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Agricultural productivity is a synonym for agricultural efficiency. The yield per unit area is known as agricultural productivity. Agricultural productivity is generally the result of the physical, socioeconomic, and cultural factors. It is also affected by the managerial skill of the farmer. Agricultural productivity, however, is a dynamic concept which changes in space and time.
Agricultural productivity of a region is closely influenced by a number of physical (physiography, terrain, climate, soils, and water), socioeconomic, infrastructural institutional, and organisational factors. Agricultural productivity also depends on the managerial skill of the farmer, his attitude, and aspirations for the better standard of living.
The delineation of agricultural productivity has great significance in the planning of agriculture of a region. The main advantages are:
(i) It helps in ascertaining the relative productivity of the component areal units of a region, (ii) It helps in identifying the weaker areas which are lagging behind in agricultural productivity, (iii) The existing patterns of agricultural productivity is a reliable index to assess the agricultural development of the past.
(iv) It provides a sound base for the agricultural development planning.
Agricultural geographers and economists have developed a number of methods for the measurement of agricultural productivity. Some of the important methods used by the geographers are given as under:
1. Output per unit area.
2. Production per unit of farm labour.
3. Agricultural production as grain equivalent (Buck, 1967).
4. Input-output ratio (Khusro, 1964).
5. Ranking Coefficient Method (Kendall, 1939, Stamp, 1960).
6. Carrying capacity of land in terms of population (Stamp 1958).
7. Determining a productivity index on the basis of area and yield (Enyedi, 1964, Shafi 1972).
8. Determining an index of productivity with the help of area and production under various crops in the areal units and converting them in a uniform scale.
9. Converting total production in terms of money (Husain, 1976)
10. To assess the net income in Rupees per hectare of the cropped area (Jasbir Singh, 1985).
11. Assessing net income (farm business income) in Rupees per hectare of cropped area or per adult male unit of farm work-force (Tiwari, Roy, and Srivastava, 1997).
Each of the methods and techniques adopted by the agricultural geographers has its own merits and demerits. None of the techniques, however, gives satisfactory results at the national and/or global level. Some of the techniques are cumbersome and time-consuming to apply for the delineation of agricultural productivity regions. The Kendall’s technique of ranking coefficient used by many of the leading geographers for the demarcation of agricultural productivity regions has been illustrated below.