Produtividade Agrícola nos Países da América Latina

This article studies the total factor productivity (TFP) in agriculture from 19 countries in Latin America in the period from 1961 to 2010. In the analysis of the countries’ economic performance, the parametric approach to stochastic frontier production is used. It is observed that all countries had positive TFP change in the period from 1961 to 2010, which showed product growth as well as positive technical progress. The greatest TFP variation in Brazil is 55.73%, while the smallest change is in Trinidad and Tobago, 42.06%. However, the change in technical efficiency showed to be decreasing to nearly 50% of all countries. In the case of scale efficiency, only Argentina, Brazil and Uruguay had positive average for the period. Regarding the change in allocative efficiency, all countries showed to be decreasing.