FARMERS’ EDUCATION AND FARM PRODUCTIVITY. EVIDENCE FROM DENMARK AND FROM ROMANIA

Abstract

The structural issues of the agricultural sector have important consequences for the productivity and efficiency of farming. The paper focusses on the impact of farm managers training structure upon farm performance. Based upon data from Eurostat and Statistics Denmark, it is shown that, as expected, basic or full agricultural education of the farm manager has a positive impact on farm productivity, measured as statistical output divided by number of employees on the farm. Results are discussed in terms of the training structure of the farm managers in the two countries as capacity to perform better. In the case of Romania, the impact is striking. The productivity for farm managers who have basic agricultural training is 152% higher than productivity for farm managers, who have only practical experience, and productivity for farmers with full agricultural education is 106% higher than productivity for managers with only basic farm education. For Denmark the effect is less striking, but still very impressive.