But everytime I have looked at the data, the US is not the leader in yield.
Corn is probably the crop for which the US has a natural advantage in terms of soil types, climate, etc.
Maybe someone has time to go to a library to check the publication, Agricultural Statistics, which I used. I tried to use the web version, which does not seem to give foreign comparisons any more.
On Sat, Aug 27, 2005 at 06:22:31PM -0400, Doug Henwood wrote:
> Michael, in your RRPE article you write:
>
> >Even for grain, yields in the United States are not
> >especially striking. For example, in 1998, farms in the United States
> >produced about 2.67 metric tons per hectare of wheat according to the
> >Department of Agriculture, slightly above the world average of 2.66.
> >Mexico produced 4.32, Belgium-Luxembourg 7.95, and the Netherlands
> >8.94.
>
> and
>
> >Corn yields in the United States were
> >just shy of 8.0 metric tons per hectare in 1988. The average for the entire
> >European Union was 9.0, where yields varied from 3.33 in Sweden to an
> >even 10.0 in Greece.
>
> According to the USDA tables at
> <http://www.fas.usda.gov/psd/intro.asp?circ_id=1>, US wheat
> production is just slightly above the world average - 2.90 vs 2.87
> tonnes per hectare in 2004-2005 (though note that that's up 9% from
> the yield you cite from 1998). Mexico is indeed considerably more
> productive - 4.44 - but the area under cultivation is tiny, about
> 1/40 that of the US, and just 0.2% of the world total (vs. over 9%
> for the US). So could it be that Mexico devotes only a small amount
> of prime land to wheat, making the comparison invalid? The USDA
> doesn't even report on the Benelux countries anymore, either, so they
> must also have been quite tiny. China, on the other hand, is
> massively productive in wheat - 4.18, with an even larger area under
> cultivation than the US. At 2.71, India also comes close to the US.
>
> But the numbers on corn don't support your argument at all. US corn
> yields per hectare were 10.07 tonnes, more than twice the world
> average (and up considerably from your 8.0 number from 1988). No
> other country comes close. Canada approaches 84% of US yields, but
> with only a fraction of the area the US devotes to corn.
>
> You try to make the US sound like a bit of a slouch, but it's not
> really. Unless I'm missing something in reading these numbers.
>
> Doug
>
> ----
>
> Michael Perelman wrote:
>
> >Wrong, Jim. I did not reply to your article. I never saw it until
> >I got my copy. I
> >wrote an article on my own.
>
> ___________________________________
> http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/mailman/listinfo/lbo-talk
-- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929
Tel. 530-898-5321 E-Mail michael at ecst.csuchico.edu