Agricultural Productivity and Land Inequality: Evidence from the Philippines

Abstract

How do agricultural productivity gains affect the distribution of agricultural land? Exploiting three waves of census data from the Philippines covering 21 years and 17 million plots, this article finds that municipalities endowed with favorable soil and weather conditions for genetically modified (GM) corn cultivation experience a relative increase in landholding inequality. Agricultural land is decreasing during this period and this decrease is driven by a decline in the size of large farms. The introduction of GM corn slows down this process by keeping more land under cultivation, which contributes to the documented relative increase in inequality.