| Recent policy interest has been directed at the sustainability of food industries, in particular the post-farm gate food chain. This comprises of manufacturing, wholesaling, retailing and catering. In order to measure sustainability Byerlee and Murgai (2001) have argued that productivity measures, alongside key indicators of resource quality trends, should be used to indicate sustainable growth. This paper adopts this approach by presenting Fisher indexes of both Total Factor Productivity (TFP) index and for prominent externalities emerging from the food chain over the period 1998 to 2002. TFP shows an average annual growth rate of –0.52% per annum. Input growth, in particular intermediate purchases, has outstripped output growth over the entirety of this... |
