The Ishikawa Curve and Agricultural Productivity in Bangladesh - Some New Findings

Based on historical experience of East Asia especially Japan and Taiwan, Ishikawa (1978) identifies a backward-bending curve depicting the relationship between land productivity and labour intensity. The predominant early view [e.g. Ruttan and Binswanger (1978); Johnston and Cownie (1969)] was that this pattern might apply to all contemporary Asia. Ishikawa himself was less optimistic about this and recent studies [Alauddin and Tisdell (1989a); Jayasuriya and Shand (1986)] support Ishikawa's caution about generalizing the East Asian experience. Both Jayasuriya-Shand and Ishikawa claim that simultaneous adoption of labour-saving technologies neutralised and in some cases more than counterbalanced the labour-using impact of the new agricultural technology