The productivity of a region's
farms is important for many reasons. Aside from providing more
food, increasing the productivity of farms affects the region's prospects for growth and competitiveness on the agricultural market,
income distribution and savings, and labour migration. An increase in a region's agricultural productivity implies a more
efficient distribution of scarce resources. As farmers adopt new techniques and differences, the more productive farmers benefit from an increase in their welfare while farmers who are not productive enough will exit the market to seek success elsewhere. dairy factory in
Victoria. As a region's farms become more productive, its
comparative advantage in agricultural products increases, which means that it can produce these products at a lower
opportunity cost than can other regions. Therefore, the region becomes more competitive on the world market, which means that it can attract more
consumers since they are able to buy more of the products offered for the same amount of money. As productivity improvement leads to falling food prices, this automatically leads to increases in
real income elsewhere. Increases in agricultural productivity lead also to agricultural growth and can help to alleviate
poverty in poor and
developing countries, where agriculture often employs the greatest portion of the population. As farms become more productive, the wages earned by those who work in agriculture increase. At the same time,
food prices decrease and food supplies become more stable. Labourers therefore have more money to spend on food as well as other products. This also leads to agricultural growth. People see that there is a greater opportunity to earn their living by farming and are attracted to agriculture either as owners of farms themselves or as labourers. . It is not only the people employed in agriculture who benefit from increases in agricultural productivity. Those employed in other sectors also enjoy lower food prices and a more stable food supply. Their wages may also increase. As agricultural productivity grows, food prices decrease, allowing people to spend less on food, and combatting hunger.
India, one of the world's most populous countries, has taken steps in the past decades to increase its land productivity. In the 1960s
North India produced only
wheat, but with the advent of the earlier maturing high-yielding wheats and
rices, the wheat could be harvested in time to plant rice. This wheat/rice combination is now widely used throughout the
Punjab,
Haryana, and parts of
Uttar Pradesh. The wheat yield of three tons and rice yield of two tons combine for five tons of grain per
hectare, helping to feed India's 1.1 billion people. Investing in the agricultural productivity of women in farming communities is of particular importance in boosting
economic development and food security in parts of the
developing world. Women in some areas of the world, for example in Africa, traditionally have less agency than men, but are often also more invested in farming in terms of time spent. They are furthermore generally more responsible for childcare, thus their productivity is more likely to translate in gains for the family as a whole. However, unlike other animals, in humans greater development and prosperity has led to lower fecundity. Thus as productivity has increased and poverty has been reduced worldwide, population growth is declining. Research suggests we may actually face a declining world population in the future. ==Inverse relationship theory==