The Performance of Agricultural Industrialization

Although advanced agricultural industrialization correlates fairly well with areas of superior physical environment and market access, there is no reason to assume that it is equally successful throughout these areas in the achievement of economic goals. Productivity and profitability are only two aspects of farming efficiency, and even they have become increasingly associated with internal and external diseconomies. National surveys of productivity distribution in American agriculture have usually used value of sales as the basic indicator. Productivity is inseparable from profitability, but the variation between the two makes it wise to consider profits as well as production in evaluating the success of agricultural industrialization.