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Drawing on Boserupian and induced innovation principles, this review explores how the farm technologies and practices associated with integrated soil management and sustainable intensification may vary spatially according to the heterogenous ways in which economic transformation and population dynamics are influencing agricultural factor prices. Long-term trends in many areas are encouraging intensification of capital inputs, including fertilizer use. However, low agronomic efficiency of nitrogen poses a major constraint on fertilizer profitability and use. Integrated soil and agronomic management practices can improve the agronomic efficiency of fertilizer use, but achieving greater adoption of such practices will require greater understanding of best practices for the wide range of environmental conditions and farmer resource constraints in the region. Because sustainable resource managment best practices are highly localized and knowledge-intensive, massively increased investment in localized adaptive farm-level research and extension systems will be required to catalyze sustainable intensification in Africa.

The five chapters on regional issues in agricultural development provide an overview of the various regional experiences and the transformation of agrifood systems. In these chapters, as well as in Chapter 1, the validity of the Hayami-Ruttan induced innovation hypothesis (Hayami and Ruttan 1985) was graphically examined, particularly by looking at growth paths of land and labor productivities in various countries and across major regions. Also examined were emerging trends of agricultural transformation in these regions. This chapter summarizes regional experiences in productivity growth and agricultural transformation.

Technological change in agriculture is analyzed from the induced innovation perspective, in which such change represents a dynamic response to shifts in resource endowments and in the social and economic environments. The theory of induced innovation is tested against the history of agricultural development in the United States, Western Europe and Japan, and is presented as a useful tool in the planning ofįuture research.

This paper compares national-level data from India with 40 years of household panel data from rural India to track sectoral changes in employment and income as well as examine the hypothesis of induced innovation in agricultural production. In the national data, India appears to be in the midst of a structural transformation. The share of agriculture in GDP and employment has shrunk while agricultural output continues to grow. This productivity growth appears to adhere to the induced innovation hypothesis, as productivity per hectare has increased more rapidly than productivity per worker. Many of the same patterns exist in the household data. Tracking households across time, I observe agricultural output has increased, despite more households engaging in off-farm labor. Household agricultural production is highly specialized and has increased its reliance on improved inputs. However, while agricultural income has grown, industrial and service income has remained stagnant, and the relative income of these households has declined in recent years.

While Boserupian intensification processes have been documented in many parts of Africa, there is regional variation in the trends in relative prices of land, labor, and capital inputs such as fertilizer. Some rural areas are experiencing unprecedented spikes in land values associated with growing land scarcity, improved market access, and agricultural commercialization potential, while others remain economically isolated and less influenced by the transformational changes occurring elsewhere in the region. This study uses a panel spanning 13 years of 1208 smallholders in Kenya to assess whether households’ response to changes in relative factor prices varies by agro-ecological potential and market access. In areas of low agro-ecological potential, households respond to rising land prices by cultivating less land and applying fertilizer more intensively but do not appear to adjust fertilizer use in response to changing fertilizer prices. By contrast, households in areas of high agro-ecological potential do not appear to adjust the quantity of land under cultivation in response to changing input prices but increase fertilizer use as land prices rise and fertilizer prices fall. Finally, households with better market access conditions appear slightly more responsive to land price changes than do those with poor market access. Given anticipated trends in factor price ratios, this heterogeneity suggests that sustainable forms of agricultural productivity growth will require anticipating the kinds of farm management technologies that will be suitable for farmers in different conditions. This highlights the need for agricultural technology generation and diffusion programs that assist smallholders to overcome the constraints that may prevent them from adapting sufficiently on their own.

In 1964, around 11% of agricultural workers in America were prevented from entering the labor force. Using a text-search algorithm allocating patents to crops, I show that a negative labor-supply shock induced a sharp increase in innovation in technologies related to more affected crops. The effect is stronger for technology related to labor-intensive production tasks.

