Agricultural Economics最新文献

Using a unique panel dataset based on two census rounds, we estimate the impact of irrigation gaps and drought on yields of paddy, maize, and other crops in Bhutan, an understudied country. We utilize a recently-developed spatial first differences (SFD) approach to identify the impacts of water-related constraints and compare these results from a panel fixed effects (FE) approach. We find that irrigation gaps reduce paddy yields and droughts reduce maize yields. Estimates from the SFD model are found to be consistent compared to those from the panel FE model. Water-related constraints also reduce yields of vegetable crops, and other constraints such as labor shortages, wild animals, insects, and diseases reduce yields of cereal crops.

Increasing smallholders market participation is acknowledged as an important step towards greater rural prosperity in developing countries. While existing literature identifies high transaction costs and market imperfections as challenges faced by smallholders in accessing agricultural markets, less attention has been paid to the role of constraints to the production of a marketable surplus. Specifically, there is a dearth of empirical evidence about how liquidity constraints during the production period that limit smallholders’ investments in agricultural inputs can affect agricultural production and subsequently their market participation and choice of marketing channel. We explore this issue in the context of the Zambian maize market during a period when the country's parastatal marketing board – the Food Reserve Agency (FRA) – operated alongside private buyers and purchased large volumes of maize at a pan-territorial price that exceeded average market prices. Although we cannot definitively identify causal effects, we find strong and robust associations indicating that smallholder maize-growing households who were liquidity-constrained during the production period harvested less maize, were less likely to sell maize, and were less likely to sell to the FRA, as compared to those who were unconstrained. Liquidity constraints during the production period likely exacerbate the already disproportionate capture of FRA benefits by wealthier farmers.

New agricultural technologies, such as stress-tolerant rice varieties (STRVs), that reduce yield risk can modify farmers’ production decisions. This article explores how STRV adoption affects farmer decision-making and productivity in Nepal in a non-drought year. STRVs are bred to be high-yielding and tolerant to climate shocks such as drought. To assess the effect of input measurements on treatment effects, we collected information from 900 households on STRV adoption and input use. We also conducted a survey experiment in which half of sampled households were randomly assigned to answer additional, more detailed questions on agricultural inputs. Farmers apply more total chemical fertilizer, pesticides, early-season chemical fertilizer, and land preparation labor to plots planted with STRVs compared to traditional varieties (TVs). Detailed input data enhances our understanding of how this “crowding-in” effect of STRV adoption on input use compares with other high-yielding varieties. While farmers increase application of a subset of these inputs on other improved variety types such as hybrids, results suggest that crowd-in effects are most consistent for STRVs. In the absence of drought, STRVs also provide a similar yield boost and yield variance reduction over TVs compared to other, non-stress tolerant improved varieties. Results suggest that improved varietal adoption, and STRV adoption in particular, can improve household productivity and modernization of agriculture.

The shift of industrial water pollution from urban to rural areas during industrialization can impact agricultural production and stimulate farmers’ adaptive behavior. As an illustration, this study examines the impact of industrial water pollution from manufacturing firms on rice production in Jiangsu, China. By combining data from the China Rural Fixed Point Survey with the China Environmental Statistics Database, we employ an extended translog production function to distinguish between the effects of industrial water pollution and farmers’ adaptation behaviors. Our results demonstrate that industrial chemical oxygen demand (COD) has a direct biological effect on paddy rice growth, reducing rice yields by 3.76 to 4.17 percent. This detrimental effect is most pronounced within a radius of 5 kg from the village center. Additionally, farmers increase their operating inputs to mitigate the adverse effects of industrial water pollution. These findings underscore the need for stringent environmental regulations and enhanced environmental education in rural areas to promote the sustainable development of both manufacturing industry and agriculture in developing countries.

