Journal of Agricultural Economics最新文献

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.

The European Green Deal aims to mitigate the environmental impact of food production while improving the income of primary producers and strengthening the EU's competitiveness. We examine how the degree of ecologisation affects farms' total factor productivity (TFP). Our analysis combines a random-parameter stochastic production frontier model with a composite indicator and a dose–response function approach. Results show a monotonically decreasing relationship between ecologisation and expected TFP level. On average, a one-step increase in the degree of ecologisation results in a 12% decrease in TFP. However, the results indicate a non-linear relationship. Three regions of the dose–response function can be distinguished; associated with high, medium and low degrees of ecologisation. In a region with a low degree of ecologisation, farms can increase the degree of ecologisation without reducing TFP. Both efficiency and technological differences contribute to these differences, but the main reason is technological. With increasing ecologisation, farm technology becomes more ‘land using’. Therefore, farms can increase their TFP and degree of ecologisation simultaneously by using land-saving technologies or through sustainable intensification.

By combining 2012 Living Standard Measurement Survey cross-sectional survey responses and georeferenced conflict data, this study quantifies the effect of violent conflict on food security and dietary quality in Iraq. Specifically, it estimates the effect of physical insecurity on different food security dimensions, including caloric consumption and household dietary diversity. Because disrespecting war-related foreign national cemeteries is a war crime that discourages nearby fighting, instrumenting conflict intensity by the exogenous variation in distance between these sites and household place of residence addresses potential sources of bias. The instrumental variable analysis confirms the positive (negative) effect of conflict—deriving from state, non-state and one-sided violence (e.g., attacks by the Islamic State)—on per capita caloric consumption (household dietary diversity), which although counterintuitive is unsurprising given Iraq's relatively high-income levels and changes in dietary pattern. Given that the primary driver of conflict's positive effect on calories is increased consumption of carbohydrates and, to a lesser extent, saturated fat, these results suggest that in countries transitioning to Western-style diets, violent conflict may drive the population toward an unhealthier diet, contributing heavily to a growing national prevalence of nutrition-related non-communicable diseases.

We examine the short-term impact of the Positive List System (PLS), a strict food safety standard implemented by Japan in 2006, on vegetable exports from China to Japan. By applying a difference-in-difference model to unique monthly export data at the firm-product level, we found that the PLS decreased the probability of Chinese vegetable firms exporting to Japan by 3.4%, and decreased their export quantity and value by 9.7% and 8.6%, respectively. Most of the policy impact is through a decrease in the intensive trade margin (i.e., how much to trade), rather than the extensive trade margin (i.e., whether to trade). We also found that foreign-invested enterprises and smaller enterprises are less affected than non-foreign-invested enterprises and larger enterprises. Our results alleviate the concern that stricter food safety standards may exclude many firms, especially small ones, from the export market.

Oil palm is one of the most rapidly expanding food and cash crops in many tropical regions with significant environmental implications, but also economic gains. Previous analyses have established that this expansion is associated with changing gender roles and time allocation for women. Time allocation is an important determinant of maternal and child nutrition as well as well-being. We use a rich farm household survey from a native oil palm production hotspot, Cameroon, to examine the associations between oil palm production and women's dietary diversity. Using different estimation and identification strategies with some sensitivity checks, we show that oil palm is associated with lower dietary diversity for women, measured as the minimum dietary diversity for women and the minimum adequacy diversity diet. We explore heterogeneity in the various food groups consumed by women and show that oil palm production is associated with lower consumption of mainly pulses, fruits and vegetables. These findings contrast with the literature that has established some positive dietary diversity implications of oil palm expansion in Southeast Asia. We carefully discuss these findings and argue that context matters and may explain these differences. Particularly, we show that oil palm production is negatively associated with farm production diversity in Cameroon. Notwithstanding, we also confirm previous findings that highlight that oil palm production is associated with higher income. These insights add to the debate on the implications of oil palm expansion in tropical environments. Moreover, they can guide policy in designing more tailored interventions that address nutrition issues and improve rural development.