Applicability of the induced innovation hypothesis—that a change in relative input prices induces innovation to economize use of the increasingly expensive input (Hicks 1932)—is examined for U.S. public agricultural research. A reduced‐form test is developed using input prices from the agricultural production sector, expenditures from the public research sector aimed at developing new technology to save specific agricultural inputs, and variables to control for innovation marginal cost differences and nonhomotheticity. Unlike recent demand‐side studies that soundly reject the induced innovation hypothesis for agriculture, support for the hypothesis is found for several input pairings through these tests of public agricultural research using state‐level panel data.

This article uses nationally representative household-level panel data from Malawi to estimate how rural population density impacts agricultural intensification and household well-being. We find that areas of higher population density are associated with smaller farm sizes, lower real agricultural wage rates, and higher real maize prices. Any input intensification that occurs seems to be going to increasing maize yields, as we find no evidence that increases in population density enable farmers to increase gross value of crop output per hectare. We also find evidence that households in more densely populated areas increasingly rely on off-farm income to earn a living, but there appears to be a rural population density threshold beyond which households can no longer increase off-farm income per capita.

In Meru, Tanzania, changing land/labour ratios have, for over a century, been the main driving force in a farm intensification process. The construction and expansion of irrigation systems, increased use of farm inputs and transfer from low- to high-value agricultural crops have enabled smallholders to improve their land productivity. Technological change has been accompanied by institutional change, primarily in the form of changes to property right regimes and expanding markets. In the past few decades, increasing urban and rural demand has further enhanced smallholders' production strategies. By applying the induced innovation theory, this article captures and analyses the long-term incremental processes of change whereby endogenous technological and institutional innovations have led to farm intensification in the contemporary local system of agricultural smallholder production. Further, it shows how this process has been reinforced by improved access to market opportunities.

We explore how smallholder agricultural systems in the Kenyan highlands might intensify and/or diversify in the future under a range of socio-economic scenarios. Data from approximately 3000 households were analyzed and farming systems characterized. Plausible socio-economic scenarios of how Kenya might evolve, and their potential impacts on the agricultural sector, were developed with a range of stakeholders. We study how different types of farming systems might increase or diminish in importance under different scenarios using a land-use model sensitive to prices, opportunity cost of land and labour, and other variables. We then use a household model to determine the types of enterprises in which different types of households might engage under different socio-economic conditions. Trajectories of intensification, diversification, and stagnation for different farming systems are identified. Diversification with cash crops is found to be a key intensification strategy as farm size decreases and labour costs increase. Dairy expansion, while important for some trajectories, is mostly viable when land available is not a constraint, mainly due to the need for planting fodders at the expense of cropland areas. We discuss the results in relation to induced innovation theories of intensification. We outline how the methodology employed could be used for integrating global and regional change assessments with local-level studies on farming options, adaptation to global change, and upscaling of social, environmental and economic impacts of agricultural development investments and interventions.

History shows that farmers and their supporting institutions have been successful in introducing technological innovations to respond and adapt to environmental and socioeconomic challenges. Innovation itself is a mechanism by which society adapt to changing resource endowments, and which is in turn driven by social and cultural values. In the future, as resource conditions changes, the role of institutions in the process of technological innovations would be crucial to avoid deleterious consequences of climate change in agriculture. Using Nepal as a case, this paper illustrates how farmers and their supporting institutions are evolving and co-producing climate sensitive technologies on demand. Drawing upon the hypothesis of induced innovation, we examine the extent to which resource endowments have influenced the evolution of technological and institutional innovations in Nepal’s agricultural research and development. This study reveals that Nepal has developed a novel multilevel institutional partnership, including collaboration with farmers and other non-governmental organizations in recent years. More importantly, by combining conventional technological innovation process with the tacit knowledge of farmers, this new alliance has been instrumental in the innovation of location-specific technologies thereby facilitating the adoption of technologies in a more efficient manner. This alliance has improved knowledge network among institutions, scientists and farmers and enabled them to seek technologies that are responsive to likely changes in climate.

