Agricultural land price and quality

Abstract

Land quality can be expected to have important implications for productivity and so also for policy. Land quality is a factor influencing the price of land. Factors influencing land prices were therefore disaggregated on a regional basis. Land quality indices were constructed by considering only those factors directly affecting quality, and with significant statistical coefficients. Statistical regions were used as units of observation. Land quality was found to vary considerably. In some South African regions, land quality is comparable to that in the most arid regions of the world. The quality in certain small areas compares with above‐average land qualities in the world, but not with the best.

Notes

Based on an M Com thesis submitted to the University of Pretoria, this is a revision of a contributed paper presented at the 1991 annual conference of the Agricultural Economics Society of Southern Africa and published in Afrikaans in the Conference Issue of Agrekon (Vol 30, No 4).

Department of Agricultural Economics, Extension and Rural Development, University of Pretoria.