Abstract
Corn is a crop that is widely distributed in the different regions of Brazil and plays an important role in human and animal nutrition. Although there have been productive advances in recent years, it is essential to maintain this trend to guarantee food security, especially in the face of population growth, income, and the use of biofuels, which demand raw materials from food crops. In this context, this paper analyzes the evolution of Total Factor Productivity (TFP) in Brazilian corn farming from 1995 to 2017, decomposing TFP growth to identify its determinants using a stochastic frontier model with microdata from the last three Agricultural Censuses. The results indicate that average TFP growth was 0.76% per annum in the period analyzed, driven mainly by technical progress, which grew at an average rate of 0.826% per annum. The determinants that explain changes in productivity due to observed and unobserved factors related to the production environment and changes in technical efficiency also positively affected productivity but to a lesser extent. On the other hand, scale effects and changes in climatic conditions had a negative impact on crop productivity.
Keywords:
productivity; total factor productivity; stochastic frontier; corn
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