@article{Kingwell:176800,
      recid = {176800},
      author = {Kingwell, Ross S.},
      title = {Managing complexity in modern farming},
      journal = {Australian Journal of Agricultural and Resource Economics},
      address = {2011},
      number = {428-2016-27991},
      pages = {23},
      year = {2011},
      abstract = {Modern farming in Australia is no longer simple. Farms are  large, multi-enterprise
businesses underpinned by expensive  capital investments, changing production  technologies,
volatile markets and social challenges. The  complexity of modern broadacre
farming leads to the  question: what is the nature of the relationship between  farm business
complexity and farm profitability? This study  uses bioeconomic farm modelling
and employs eight measures  of complexity to examine the profitability and  complexity
of a wide range of broadacre farming systems in  Australia. Rank order correlations
between farm  profitability and each measure of complexity show  inconsistent relationships,
although the most profitable  farming systems are found to be reasonably complex
on  several criteria. Among the set of highly profitable  systems are found some
characterised by less complexity. A  commonly acknowledged feature of farm business
complexity  is the annual workload of the farmer, yet the trade-off  between farm profit
and this workload is found not to be  large. A case is outlined where the farmer’s
annual hours  worked could be reduced by 9 per cent for a 3 per cent  reduction in farm
profit. If farmers’ workloads are proving  problematic now, and in the future, then
agricultural R&D,  service delivery and policy development will need to focus  more on
being highly attractive to increasingly time-poor  farm managers.},
      url = {http://ageconsearch.umn.edu/record/176800},
      doi = {https://doi.org/10.22004/ag.econ.176800},
}