Economics of agricultural mechanization in southern Brazil

The path mechanization has taken and the government policies that molded this path were described and literature relating to the effects of mechanization were reviewed to provide background information. Tabular, covariance, and regression analyses were used with cross-sectional farm survey data to determine the impact of mechanization. The observations representing each situation were first characterized and compared by categorizing them on the basis of tractor ownership and land unit machine cost. Next, covariance analysis was employed to remove the influence of farm size. And, lastly regression analysis was used to measure the influence of mechanization on employment, productivity and efficiency among both the mechanized and non-mechanized sub-samples.