Land Resources and Agricultural Exports Nexus

Abstract Research background As part of the process of structural transformation that countries go through in their development journey, the relative significance of agriculture as a sector typically shrinks over time. Nonetheless, the agricultural sector maintains its significance in terms of its trade potential and global employment prospects to this day. The extant literature largely neglects the impact of countries’ land resources on agricultural trade by emphasizing agricultural farm size and land productivity nexus. This justifies the exploration of the causal nexus between countries’ agricultural land resources and their agricultural exports. Purpose The study herein aims at investigating the nexus between countries’ total agricultural land resources and agricultural exports for 174 selected countries over the period 1991–2019. Research methodology Dumitrescu and Hurlin’s (2012) test for Granger non-causality for heterogeneous panels is harnessed. Results Estimation results evidence the presence of bi-directional causality (feedback) between countries’ agricultural land resources and agricultural exports not only in the whole panel (1991–2019) but also in subpanels too (1991–2000, 2001–2010, and 2011–2019). Overall, the results stress the strategic importance of agricultural land as a significant determinant of agricultural exports. Novelty Our study takes a unique approach and investigates if there is a cause-and-effect relationship between a country’s agricultural land resources and its agricultural exports by relying on the implications of the factor endowment theory of trade.