Journal of Agricultural Economics最新文献

In this paper we examine whether there are significant gender differences in the adoption of climate-smart agricultural (CSA) practices in sub-Saharan Africa. Using individual-level data from four sites in Kenya, Uganda and Senegal, our empirical analysis provides robust evidence that men have a higher likelihood of adopting high-return CSA practices including modern chemical fertiliser, improved high-yielding varieties and drought/pest tolerant livestock practices. In contrast, women tend to have a higher likelihood of adopting low-risk and low-return traditional CSA practices such as water harvesting, crop covering, rangeland management and pest management. Our subsample analysis shows significant heterogeneity in the gender gap across countries. The results of the decomposition of the observed gender gap show that personal values and norms, access to weather and production information and farm characteristics are important factors that explain the gender differential in the likelihood of CSA adoption. Our findings imply that equalising access to key resources such as plots of land, information and decision making power will be crucial to close the gender gap in the adoption of CSA practices. This is particularly important given the differential impacts of climate change between men and women in sub-Saharan Africa.

Poor health conditions of livestock cause sizeable losses for many farmers in the Global South. Veterinary services, including vaccinations, could help but often fail to reach farmers under typical smallholder conditions. Here, we examine how the provision of a vaccine against East Coast Fever (ECF)—a tick-borne disease affecting cattle in Africa—can be designed to reduce typical adoption barriers. Using data from a choice experiment with dairy farmers in Kenya, we evaluate farmers' preferences and willingness to pay for various institutional innovations in vaccine delivery, such as a stronger role of dairy cooperatives, new payment modalities with a check-off system, vaccination at farmers' homestead, and bundling vaccinations with discounts for livestock insurance. Our data reveal that farmers' awareness of the ECF vaccine is limited and adoption rates are low, largely due to institutional constraints. Results from mixed logit and latent class models suggest that suitable institutional innovations—tailored to farmers' heterogeneous conditions—could significantly increase adoption. This general finding likely also holds for other veterinary technologies and services in the Global South.

Input subsidy programmes (ISPs) remain a popular but contentious policy tool to promote agricultural intensification, food security and poverty reduction across Africa. Although previous studies have explored the impact of ISPs on various smallholder outcomes, no studies have analysed the impact of recent ISPs on pest management. This is particularly important given the increasing pest challenges due to climate change and the recent surge in pesticide use in low-income countries and its associated negative consequences for human and environmental health. Thus, this study assessed the effects of ISPs on smallholder adoption of sustainable pest management practices, using data from 1048 smallholder maize plots across major maize-producing zones of Zambia and a control function regression approach. We find consistent evidence that input subsidy receipt is negatively associated with smallholders' adoption of environmentally friendly and sustainable pest management strategies. Participation in the Zambia ISP (particularly the flexible e-voucher system) encourages synthetic pesticide use, at the expense of sustainable practices. We also find that farmers consider synthetic pesticides and biopesticides as substitutes and are more likely to adopt sustainable pest management when they have tenure security and access to financial resources. Given the human and environmental health consequences associated with synthetic pesticide use, it would be important to leverage input subsidy schemes to promote the adoption of safer and more sustainable alternatives to synthetic pesticides. Beyond input subsidies, policies that improve tenure security and financial access for smallholders can promote the adoption of sustainable pest management practices.

The integration of smallholder farmers into emerging value chains for fine-grain and aromatic ‘premium quality rice’ (PQR) could prove to be crucial to improving rural livelihoods in Bangladesh, though efforts could be constrained by farmers' differing levels of agronomic knowledge. Based on a pre-analysis plan, we analyse farmers' ability to efficiently allocate production enhancing inputs in PQR cultivation based on a survey of 1420 farmers in key PQR producing areas. Farmers received a hypothetical budget to allocate to six different inputs advised for efficient production of PQR, mimicking familiar production decisions made seasonally on their own farms. Our results suggest that even without budget or input access constraints farmers tend to inefficiently allocate inputs in PQR in this hypothetical setting. In particular, they tend to overspend on seeds, fertiliser and pesticides. Farmers with better access to agricultural information, such as through PQR specific extension services, conversely reach substantially higher efficiency scores and decided to spend significantly less on fertiliser. Without future adjustments such as more targeted extension services, implied higher production costs will likely lower the profitability of PQR cultivation for smallholder farmers, thereby limiting potential income gains. Besides these economic concerns, excessive input use is associated with environmental externalities. Improved efficiency is therefore desirable from both an economic and environmental standpoint.

