SOURCES OF PRODUCTIVITY GROWTH DURING THE TRANSITION TO ALTERNATIVE CROPPING SYSTEMS

Traditional measures of productivity growth may not fully account for all sources of growth during the transition from conventional to alternative cropping systems. This paper treats soil quality as part of the production process and incorporates it directly into rotational measures of productivity growth. An application to data from an experimental cropping system in Pennsylvania suggests that both experimental learning and soil-quality improvements were important sources of growth during the system's transition.