The development of technological solutions to minimize risks of the current climate can lead to two possible outcomes: increase in agricultural productivity and insights about adaptation to future climate change. Drawing on the hypothesis of induced innovation, we investigate whether spatial variations in climatic resources prompted the development of location-specific technologies that led to increased rice productivity in Nepal. Using Nepal's district-level time-series data (1991–1992 and 2002–2003), this article examines the extent to which technological innovations have provided farmers with means to respond to climatic constraints to enhance rice productivity in climatically marginal regions of the country. Complementing this analysis with relevant case studies, we also investigate how and to what extent Nepal's research establishments have provided farmers with technological options to alleviate climatic constraints in rice cultivation across the country's climatically diverse terrain. The findings ...

The major objective of this article is to measure the inter-regional difference in agricultural productivity of China, and then to test empirically whether or not some relevant hypotheses with respect to agricultural technology are valid. The analysis shows that biochemical (BC) technological changes account for a significant part of China's agricultural production growth. This result is consistent with the fact that China's factor endowments are characterized by abundant farm labor relative to scarce arable land. Besides, in accordance with the standard theory of market failure, the benefits accruing to BC technological development are not privately appropriable. Thus, it can be hypothesized that the inter-regional difference in BC technological attainment must be closely associated with public spending in agricultural R&E activities at a local level. The random effects model reveals that the BC technological level is high in provinces where the public sectors are seriously committed to R&E activities. In addition, the analysis lends strong support to the validity of the induced innovation hypothesis with respect to M technological progress.

In general, societies are divided into agricultural and industrial types. This study presents theoretical and historical perspectives on decelerating agricultural societies. Agricultural demand and supply play major roles in society development. Three descriptions of an agricultural society and theories of its deceleration patterns are presented: the neo-classical production function, stage theory, and induced innovation. Two important cases of decelerating agricultural societies and their ultimate replacement by industrial societies, Europe and the United States from preindustrial to the early industrial era are examined. The limitations of decelerating agricultural societies with a focus on structural problems, impacts of industrial structure, and problems of agriculture in market and non-market areas, are also discussed. The position of agriculture as described by economic development theory is established by analyzing the stages of economic development, the theory of structural change, and the theory of leading industry. Finally, the transition from an agricultural to a commercial society is described with a focus on the formation, development, value creation, and structural limitations of a commercial society.

The hypothesis of induced innovation is tested for U.S. agriculture using a high-quality state-level panel data set and three disparate testing techniques—time series, direct econometric, and nonparametric. We find little support for the hypothesis. That conclusion is robust across testing techniques. However, as with all empirical tests of this hypothesis conducted to date, ours focus only on the demand side of the hypothesis. The hypothesis could have been rejected simply because the marginal cost of developing and implementing input-saving technologies for the relatively expensive inputs is greater than for the relatively cheap inputs. Copyright 2009, Oxford University Press.

This article explains the lasting transition crisis of Russian agriculture by applying Hayami & Ruttan's theory of induced innovation. The empirical analysis uses Russian farm data. For various types of farms factor intensities and partial factor productivities are calculated to identify differences in productivity between them. We identify the mechanism through which institutional frictions in Russia influence the choice of technology and the adaptation of technological change. Finally, policy recommendations are derived to make technical change more consistent with relative factor supplies and prices, and improve productivity, especially of inefficient farm types. In our view nothing speaks in favour of expensive Western ‘high-tech’ machinery imports to enhance the efficiency of Russian farms (especially larger ones). Until now the poor operation of domestic markets in Russia has obstructed a sufficient supply of Russian technology consistent with relative scarcities.

In the literature on the evolution of farming systems in Sub-Saharan Africa, the theses of Malthus and Boserup seem to offer contrasting views on rural development. The purpose of the present study is to revisit these theses and empirically examine them through a case study of northern Cote d’Ivoire. We surveyed a sample of farms in four villages in the Dikodougou region during three agricultural seasons. The villages mainly differ regarding their population density and historical genesis. Comparative analysis of the villages and farm types identifies population pressure as a key factor of the evolution of farming systems in this region. Our empirical analysis shows that Boserupian and Malthusian processes coexist, rather than contrast. Through mechanisation and intensification, Boserupian innovation has been largely able to compensate for the Malthusian repercussions of increasing population pressure. However, in a first stage demographic pressure engenders migration, i.e. Malthusian population control, rather than Boserupian mechanisms of induced innovation, which seem to be unleashed after a critical population density is attained.

