Trend of Soybean Total Factor Productivity in Hokkaido and Other Regions

Abstract

The total factor productivity (TFP) of soybean production was measured from 1987 to 2015 by the Tornqvist index for different production scales in the large-scale farming region Hokkaido and other remaining regions. The TFP increased gradually in both the Hokkaido and other regions, though the former continuously increased grain yield per unit area (YU) while the latter decreased it. The latter region increased the proportion of middle-to-large scale farmers with relatively high TFP and low YU, thereby resulting in the overall TFP increase and YU decrease in Japan. Results suggest that the two regions adopted different strategies to increase TFP.