@article{Ehui:173219,
      recid = {173219},
      author = {Ehui, Simeon K. and Spencer, Dunstan S.C.},
      title = {Measuring the sustainability and economic viability of  tropical farming systems: a model from sub-Saharan Africa},
      journal = {Agricultural Economics: The Journal of the International  Association of Agricultural Economists},
      address = {1993-12},
      number = {968-2016-75851},
      pages = {18},
      year = {1993},
      abstract = {New technologies must be developed in sub-Saharan Africa  which are sustainable and
economically viable. This paper  discusses a methodology for measuring the  agricultural
sustainability and economic viability of  tropical farming systems for new technology evaluation.
The  approach is based on the concept of interspatial and  intertemporal total factor
productivity, paying particular  attention to valuation of natural resource stock and  flows.
Agriculture is a sector which utilizes natural  resources (e.g. soil nutrients) and the stock and
flows of  these resources affect the production environment. However,  in many cases, the
stock of these resources is beyond the  control of the farmer and must be accounted for in  an
agricultural sustainability and economic viability  measurement. For example, soil nutrients
are removed by  crops, erosion or leaching beyond the crop root-zone, or  other processes
such as volatilization of nitrogen.  Agricultural production can also contribute to the stock  of
some nutrients by leguminous plants such as agroforestry  systems. Using a data set available
at the International  Institute of Tropical Agriculture, we compute the  intertemporal and
interspatial total factor productivity  indices for four cropping systems in southwestern
Nigeria  using stock of major soil nutrients as the natural resource  stock. Results show that
the sustainability and economic  viability measures are sensitive to changes in the stock  and
flow of soil nutrients as well as the material inputs  and outputs. Where the contribution of
natural resource  stock and flows are important (such as in the case of alley  cropping), the measures provide markedly different results  from conventional TFP approaches. The
advantage of this  approach is that interspatial and intertemporal total  factor productivity
measures are computed using only price  and quantity data, thus eliminating the need  for
econometric estimation.},
      url = {http://ageconsearch.umn.edu/record/173219},
      doi = {https://doi.org/10.22004/ag.econ.173219},
}