four measures of productivity. While relatively large farms (medium-scale farms) enjoy labor productivity efficiency, they do not exhibit a superior efficiency advantage over small farms when other productivity measures are considered. With a multiple set of considerations to be made in setting land and agricultural policy, these findings indicate that prioritizing unutilized land for medium-over small-scale farms on efficiency grounds are unwarranted.