EDUCATION, INSTITUTIONS, AND LAND TENURE: A REVIEW OF SOCIO-ECONOMIC DRIVERS OF WHEAT PRODUCTIVITY"

Abstract

Wheat (Triticum aestivum L.) is vital to global food security, yet actual yields in developing countries remain well below research-station potential. While agronomic and climatic drivers of this gap are well studied, growing empirical evidence shows that socio-economic factors education, age, experience, household size, farm size and fragmentation, tenure security, credit and extension access, market access, gender, and off-farm income are equally decisive, particularly among smallholder farmers. This review synthesizes empirical findings on socio-economic determinants of wheat productivity and technical efficiency across Ethiopia, Pakistan, India, Nigeria, Sudan, Afghanistan, Kazakhstan and China, using studies based on stochastic frontier analysis (SFA), data envelopment analysis (DEA), Cobb-Douglas, and Tobit/Beta regression models. Findings show consistent evidence that education, extension contact, credit access, and experience raise technical efficiency, while land fragmentation, insecure tenure, and poor market access constrain productivity; farm-size and tenure effects, however, remain context-dependent. The review highlights key gaps treating farms as a homogeneous group, reliance on cross-sectional data limiting causal inference, and a narrow focus on technical efficiency over land productivity and calls for future longitudinal, climate-interactive studies comparing wheat productivity and socioeconomic factors across landholding size and tenancy status.