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- Title
CONGRUENCE VERSUS PROFITABILITY: A FALSE DICHOTOMY.
- Authors
Griliches, Zvi
- Abstract
The hybrid corn study concluded that one of the major factors accounting for the difference in the rate of acceptance of hybrid corn in different areas was the difference in the absolute profitability of the shift over from open pollinated to hybrid varieties. Thus even though the relative superiority of hybrids may have been the same in different areas, it meant much more to farmers in higher corn yield areas. It is informed that very little is known about the properties of hybrid sorghum varieties as yet, but it is probably safe to assume that, in this case as in the case of hybrid corn, their superiority over open pollinated varieties can be described well as a percentage increase in yield of about the same magnitude at different yield levels. If this is true, then a difference in the pre-hybrid level of sorghum yields would indicate differences in the absolute profitability of the shiftover to hybrids. Thus one would expect hybrid sorghum to spread faster in high sorghum-yield areas than in the lower-yield areas, and that is what is happening. Hybrid sorghums are spreading much faster in east and northeast Kansas than in west and southwest Kansas, and this pattern is clearly consistent with the difference in long-term yield levels of sorghum in different parts of Kansas.
- Subjects
KANSAS; UNITED States; HYBRID corn; HYBRID sorghum; AGRICULTURAL productivity; PROFITABILITY; AGRICULTURE
- Publication
Rural Sociology, 1960, Vol 25, Issue 3, p354
- ISSN
0036-0112
- Publication type
Article