Influence of entrepreneurship and management on sow farm labour productivity

Labour is, next to arable land and capital, one of the three pillars in agricultural production. On Western European sow farms, labour costs, make up 15% to 20% of the piglet production costs. In practice, however, there¿s a large variation in the number of sows a farmer can handle and in the piglet productivity on the farm. Consequently, the labour costs per piglet raised differ enormously between farms. Apart from obvious factors like farm size, there is little knowledge available about the factors that have an important influence on labour productivity. This is particularly the case for factors concerning management and entrepreneurship. Therefore, a study was carried out to determine the variation in labour productivity among Dutch sow farms and subsequently identify managerial and entrepreneurial factors which influence labour productivity.