This study investigates the determinants of farmers’ risk management decisions in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa, Pakistan, using a recursive multivariate probit (RMVP) model. Employing data from 382 farmers collected through a multistage sampling process, the study compares the RMVP with the traditional multivariate probit (MVP) model, demonstrating the superior performance of the RMVP in capturing complex decision-making patterns. Our rigorous statistical analysis demonstrates the significant impact of endogenous covariates on farmers’ risk management choices, revealing complementarity or substitutability among strategies. The study contributes to the literature by providing empirical evidence on the effectiveness of the RMVP model for understanding smallholder farmers’ risk management behavior and offering insights for policymakers to support resilient agricultural systems.

Diversification of income sources is one of the most common strategies households employ to minimize household income variability and to ensure a minimum level of income that guarantee their food security. This study examines the impact of livelihood diversification on farm profits among smallholder rice farmers in the Central Luzon Region (CLR) of the Philippines using long-term farm-level panel data spanning from 1966 to 2016. We employed a random-effects ordered probit model to investigate the drivers of livelihood diversification and then used the mixed Markov chain model to analyze the transition of households from less to more diversified livelihoods and its impact on farm profits over time. Our findings reveal substantial diversification among households over time. In particular, the elevation of the farm location is a key driver of rice farm households’ probability to diversify. The estimates show that an increase in the latitude of the farm location increases the probability of rice farmers in the CLR to diversify. We find that 64% of the rice farm households constitute farmers for whom diversification can be a strategy for survival. For medium- to high-profit farm categories, diversification tends to protect farmers against farm profit losses arising from adverse climatic and weather variability.

The CO₂ fertilization effect has been demonstrated to boost crop production by enhancing photosynthesis and reducing drought stress. In addition to this biological channel, there is also a behavioral margin for the CO₂ fertilization effect that was previously unnoticed. I find evidence that an additional ppm of average CO₂ concentration leads to increases in the corn and soybean harvested ratios of .57 and .75 percentage points, respectively. My predictions suggest that, without considering the adjustment in harvesting decision, the crop production benefits from CO₂ fertilization effect would be biasedly estimated for both corn and soybeans, which broadens the understanding of farmers’ behavioral responses to environmental stimuli and extends the knowledge on how CO₂ would benefit crop production.

In this article, we provide a quantitative review of the literature on the effect of cooperative membership on farms productive performance. Based on a dataset composed of 332 estimates from 80 studies, our meta-regression analysis suggests that the current literature suffers from a severe positive publication bias. After correcting this bias, the overall average effect of cooperative membership on farms' productive performance is positive and statistically significant, but its magnitude is small to negligible. Interestingly, we find that cooperative membership has a stronger effect on yield than on technical efficiency. We also explore how contextual variables and methodological choices affect the reported estimates in the literature.

Drawing on data from the Chinese Family Database for 2015, 2017, and 2019, this study employed the difference-in-differences method to examine the spillover effects of large-scale farms (LSFs) on smallholders. The findings confirmed that LSFs positively affect smallholder household income and nonfarm income. The mechanisms verified that LSFs increase the nonfarm income of smallholders, primarily through the transfer out of their land. Additionally, we found that vulnerable groups—such as households with a lower proportion of the labor force, a lower proportion of members in good health, and lower total education years of the labor force—are more likely to be crowded out. Additionally, the study confirmed that LSFs steal the market from smallholders, precipitating a slightly negative competitive effect. These findings have important policy implications for developing countries implementing the LSF policy and for countries where smallholders suffer from livelihood issues.

Considering the consumption-induced intensification of global challenges and the continuously changing consumer needs, it is important to understand the drivers of consumer food choices under external pressures. We applied best–worst scaling to elicit the relative importance of 11 food values and conducted latent class cluster analyses based on individual scores, allowing us to gain insights into distinctive consumer segments. Data were collected through online surveys of 1000 consumers in Bavaria, southern Germany, in November 2020 and November 2022. As expected, the relative importance of food value price has strongly increased during this period. Similarly, the price-sensitive segment has become larger in 2022 than in 2020, while the societal impact-centered segment has become much smaller in 2022. These findings call for target-specific measures to counteract this trend of increasing price focus that challenges sustainable dietary transitions.