The induced innovation hypothesis is tested for the USA and western regions using cointegration procedures. An error correction model separates short-run and long-run effects of relative price changes. A significant difference in the elasticities of factor substitution along the isoquant and the innovation possibility curve implies induced innovation. The estimated results support the hypothesis for Washington, the Pacific Northwest, and the Western Region, but not for the nation. Corroborative tests of weak exogeneity fail to support the hypothesis in any of the geographic units. Changes in output level and research investment do not significantly bias agricultural technology in the USA.

Technical change is inherently unobservable and has conventionally been represented by proxy variables, from simple time trends to more sophisticated knowledge stock variables. This paper follows Lambert and Shonkwiler (1995) in modelling technical change as a stochastic unobservable variable and tests this formulation against the alternative of using R&D and patent indices. This is done by fitting a system of share equations, derived from the dual profit function, to production data for South African agriculture. Each equation includes both unobserved technical change components and technical proxy variables. Variable deletion tests show that conventional proxy variables fail to explain the biases of technological change, while cointegration tests show that technical change is both stochastic and biased. The latent variables provide estimates of biases that are consistent with past studies and the historical record and can be explained by policy change in South Africa following WWII. The demonstration of...

The present paper investigates the magnitude and the Hicksian output and input biases of technological change brought about by investments in public agricultural research and extension activities in Japan. Given this objective, it estimates a translog multiproduct cost function for 1957–1997. Empirical results show that the cost reduction effects were fairly large. The Hicksian (1932) biases were found to be: (i) livestock-augmenting; (ii) labor- and other-inputs-saving; and (iii) machinery- and intermediate-inputs using. Except for other inputs, the directions of the biases are consistent with the Hicksian (1932) induced innovation hypothesis, which supports the public-sector-induced-innovation model proposed by Hayami and Ruttan (1985) and Ohtsuka (1982).

Since the publication of the World Development Report 2008, two related strands of research have emerged—one on the validity of smallholder-led development strategy and the other on agricultural intensification under population pressure. The former casts doubt about the role of agriculture in economic development in smallholders dominated countries and the later provides evidence that are contrary to earlier findings on induced innovation theory. Using a unique panel dataset, we examine whether these arguments are valid for Bangladesh—a densely populated country that has experienced significant growth in recent decades. The results suggest that (1) agriculture as a source of income declined significantly over the past two decades; (2) the operated farm size stopped declining in the late 1980s; and (3) that population density relates positively with a host of agricultural intensifications indicators with no evidence of threshold. Historical data on real prices, domestic surpluses, and other macroeconomic variables lend further support to these results. Thus, the paper concludes that small-holding was not a deterrent to structural changes in Bangladesh thus far and that agricultural intensification continued amid intense population pressure.

Technological research and development are among the most frequently advocated strategies for adapting agriculture to possible future changes in climate. However, while many statements point to the reliance that is placed on technology, and to the power of induced innovation, the actual process of agricultural research and development has received little explicit consideration in the context of climatic constraints on food production. This paper offers both a descriptive assessment and empirical analysis of the place of technology research and development in climate adaptation research and planning. Insights into the assumed role of technology are developed through a review of the published literature and recent commentary. The role of technological innovation in the handling of climatic risks is then explored empirically in an analysis of innovation research and development in the Ontario soybean industry. This reveals an array of technological innovations that have helped Ontario soybean-growers manage climatic challenges to date, as well as a range of potential constraints on the innovation process itself.

This paper proposes a methodology to investigate the process of technical change with a focus on the dynamic effects of R&D investments on productivity, and on the induced innovation hypothesis for both inputs and outputs. The approach builds on a nonparametric representation of the underlying technology. An application to U.S. agriculture is presented. By distinguishing between private and public R&D investments, the analysis provides useful insights into the source and the dynamic nature of technical progress. © 1997 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology

This paper exploits the properties of the third order approximation of the translog cosl function lo estimate the input demand elasticities and factor-saving biases of technological change for UK agriculture. Then, cointegration techniques are used to determine the time series properties of the variables, eslablish cointegration and test for causality. The tests show that the single bias, single relative price approach, applied to the cumulative biases in previous tests, is inappropriate. Maximum likelihood techniuues show that cointegrating vectors exist and that the input prices are negatively related to the biases, as required by the hypothesis. The prices are causally prior to the biases, but for crop inputs there is also reverse causality.

