Measuring and Comparing the Competitiveness of Heterogeneous Production Systems in Agriculture: A Note

The measurement of competitiveness in agriculture is often based on data for average or‘typical’ farms. However, if the farms that are summarized in this manner are heterogeneous, inferences based on aggregated measures can be misleading. The authors propose the calculation of competitiveness indicator distributions based on micro-data. This procedure makes it possible to determine for each product (a) the proportion of the farms producing it that is competitive and (b) the proportion of the total production/output value of the product that derives from competitive/uncompetitive farms. Furthermore, the authors propose and contrast distribution-based and aggregate-based approaches for ranking activities.