Journal of Agricultural Economics最新文献

Basic economic logic, which often simplifies assessments and explanations of agricultural policy issues, is vitally important in communicating with policy-makers. Resources are limited, and there is a premium on getting decisions at least approximately right first time. Examples from southern Africa illustrate the importance of parity pricing, and its links to household food security (Lesotho), price risk, the emergence of an agricultural futures market, and its central role in allocating scarce agricultural resources (South Africa). Insights derived from an appreciation of parity pricing are relevant in other national contexts and also help explain how international grain markets operate. The parity pricing concept provides a framework for sense-checking complicated debates relating to two issues that have been prominent in recent years; first, whether and to what extent speculation in futures markets has been a driver of agricultural price spikes, and second, how far indirect land use change (ILUC), triggered by the use of agricultural feedstocks to produce renewable energy, is a material issue. These issues are likely to be of heightened importance in the face of climate change. Each emphasises that agricultural economics matters, and that it matters that we get the economics right.

Increasing agricultural productivity in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) is an important channel for reducing poverty and food insecurity. Information and communication technologies (ICT) have the potential to boost agricultural productivity by lowering transaction costs and enhancing access to information. Even though there are several micro-level studies analysing the effects of ICT on agricultural productivity, there is scant research addressing the role of ICT in agricultural productivity at the global and regional levels. Using data from 86 countries for the period 2000 to 2019 and utilising a fixed effect panel regression with a feasible generalised least square approach, we find that globally there is a positive and significant association between ICT uptake and both land and labour productivity in agriculture. In each case, however, the magnitude of the effect is much smaller than other important determinants, such as human capital, access to inputs or environmental factors. At the regional level, the relationship between ICT uptake and land productivity is not significant in Africa and Asia, while we find a significant effect on labour productivity. This finding indicates that while ICT can provide valuable information and tools for land management, the effect on land productivity might be less immediate in these regions. Finally, we revisit the question of whether ICT expansion increases agricultural productivity gaps between high-income nations and LMICs. In contrast to previous research, this study does not find significant differences in the effects of ICT on land and labour productivity between higher-income and lower-income countries.

On retirement from the post of Editor in Chief of the JAE, it is appropriate that I offer some reflections on my editorship. First, I review the general performance of the journal over the period 2005-2023, and conclude that the JAE has held its own amongst our peers though this is is largely due to our authors and reviewers, rather than the Editor. Second, I consider the subject matter and citation scores of our published papers over this period, as a reflection of the evolution of the state of the art of the Agricultural Economics profession. Here, I illustrate the increasing number and subject/method range of published papers, but raise some questions about what, exactly, citations really indicate. I conclude with some reflections on the challenges and opportunities for the profession.

Ensuring that farmers' ex ante preferences are accounted for is crucial for the design of effective agri-environmental contracts. We present a systematic review of 127 discrete choice experiment (DCE) studies of farmers' preferences with respect to agri-environmental contracts. DCE studies evaluate two central features of farmers' behaviour: (1) their willingness to accept land use prescriptions, such as fertiliser use, application of pesticides, restrictions on cropping, livestock management, integration of silvopasture, maintaining soil health or water use restrictions; and (2) their responses to variations in incentive and commitment criteria, such as reward schemes, monitoring regimes, technical assistance, flexibility of agreements, administrative burden and collaborative implementation. Our analysis considers how these different elements are interlinked and applied in experiments to simulate farmers' decision-making processes. We examine recent methodological improvements in explaining farmer behaviour, including the accommodation of preference heterogeneity, the combining of discrete (enrolment) and continuous decisions, and the incorporation of farmers' sense of identity. DCEs have been applied for the ex ante analysis of different policy instruments to inform the European Common Agricultural Policy and agri-environmental schemes outside the EU. The results of this systematic review may be useful in informing the future design of such agri-environmental programmes. The database underpinning this systematic literature review may help peer scientists to (a) compare, validate and triangulate their own findings with respect to other experimental approaches, (b) use previous willingness-to-accept (WTA) measures as priors for their own study design, and (c) identify research gaps regarding farmers' preferences for agri-environmental measures.

Explaining farmer decision making using cumulative prospect theory is of increasing importance. We present a systematic review on European farmers' preferences under the cumulative prospect theory framework. We identified 17 studies covering 2324 farmers from 12 European countries. All studies report that (on average) farmers are: (i) risk averse, (ii) loss averse, and (iii) overweight small probabilities and underweight large probabilities. However, there is a large heterogeneity across and within studies. These findings have implications for the analysis and design of policy and insurance.

Accessibility to financial resources is considered a prevalent problem in the agricultural sector. We develop an approach to quantify the long-term opportunity costs of financial constraints in relation to peers who do not face any financial constraints. Using data on past financial performance, we assess creditworthiness and the size of an additional accessible bank loan to farmers. Combining this with data on reported expenditure, we determine the accessible finance. We quantify the opportunity cost as the forgone dynamic profit (intertemporal profit in current-value terms) from financial constraints. Using data envelopment analysis, we apply our approach to 264 specialised Dutch dairy farms for the years 2006–2017 and explore the potential impact of changes in finance provision for several scenarios. Our results show an increasing gap between frontrunners and other farmers, as the latter generate progressively less dynamic profit in comparison to their best peers. The gap between the dynamic profit of the average farm and that of its best peers from their production and investment decisions made over the span of 1 year grew from €40,040 in 2009 to €114,548 in 2017. However, the growth is not driven by insufficient access to finance. Financial constraints can only explain 6% of the forgone dynamic profit in 2009 and as little as 1% for 2017. The number of farms classified as financially constrained in comparison to their peers decreases in our sample from 44% in 2009 to 8% in 2017. This suggests that non-financial factors are driving the growing gap.

The gender difference in employment across sectors is a critical element of gender inequality in rural livelihoods and welfare in developing countries. The role of production technologies, including agricultural mechanisation, in addressing gender inequality is increasingly explored. Knowledge gaps remain, however, including how agricultural mechanisation differentially affects labour engagements across sectors. This study aims to partly fill these knowledge gaps through micro-evidence from seven countries (Ethiopia, Ghana, Nigeria, Tanzania, India, Nepal and Vietnam), using several nationally representative panel data and supplementary data and applying correlated random effects double-hurdle models with instrumental variables. We find that the use of tractors and/or combine harvesters by the household induces a greater shift from farm activities to non-farm activities by female members than by male members. While statistical significance varies, these patterns generally hold consistently across all seven countries studied. These patterns also hold across different farm sizes. While these are short-term relations, agricultural mechanisation proxied by tractors and/or combine harvesters is one of the crucial contributors to gendered rural livelihood. Future studies should more closely investigate these patterns' underlying mechanisms and implications.