This paper calculates multilateral Malmquist indices of total factor productivity (TFP) for agriculture in 47 African countries, for the period 1961–91. The average rate of TFP growth was found to be 1.27 per cent, which is higher than expected, given the pessimistic nature of much of the literature. There is some evidence of convergence in productivity levels, as the countries with low starting levels grew more rapidly. Population pressure on the land also appears to be a major explanation of faster growth, as has been suggested by Boserup and by Hayami and Ruttan's induced innovation hypothesis. However, fitting deterministic and stochastic frontier models shows that the effect of agricultural R&D on TFP growth is also positive and significant. © 1997 by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

This paper investigates the cause for the decline in the growth of productivity in Japanese agriculture since the late 1960s. For this objective, it investigates the effects of research and extension (R&E) activities on the extent and the direction of the bias of technological change in Japanese agriculture for the period 1960-90 based on the trans log cost function framework. Empirical results show that the cost-reducing effects of R&E measured in terms of the absolute value of the cost-R&E elasticity increased slightly from 0.194 in 1960 to 0.205 in 1965 and then decreased consistently to 0.110 in 1990. This finding is broadly consistent with the finding of the decline or slowdown in agricultural productivity since the late 1960s. The bias due to R&E was found to be toward labor, intermediate inputs, and other inputs saving on the one hand, and machinery and land using on the other. Labor-saving and machinery-using biases are consistent with the Hicksian induced innovation hypothesis. © 1997 Elsevier Science B.V.

Farmers' willingness to grow trees depends on many factors, and if governments or other organizations want farmers to grow more trees, these factors need to be understood. This article describes the expansion of the tree component in farming systems in recent decades in the Gunung Kidul district of Java. This trend is then explained with elements of the induced innovation model of agricultural development, viz. resource endowment, demand for products and institutional aspects. An increase in the productivity of staple crops seems to have been an important factor permitting farmers to plant trees. Another factor related to resource endowment that induced farmers to grow trees is the response to declining soil productivity as a result of erosion. The Indonesian government's trade and pricing policy for certain tree products has supported the favourable market trend for these products, and has induced farmers to plant fruit and fodder trees in particular. Improvement of the (physical) infrastructure has demonstrably encouraged tree growing. Examples are given of technological change in tree growing that result from farmers' own innovation as well as from research done by various organizations.

One of the most remarkable changes in Japanese agriculture since the late-1950s has been a drastic decline in labor with dramatic increases in machinery and intermediate input, as seen in Figure 1.3 presented in Chapter 1.1 These changes in relative factor uses in agricultural production have played important roles in the process of economic growth, not only in the agricultural but also in the non-agricultural sectors. In agriculture, the drastic declines in labor have increased the levels of labor productivity at a fairly high rate of about 3 per cent per year on average for the entire study period 1957–97.2 At the same time, the tremendous migratory inflow has also contributed significantly to the growth of the non-agricultural sectors, in particular during the 1957–75 period.

This paper examines whether the development path of South African agriculture has been consistent with its resource endowments. Within an induced innovation framework the two stage constant elasticity of substitution (CES) production function is used and results in a direct test of the inducement hypothesis which are applied to data for South African commercial agriculture for the period 1947–91. Cointegration is established, and an error correction model (ECM) constructed. The results indicate that factor price ratios are not the sole cause of factor-saving biases of technological change. Public choice and macroeconomic incentives played a significant role resulting in a distorted development path.