To reduce agricultural greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, farmers need to change current farming practices. However, farmers' climate change mitigation behaviour and particularly the role of social and individual characteristics remains poorly understood. Using an agent-based modelling approach, we investigate how knowledge exchange within farmers' social networks affects the adoption of mitigation measures and the effectiveness of a payment per ton of GHG emissions abated. Our simulations are based on census, survey and interview data for 49 Swiss dairy and cattle farms to simulate the effect of social networks on overall GHG reduction and marginal abatement costs. We find that considering social networks increases overall reduction of GHG emissions by 45% at a given payment of 120 Swiss Francs (CHF) per ton of reduced GHG emissions. The per ton payment would have to increase by 380 CHF (i.e., 500 CHF/tCO₂eq) to reach the same overall GHG reduction level without any social network effects. Moreover, marginal abatement costs for emissions are lower when farmers exchange relevant knowledge through social networks. The effectiveness of policy incentives aiming at agricultural climate change mitigation can hence be improved by simultaneously supporting knowledge exchange and opportunities of social learning in farming communities.

Understanding the factors associated with adoption of ecological farming practices is a well-established topic of interest to agricultural economists. As the transition to more sustainable agriculture has become a policy priority for the European Union, broad and balanced reviews of this literature are important. We develop a systematic map of quantitative observational studies which describes the ecological practice(s) adopted, the frequency of inclusion and significance of a range of independent variables, and how the dependent variable is measured. We also conduct a quality assessment. We find that while socio-demographic variables and farm structural variables are frequently included, they were insignificant more often than they were significant. For behavioural factors we find stronger evidence for the importance of cognitive or attitudinal variables compared to dispositional attitudinal variables. We also find a growing interest in social factors which will be valuable for researchers to explore further and reflect on the policy implications of our findings.

Choice models are used by applied economists for many purposes, such as non-market valuation or estimating willingness to pay for novel food and product attributes. Mixed-logit models allow researchers to account for preference heterogeneity and complex decision-making processes when modelling choices. In mixed-logit models, parameters of monetary attributes such as prices typically are assumed to follow a negative lognormal random distribution to ensure that the marginal utility of a price increase is strictly negative. However, this practice can cause means and standard deviations of welfare estimates to ‘explode’ to unfeasibly large levels, as the model assumes there are some marginal utilities of cost approaching zero. This paper examines whether cost non-attendance, which occurs when respondents ignore costs in stated-preference studies, could be a cause of inflated welfare estimates when a lognormal cost parameter is used. A two-class equality-constrained latent-class model is proposed, in which the cost parameter is fixed at zero for a cost non-attender class and is specified as a random lognormal parameter for cost attenders. This proposed model produces mean welfare estimates that are 17 times lower than a mixed-logit model with a lognormal cost parameter, and 10% lower than a model with a non-random cost parameter. These results suggest that cost non-attendance can result in inflated welfare estimates when employing a lognormal cost parameter, and that accounting for cost non-attendance could be a simple, parsimonious solution to this problem.

Understanding how subsidies affect the selection of farms with different risk exposure into insurance products is key to evaluating the efficiency of government-supported insurance programs. We study the US crop insurance program, which is a major federally supported insurance program, to assess the impact of premium subsidies on the riskiness of the insured. By exploiting two waves of policy changes, we find that the average loss per insured liability falls as premium subsidies increase, which implies that crop producers with lower risk are more responsive to the price of insurance.

Fifty years have passed since the Journal of Agricultural Economics published an article by Ruth Gasson on the goals and values of farmers in England. Gasson's research demonstrated the complexity of motives and, in particular, the importance farmers attached to the activities of farming (their intrinsic orientation), even among the operators of larger farms. Gasson's article has been widely cited as seminal by subsequent researchers on farmer behaviour. Governments have acknowledged the importance of understanding the motives of farm decision-makers when explaining their responses to economic and policy signals and designing schemes to shape farmers' behaviour. Brexit and the creation of national agricultural policies for each constituent UK country have highlighted the need for this better understanding, though precisely how this information can be used remains difficult. The continued dominance of an intrinsic orientation is particularly important for policies encouraging retirement and for the agri-environment. Gasson's legacy is also important in the quantification of goals and values to segment, and hence model, the heterogeneity of likely farmer responses to market and policy signals.