EFFECTIVENESS AND EFFICIENCY OF EXPERTS: AN EVALUATION OF AGRICULTURAL ECONOMISTS

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Abstract
The main challenge for agricultural economists is effectiveness rather than efficiency. Effectiveness is the channcling of resources and efforts to those endeavours rendering the highest returns. Efficiency is the extent to which it is done well. Agricultural economists should be system directed problem solvers. Failures to clearly recognize interactions between levels or activities in the total system cause expensive problems. Effectiveness requires such recognition aimed at improving human welfare. Grave inequitabilities occur in South African agriculture and food consumption. Production and consumption are both dualistic, without agricultural economists analyzing inequitabilities meaningfully. They have been effective neither in dealing with problems of commercial agriculture nor with the macro environment in a holistic sense, nor with institutions, nor with consumption economics. The already low effectiveness has been further decreased by some tool-oriented research. In South Africa, effectiveness implies more accent on problem-solving analysis: adaptive and maintenance research. Efficiency requires use of appropriate logic, analytical tools and data. It has lately been lowered by overemphasis on so-called elegant analytical tools and simultaneously, neglect in proper data collection. A reorientation is needed in this respect.

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