Attitude to the indicator of gross domestic product will help to understand the role of agriculture in the country.

Comprensive reply from LAP, but I liked human Development Index (HDI) devised by the United Nations Development Programme and the Index of Sustainable Economic Welfare (ISEW) developed by economist Herman Daly and theologian John Cobb. A third indicator, per capita grain consumption, is a useful measure of changes. 

Dear HOUNGBO_E

The possible indicators to measure agricultural development in a country includes; ecological indicator, economic indicator and social indicator.

Ecological indicators include; amount of fertilizer and pesticides used, irrigation water used, soil nutrient content, water use efficiency etc

Economic indicators: Crop productivity, net farm income, benefit-cost ratio of production and per capita food grain production.

Social indicators: These encompass food self -sufficiency, equality in food and income resource conservation.

It is a matter of productivity, income of farmers, stability in production and self-sufficiency, all count.

 Simply and synthetic indicators of agricultural development that in general can be calculated from national statistics are: 

- Agricultural Gross Production Value ($)/Agricultural Working Units (N)

- Agricultural Added Value ($)/Agricultural Working Units (N)

- Agricultural Intermediate Consumption Value ($)/Agricultural Working Units (N)

- Agricultural Investments Value ($)/Agricultural Working Units (N)

- Utilized Agricultural Land (ha)/Agricultural Working Units (N)

- Agricultural Gross Production Value ($)/Utilized Agricultural Land (ha)

- Agricultural Added Value ($)/Utilized Agricultural Land (ha)

- Agricultural Intermediate Consumption Value ($)/Utilized Agricultural Land (ha)

- Agricultural Investments Value ($)/Utilized Agricultural Land (ha)

Such indicators, of course, need cross analysis and interpretation.

Dear Massimo Canali.

Your presentation is simple and can be used easily. But, you don't add the criteria for decision making. I need that you indicate the value of each indicator with which an agricultural system can be declared more developed than another. Some examples of countries can be added for comparision.

Best regards.

Dera Massimo Canali,

Can we present all that in a table ?

Dear Mr Hungbo, agricultural development is not measurable as a physical quantity. The information you can draw from those indicators (as from any other possible indicator) needs always to be interpreted (also considering data comparability if you make comparisons between countries).

Here you can find a lot of data concerning EU countries. You can calculate the indicators and make comparisons:

https://ec.europa.eu/agriculture/statistics/agricultural/2013_en

Thanks.

Agricultural irrigated land (% total agricultural land)

Agricultural land (% land area)

Agricultural machinery, tractors per 100 sq. km of arable land

Agriculture, value added (% contribution GDP or NI)

Arable land (% land area)

Arable land (hectares per household or per individual)

Cereal yield (kg per hectare in kg compare to the world maximum or to potential)

Crop production index (2016-2017 = 100)

Employment in agriculture, female (% female employment and value addition used)

Employment in agriculture, male (% male employment and value addition)

Fertilizer consumption (kilograms per hectare of arable land)

Food production index (2016-2017 = 100)

Forest area (% of land area)

Forest area (sq. km)

Improved sanitation facilities, rural (% rural population with access rural=agricultural farming dominated)

Improved water source, rural (% rural population with access but here quality matters too)

Land area (sq. km)

Land under cereal production (hectares)

Livestock production index (2016-2017 = 100)

Permanent cropland (% land area if possible see the trend over years also to be sure)

Rural population

Rural population (% total population)

Rural poverty gap at national poverty lines (%)

Rural poverty headcount ratio at national poverty lines (% of rural population)

But this variables works the reality existent condition of your country development and reality conditioning factor in the sector and sub-sectors may change the variable on different conditions.    

Thank to every body.

You should use specialized managerial indicators, as financial, production, marketing, materials, human resources etc. Exemples of financial indicators: return on invesinvestment, payback time etc.

It is important too, ask to farmers about indicators, they know their agroecosystems.

Dear HOUNGBO,

You have asked a very interesting question. Actually, I have analyzed agricultural development for an Indian state during my masters. I have measured various dimensions of agricultural development along with determining the levels of agricultural development and analyzing inequalities in agricultural development.

You can download my thesis from the link below: https://ageconsearch.umn.edu/record/258034?ln=en

If you had any question, please feel free to write me.