Index-based microinsurance is a promising risk management tool for smallholder farmers. Recently, several mobile-delivered insurance schemes have entered the market. Depending on the degree of digitisation of the product, farmers can learn about the insurance, register, pay premiums and receive payouts via a mobile phone. As cell phone usage and network coverage constantly increase, digitally enabled insurance distribution may overcome previous barriers for insurance adoption. Still, farmers' preferences for these products remain largely unknown. We address this knowledge gap by means of a discrete choice experiment applied to 499 maize farmers in Mali. The experiment presents an easy-to-understand multi-peril crop insurance linked to a greenness index. It focuses on attributes related to the distribution channel and product design. Using mixed logit models, we find that the insurance attributes enabled by mobile-delivery are attractive to farmers. Product bundles that include mobile-delivered weather information and agricultural advice in addition to the insurance policy or credit access increase the likelihood of farmers taking out insurance. Similarly, recommendations from fellow farmers increase interest in the insurance product. The results are highly relevant for future product improvements that are needed to increase adoption rates and ultimately realise the loss-hedging potential of microinsurance.

This paper analyses the potential impacts of a hypothetical implementation of the Income Stabilisation Tool (IST) in France for the field crops sector. The IST is a risk management tool available within the 2014–2020 Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) to support farmers facing a severe drop in their incomes. This analysis was conducted using a farm-level model relying on expected utility theory and based on positive mathematical programming with risk. The model was applied to a sample of 1375 field crop farms in France derived from Farm Accountancy Data Network (FADN) data. Simulation results show that the uptake rate of the tool is relatively low, less than 37% in all scenarios. It is strongly dependent on CAP public support and on how much premium farmers have to pay. Highest uptake rates are observed in farms specialising in Other Field Crops, such as potatoes, pulses and sugar beet, and farms located in regions highly exposed to climatic risks. Previous experience with insurance favours the acceptance of the IST. Model results also show that the IST improves adopters' income and reduces income inequality. However, its impacts on crop diversity, measured by the Shannon index, are negative.

Income comparisons between farm and non-farm households play a crucial role in many aspects of farm policy. Using household income data from tax returns of all Norwegian taxpayers in the period 2006–2015 we study these income differences. We find that the unconditional mean income is higher for farm households, but with important differences depending on the comparison group considered. We also find that the income difference is reduced when we control for differences in the personal characteristics of the different non-farm comparison sub-groups. This finding implies that income comparison using unconditional means, as frequently done in agricultural policy making, is potentially misleading. We also show that the income effect of personal characteristics is not the same for different comparison sub-groups, as has been assumed in previous studies of income disparities. Differences in personal characteristics, and the income effect of those characteristics, therefore need to be accounted for if income comparisons between farmers and non-farmers are to inform farm support policies.

Modern communication technologies make information more easily and quickly accessible, leading to more transparent and competitive markets. Based on a theoretical model, this paper provides new empirical evidence on the potential impact of online search intensity on asymmetric cost pass-through. Prices often move as ‘rockets and feathers’: they rise quickly in response to cost increases and they fall slowly in response to cost reductions. A panel threshold error correction model is applied to weekly producer and retail prices of chicken and mutton in Iran. The results suggest that the volume of online searches is associated with a more complete and less asymmetric cost pass-through from farmgate to retail prices. Thus, online platforms and search engines have the potential to increase competition by bringing prices closer together and reducing profit margins.

Geographical indications (GIs) aim to protect the names of specific high-quality products (food and wine) to preserve and promote the uniqueness linked to their geographical origin and traditional know-how. EU and extra-EU countries register domestic products with GIs. This study disentangles the effects of such registrations on the quality of imports using country-level product import data for the fruit, vegetable, coffee, tea, and spice sectors. Our results show that the registration of domestic products as GIs enhances the quality of imported goods only if the importing country has a lower level of quality of domestic production. The introduction of GIs into high-quality domestic markets can discourage import quality upgrades. This is because domestic producers may prefer to compete for quality rather than price, and imported goods represent a less expensive alternative to high-quality national goods for consumers. Conversely, in countries where domestic product quality is lower, the introduction of GIs may enhance import quality upgrading because the diffusion of GIs induces domestic consumers to become more demanding in terms of quality for foreign products.

We examine the evolution of productivity and markups in US food and beverage manufacturing from 1959 through 2018. We account for non-Hicks-neutral (labour-augmenting) productivity changes and compare markups with those in general manufacturing using the same dataset and model. We also compare our results with those of the increasingly popular De Loecker and Warzynski (2012, American Economic Review, 102, 2437) method, which does not account for non-Hicks-neutral productivity growth. Empirical results show that productivity growth in the food and beverage sector has been relatively slow and driven with equal intensity by Hicks-neutral and labour-augmenting productivity gains. General manufacturing shows higher productivity growth that is mostly labour-augmenting, with markups comparable to those of food manufacturing. We find that accounting for labour-augmenting productivity produces more moderate markup estimates than the De Loecker and Warzynski (2012) method. We also find no evidence of markups rising in either food manufacturing or general manufacturing in the last 20 years, in contrast to much of the recent economic literature.