To meet the [African] crisis one must turn to agricultural-led growth. But, based on historical experience, an agricultural-led strategy must be framed in no less than a twenty-year horizon and must entail a combination of technological innovation, policy reform, and institutional restructuring because each, by itself, is limited. (Eicher, 1989)

The induced innovation hypothesis of Hayami & Ruttan (1971, 1985) Agricultural Development: An International Perspective (Baltimore, Johns Hopkins) provides the focus for many subsequent studies of technical change in agriculture. Using inter alia US data, they provide convincing support for their hypothesis. We reconsider Hayami & Ruttan's econometric equations using cointegration analysis. Our results lend only limited support to Hayami & Ruttan's hypothesis and indicate a revised hypothesis whereby the rate of change in relative factor use is determined by relative factor prices.

This paper investigates the role of induced innovation in the development of American agriculture from 1880 to 1980. The induced innovation hypothesis, most closely associated with the work of Yujiro Hayami and Vernon W. Ruttan, argues that successful economies develop technologies in accordance with market price signals to loosen constraints on growth imposed by factor scarcities. The analysis employing new state and regional level data fails to find support fo r their hypothesis. This paper suggests that many of the fundamental generalizations about American agricultural development need to be considered and redirects attention to the role of settlement, changi ng crop patterns, and biological investments in explaining changes in factor utilization. Copyright 1993 by University of Chicago Press.

Grubler, Nakicenovic, Nordhaus, and their distinguished contributors offer a unique, single-volume overview of the most contemporary theoretical and empirical work on technological change. Beginning with a survey of existing research, they provide analysis and case studies in contexts such as medicine, agriculture, and power generation, paying particular attention to what technological change means for efficiency, productivity, and reduced environmental impacts, especially in the context of global climate change. The book includes a historical analysis of technological change, an examination of the overall direction of technological change, and general theories about the sources of change. The contributors empirically test hypotheses of induced innovation and theories of institutional innovation. They propose ways to model induced technological change and evaluate its impact, and they consider issues such as uncertainty in technology returns, technology crossover effects, and clustering.

In this paper, we assess how production costs and capital accumulation patterns in agriculture have evolved over time, by paying special attention to the influence of risk. A dynamic state-contingent cost-minimisation approach is applied to assess production decisions in US agriculture over the last century. Results suggest the relevance of allowing for the stochastic nature of the production function which permits to capture both the differences in the costs of producing under different states of nature and the differences in the evolution of these costs over time, as well as the differential impacts of different states of nature on investment decisions. Oxford University Press and Foundation for the European Review of Agricultural Economics 2010; all rights reserved. For permissions, please email journals.permissions@oxfordjournals.org, Oxford University Press.

This paper takes the viewpoint of a social scientist and looks at agricultural scientists' pathways for science impact. Awareness of these pathways is increasingly becoming part and parcel of the professionalism of the agricultural scientist, now that the pressure is on to mobilize smallholders and their productive resources for (global) food security and for reducing persistent rural poverty. Significant new thinking about pathways is emerging and it is useful to present some of this, even if it is not cut-and-dried. This new thinking focuses on innovation, not as the end-of-pipe outcome of development and transfer (or `delivery¿) of results of research to `ultimate users¿, but as a process of technical and institutional change at farm and higher system levels that impacts on productivity, sustainability and poverty reduction. This paper will review technology supply push; farmer-driven innovation; market-propelled or induced innovation based on the agricultural treadmill; participatory technology development; and innovation systems. The pathways reviewed all have their merits; the paper will assess them from the perspective of improving smallholder productivity and livelihoods. This paper concludes that many agricultural scientists have not developed their thinking about how the fruits of their work can help make the world a better place. This is a flaw in their professionalism. Curriculum development, training, promotion criteria, standards used in refereeing journal articles and research funding could benefit from taking on board understanding of pathways of science-for-impact.

