Land allocation among the main crops in Argentina: Estimation of price and land elasticities

GARCIA ARANCIBIA RODRIGO; EDITH DEPETRIS GUIGUET; GUSTAVO ROSSINI; CORONEL MARIANO

International Journal of Food and Agricultural Economics

Niğde University, Faculty of Economics and Administrative Sciences

Año: 2016 vol. 4 p. 63 - 75

In the past twenty years, there have been significant changes in land allocation among the main crops in Argentina. The aim of this paper was to analyze how those changes responded to variations in their relative prices in the short-term and quantify theirresponses. Additionally, it focused on understanding how the hectares devoted to aparticular crop responded to changes in the total planted area. For this purpose a system ofland allocation equations was estimated for the period 1980-2014. The results showed thatthe area planted with corn, soybean, sunflower and wheat responded to their own prices,being inelastic in all cases. A statistically significant and negative cross-price elasticity wasobserved for sunflower and corn. The other cross-price elasticities showed substitution forland use but they were not statistically significant. The land elasticities revealed to be elasticfor wheat and inelastic for corn, soybean and sunflowers, while not significant for sorghum.