Inverse Relationship between Farm Size and Land Productivity-A Product of Science or Imagination

and Land Productivity A Product of Science or Imagination?
Pol Barbier This paper intends to show, with the help of an empirical enquiry in the Hooghly district of West Bengal, that the 'inverse' relationship between farm size and land productivity in Third World countries, the existence of which is taken for granted in textbooks on development, does not stand a careful examination of the data. On the con- trary, strong doubts can be raised about the very existence of a functional relationship between these two variables. Consequently, it is here argued that land productivity differentials, in order to be properly explained, ought not to be analysed in the restrictive size-productivity framework; they should not, moreover, be apprehended from pooted or aggregated data.