Good Luck,

In view of the fact that agricultural development is crucial for improving the

quality of life, welfare, food security and the nutritional capacity of the people etc., It presupposes that balancing all this variables with respect to levels of

agricultural development necessitates categorizing and rating the areas concerned.

I agreed with Essien comment because you are asking about "development" so you should include some human development indicators like educational level and access: access to education, access to health care, access to drinkable water (not only irrigation), access to electricity, etc. Education, for example, is key because we have many new technologies and we need people with skills to use it. These areas will show you not only the development level but also some of the main barriers to development plans. Good luck!

I think you have gained a lot of indicators and knowledge already, but my opinion is use key indicators to see the overall picture. it will help you to compare across the countries as well. Perhaps you may able to define few indicators by combining couple of them together. when you select indicators , make sure to avoid similar indicators and concern the data availability. Some indicators are not available in all areas and data bases may not accurate or strong to forecast. thus select according to the country but strong representation of the whole picture.  

There are large number of such parameters. To be brief we can capture most of the factors by using the following

I will suggest to consider in your analysis not only the primary sector but also the agribusiness sector (agriculture+agribusiness) to capture development through aggregation of value added and multiplier effects.  You will see in the publication by the World Bank ratios of primary agriculture to agribusiness quite revealing of the stage of agricultural development in different countries (World Bank Group. 2015. Enabling the business of agriculture. Washington DC, World Bank Group.

Another way of doing it is by calculating multipliers effects of primary the agriculture with agribusiness and other sectors of the economy. The higher the forward linkages of agriculture with the rest of the economy the more develop is the sector (Trejos, R; Arias, J; Segura, O; Vargas, E. 2004. More Than Food on the Table : Agriculture ’ S True Contribution. San Jose, Costa Rica, IICA, 1-116.). The problem is that you need input-output tables or social accounting matrices to calculate this. 

Another way is by calculating multiplier elasticities using econometric methods.   It requieres long times series but at least you avoid social accounting matrices (Arias, J. 2010. The Contribution of Agriculture to Sustainable Development in Jamaica. San Jose, Costa Rica, IICA).

Other accounting measures are necessary to combine quantitative and qualitative data to take in consideration other than the economic dimension of agricultural development, such as social, environmental and institutional development (Sepúlveda, S; Chavarría, H; Rojas, P. 2005. Metodlogía para estimar el nivel de desarrollo sostenible de los territorios rurales. San Jose, Costa Rica, IICA (Instituto Interamericano de Cooperación para la Agricultura).

Finally, I also suggest and adaptation to the way the performance of Agricultural GDP is normally measured (only measures growth in the volume of production) to also measure the evolution of income of the factors of production (Paz, J; Benavides, H; Arias, J. 2009. Measuring agricultural GDP performance: a technical note. COMUNIICA 2009).  

As suggested before, total factor productivity is another very important way of measuring the performance or development of the sector (Hurley, TM; Rao, X; Pardey, PG. 2014. Re-examining the Reported Rates of Return to Food and Agricultural Research and Development. American Journal of Agricultural Economics 96(5): 1-13.)

Regards, 

https://www.worldbank.org

https://goo.gl/0Z9Onc

https://goo.gl/yGQJdY

http://argus.iica.ac.cr/Esp/regiones/sur/chile/Documents/BIOGRAMA%202008.pdf

http://goo.gl/TrPFmd

http://ajae.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/doi/10.1093/ajae/aau047

The most common indicator of efficiency in agrarian business is EBITDA / hectare.

Don’t think of ‘easy’ indicators. The space is non-ergodic. See Preprint Public-Private Partnerships (PPP) in Africa: Harking the Holonomic

The problem is that our research should be understood not by doctrine, but by ordinary people, then there will be no such gap between science and production.

easy, the number of poor, the number of rural immigrants to cities and other countries, rural poverty, food imports, these are determining factors of whether a country has agricultural development

Two basic indicators to measure the level of agricultural development in a country are:

1.Productivity and

2. Profitability.

Also, we can see the rural and urban infrastructural developmental indicators which directly/indirectly affect agricultural development.

In addition to productivity and profitability, quality of the product also should be considered

I think it will take a while to build a global model. We are working on building specific and delimited models so that we can identify the facts that are common to them. Based on this commonality, we hope to establish some proposal for global dimensions (factors) and analytical categories (indicators).