2019, Volume 22, Paper 13
ISSN: 2209-6612
Farm Economic Research and the Case Study Approach
Alexandria Sinnett, Bill Malcolm, Claire Lewis and Christie Ho
Abstract
The ‘representative firm’ of the theory of the firm has a long and respected history in economic thought. Yet, farm economists are required to put in undue, even unseemly, effort defending using representative case study farms to researchers in non-economic disciplines whose focus is on the empirics of generalising from representative samples to populations. Research that uses the ‘whole farm approach’ into typical case study farms – ‘representative firms’ – adds to other methods of inquiry by investigating deeply how and why the farm firm works, considering the people, technology, management, dynamics, risk, uncertainty and influences beyond the farm to determine ‘what is’, to identify causes and effects, and to imagine ‘what could be’. The focus in using a farm as the unit of analysis in farm economic analysis is to identify and solve problems that stand in the way of farmers achieving their goals. The results from analyses of representative whole farms test, and add insight to, economic theory about how farms work and not to how populations of farms work. Applied analysis for management of farms requires adequate modelling of relevant detail and complexity, and our experience suggests that the diversity of detail and complexity across farms in Australia commonly goes unrecognised in aggregative analysis, vitiating the reliability of aggregate representations of states of affairs. Importantly, case analyses can indicate the inappropriateness of specific aggregate analysis a priori. As a component of farm case analysis, the whole farm approach exposes fallacious methods of aggregated analysis: the widespread ‘get the facts’ and partial ‘analyses’ of much of what passes for ‘farm systems analysis’. The aim of this paper is to give those new to farm economic research arguments to justify using the case study approach, to share the authors’ insights of using the case study approach in farm economic research and to highlight errors in agricultural science/agricultural systems research that result from ignoring economic principles.
Key words: Farm economics, case study, whole farm approach
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