Este artigo teve como objetivo identificar e analisar a dinâmica de crescimentoda cafeicultura em Minas Gerais e em duas regiões do estado tipicamenteprodutoras – Sudoeste e Cerrado. O referencial teórico utilizado baseia-se na teoriade inovação induzida. O modelo analítico é o denominado Shift-Share, que permitedecompor as fontes de crescimento nos efeitos área, rendimento, localização geográ-fica e composição, a fim de encontrar os fatores responsáveis pelo crescimento (ouqueda) da produção. Os resultados apresentados indicam que existem diferenças nosfatores que determinam o crescimento da produção de café na região mais tradicional(Sudoeste) comparada à região relativamente mais moderna (Cerrado). Assim,pode-se salientar que programas e políticas que visam o desenvolvimento agrícolade determinadas regiões devem levar em consideração as especificidades destas,de forma a estimular atividades e práticas agrícolas segundo suas necessidades eparticularidades, gerando o melhor impacto possível para as mesmas.

The hypothesis of induced innovation has been empirically tested in many ways, using a wide variety of data and test periods for many industries in many countries. However, each test has maintained the hypothesis that the relative marginal cost of developing and implementing technologies that save one input is the same as for any other input. Lacking data on development and implementation costs of input-saving technologies, we develop and use a nonparametric procedure to estimate relative differences required for technical change in U.S. agriculture to be consistent with the induced innovation hypothesis.

Technology adopted by Canadian farmers has been induced by changes in factor prices. This paper demonstrates the consistency of the change in factor prices to the bias of technical change. The analysis compares two distinctly different regions of Canada, the Prairies and central Canada. Les technologies qui ont ete adoptees par les agriculteurs canadiens ont ete influencees par l'evolution des prix des facteurs de production. Le present document montre la Constance des liens entre la fluctuation de ces prix et les changements technologiques. L'analyse compare deux regions fort distinctes du pays, soit les Prairies et le centre du Canada.

Reducing air and water pollution from livestock operations that are not regulated as concentratedanimal feeding operations (CAFOs) will require voluntary adoption of new practices and technologies.However, adoption of the manure management strategies and innovations suggested by scientistshas been disappointing. Increasing voluntary adoption of animal waste management strategieswill require improved understanding of the economic and social barriers and constraints that currentlylimit adoption. Before an innovation can be adopted, it must be invented and modified. Induced innovation theorysays that innovations are developed that economize on relatively scarce factors of production.The fact that pollution is not costly to the farmer means that technologies that reduce pollution areless likely to be developed in the free market. Therefore, well-designed regulations and policies canfacilitate the development of abatement technologies. For innovations that have been developed, a number of barriers to adoption exist. A review of theadoption and diffusion literatures in economics and sociology shows that perceived characteristicsof the innovation, characteristics related to the individual farm and farmer, as well as the social systemare important. Uncertainty regarding potential costs and benefits of manure management systemswill limit adoption and is accentuated by the complexity involved with animal and crop productionsystems. Increased information availability and trialing of innovations reduces uncertainty. Profitability, or lack thereof, is an important barrier to adoption of improved manure managementpractices. If storage structures and application equipment are required, credit constraints maybe an issue. In addition, the opportunity cost of time is an important factor with respect to both laborand management requirements. Transportation costs are a very important issue and will becomemore critical with phosphorous-based regulations. Compatibility with the goals of the farmer aswell as the current farming system is an important barrier to adoption of improved manure managementstrategies. Institutional constraints may also exist. Systems solutions, involving interdisciplinaryresearch, are required. Given the variability in farms, farmers, and location-related factors,different barriers will be most limiting and one-size-fits-all technologies and policies will not beappropriate. Methodological approaches and institutional incentives for systems research need to be designed.Technologies and policies that address the current barriers to adoption of manure managementstrategies need to be developed in a systems context. For example, production systems that result ina valuable product, which may involve multiple farm units, are needed.

We present direct econometric tests of the induced innovation hypothesis. We test whether the price of herbicides relative to labor, machinery, and land, as well as research stocks, affects the direction of technological change and long-run substitution of herbicides for labor, machinery, and land, in U.S. agriculture. In the long run, a decrease in the price of herbicides relative to labor induces a strong labor-saving and herbicide-using bias in technological change. Public research induces labor-saving, machinery-saving, land-saving, and herbicide-using biases. Exogenous changes in scientific knowledge and/or spillovers from other sectors are labor and machinery saving and herbicide using.