Does land fragmentation affect farm performance? A case study from Brittany. Factor Markets Working Paper No. 40, April 2013

Agricultural land fragmentation is widespread and may affect farmers’ decisions and impact farm performance, either negatively or positively. The authors investigated this impact for the western region of Brittany, France, in 2007, regressing a set of performance indicators on a set of fragmentation descriptors. The performance indicators (production costs, yields, revenue, profitability, technical and scale efficiency) were calculated at the farm level using Farm Accountancy Data Network (FADN) data, while the fragmentation descriptors were calculated at the municipality level using data from the cartographic field pattern registry (RPG). The various fragmentation descriptors enabled the authors to account for not only the traditional number and average size of plots, but also their geographical scattering. They found that farms experienced higher costs of production, lower crop yields and lower profitability where land fragmentation (LF) was more pronounced. Total technical efficiency was not found to be significantly related to any of the municipality LF descriptors used, while scale efficiency was lower where the average distance to the nearest neighbouring plot was greater. Pure technical efficiency was found to be negatively related to the average number of plots in the municipality, with the unexpected result that it was also positively related to the average distance to the nearest neighbouring plot. By simulating the impact of hypothetical consolidation programmes on average pre-tax profits and wheat yield, the study also showed that the marginal benefits of reducing fragmentation may differ with respect to the improved LF dimension and the performance indicator considered. The analysis therefore shows that the measures of land fragmentation usually used in the literature do not reveal the full set of significant relationships with farm performance and that, in particular, measures accounting for distance should be considered more systematically.

The Role of Environmental and Land Transaction Regulations on Agricultural Land Price: The example of Brittany. Factor Markets Working Document No. 52, June 2013

Using data from individual transactions for the period 1994-2010 in the French NUTS2 region Brittany, the authors investigated how environmental regulations and transaction land regulations influence the price of sold plots. Regressions on three sub-samples of buyers were performed in order to assess whether different buyers have different attitudes or plans regarding the farmland purchased: a sub-sample including only farmer-buyers, a sub-sample including non-farmer individual buyers, and a sub-sample including non-farmer non-individual buyers. Estimations were performed ignoring and accounting for spatial interactions (model SARAR). Results indicate that the price of land decreases when buyers are farmers, that the nitrate surplus area zoning increases the price of land, even more so for farmer-buyers. Regarding land transaction regulations, there is a negative effect, on land price, of the purchaser being the current tenant or being the land regulating public body SAFER. Estimating the model on different sub-samples depending on the buyers’ type shed light on the factors that are more important for each buyer.

Folk tales of Brittany,

Mode of access: Internet.

Farm houses, manor houses, minor chateaux and small churches, from the eleventh to the sixteenth centuries, in Normandy, Brittany and other parts of France,

Mode of access: Internet.

A childhood in Brittany eighty years ago /

"This little sheaf of childish memories has been put together from many talks, in her own tongue, with an old French friend."

Through Brittany.

Mode of access: Internet.

Anne of Brittany : an historical romance ...

Shaw-Shoemaker 22198.

Pictures and legends from Normandy and Brittany,

Mode of access: Internet.

The ancient chronicles of Sir John Froissart, of England, France, Spain, Portugal, Scotland, Brittany, and Flanders, and the adjoining countries;

Tr. of Chroniques.

Picturesque Brittany ...

Mode of access: Internet.

Studies in sentiment; apple-blossom in Brittany. The eyes of pride. Countess Marie of the angels. The dying of Francis Donne.

Bound in blue paper boards. Spine lacking.

Popular legends of Brittany : an English version of Sonvestre's [sic.] "Foyer Breton" from a German translation by Heinrich Bode /

"6th ed."