Impact of Full Time and Part Time Farming on Rural Households' Labor Productivity in Central Punjab, Pakistan

Abstract

Part time farming is very common to overcome the unexpected income fluctuations in agriculture and to fulfill the economic needs of large families in rural areas of Pakistan. But, it has implications on labor productivity. Therefore, the study objective was to assess the impact of full time and part time farming on rural households' labor productivity. For this purpose, the heads of 200 randomly selected rural households from the central Punjab region were directly interviewed. The study disclosed that the shifting from full time to part-time farming involves a self-selection process, and does not occur in a random manner. This study concentrated on the issue of sample selection with the application of propensity score matching. The results of logit regression for estimating p-score described that the farm households with few acres of land, small animal inventory, large family size, distant market, higher education level of family head and families with more sick members are more likely to engage in part-time farming. It was noted that the part-time farming has significant negative impact on agricultural labor productivity and positive impact on non-agricultural labor productivity. Similarly, full time farming has a significant positive impact on agricultural labor productivity. Part-time farming has potential of improving labor productivity of rural households in study area. Moreover, the well managed utilization of family resources, specifically, the use of family labor can contribute in uplifting the economic growth and development of rural areas in Punjab province.