Agricultural Economics最新文献

Aquaculture in Ghana is experiencing tremendous growth, led mainly by large-scale commercial cage operators. A major objective of the government and its partners is to ensure that this rapid growth is sustainable and includes small-scale farmers and poor rural producers. This paper evaluates the aquaculture trainings implemented in six main tilapia-producing regions in Ghana as part of the Ghana Tilapia Seed Project. The impact evaluation is designed as a cluster randomized controlled trial, with half of the producing districts randomly-assigned as the treatment and the rest as the control, complemented by qualitative interviews. One year after the trainings, results show positive impacts on the adoption of good record-keeping, water management, and some biosecurity practices, and on productivity and incomes. In terms of mechanism, improved management practices resulted from reducing overstocking, reducing inbreeding, maintaining water level for fish ponds, regular pond clearing and establishing physical barriers, following advice and recommendations on feeding practices, and complementing feeding practices with farmers’ own feed formulation. Half of the trained farmers experienced lower fish mortality, faster growth, and heavier fish at harvest. Marketing and processing advice through the trainings and complementary FishConnect WhatsApp platform likely contributed to higher incomes, although the platform's coverage and regular updating can be improved.

Given the importance of climate change and the increase of its severity under extreme weather events, we analyze the main drivers of high food prices in Colombia between 1985 and 2020 focusing on extreme weather shocks like a strong El Niño. We estimate a non-stationary extreme value model for Colombian food prices. Our findings suggest that perishable foods are more exposed to extreme weather conditions in comparison to processed foods. In fact, an extremely low precipitation level explains only high prices in perishable foods. The risk of high perishable food prices is significantly larger for low rainfall levels (dry seasons) compared to high precipitation levels (rainy seasons). This risk gradually results in higher perishable food prices. It is nonlinear and is also significantly larger than the risk related to changes in the US dollar-Colombian peso exchange rate and fuel prices. Those covariates also explain high prices for both perishable and processed foods. Finally, we find that the events associated with the strongest El Niño in 1988 and 2016 are expected to reoccur once every 50 years.

We analyze the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and associated policy responses on the global economy and food security in 80 low- and middle-income countries. We use a global economy-wide model with detailed disaggregation of agricultural and food sectors and develop a business-as-usual baseline for 2020 and 2021 called “But-for-COVID” (BfC). We then shock the model with aggregate income shocks derived from the IMF World Economic Outlook for 2020 and 2021. We impose total-factor productivity losses in key sectors as well as consumption decreases induced by social distancing. The resulting shocks in prices and incomes from the CGE model simulations are fed into the USDA-ERS International Food Security Assessment (IFSA) model to derive the impact of the pandemic on food security in these 80 countries. The main effect of the pandemic was to exacerbate the existing declining trend in food security. Food insecurity increases considerably in countries in Asia through income shocks rather than prices effects. We also review trade policies that were put in place to restrict imports and exports of food, and we evaluate their potential for further disruption of markets focusing on the food-security implications.

We adapt a Ricardian general equilibrium model to the setting of U.S. domestic agri-food trade to assess states’ vulnerability to adverse production shocks and supply chain disruptions. To this end, we analyze how domestic crop supply chains depend on fundamental state-level comparative advantages—which reflect underlying differences in states’ cost-adjusted productivity levels—and thereby illustrate the capacity of states to adapt to and mitigate the impacts of such disruptions to the U.S. agricultural sector. Based on the theoretical framework and our estimates of the model's structural parameters obtained using data on U.S. production, consumption, and domestic trade in crops, we undertake simulations to characterize the welfare implications of counterfactual scenarios depicting disruptions to (1) states’ agricultural productive capacity, and (2) interstate supply linkages. Our results emphasize that the distributional impacts of domestic supply chain disruptions hinge on individual states’ agricultural productive capacities, and that the ability of states to mitigate the impacts of adverse production shocks through trade relies on the degree to which states are able to substitute local production shortfalls by sourcing crops from other states.

This article presents an investigation of agricultural production risk over time and across space and its implications for food security. The econometric approach involves a Quantile Autoregressive (QAR) model and a copula to provide a flexible representation of the distribution of yield risk and its evolution over time and across space. The analysis relies on a two-step estimation method to evaluate the multivariate yield distribution and its spatial and temporal evolution. Linkages between agricultural production risk and the economics of food security are explored, with implications for the welfare cost of food insecurity. The approach is illustrated in an econometric application to regional wheat and corn yields in Italy. The analysis provides new and useful information on the evolving linkages between agricultural production risk, productivity, and food security. Our integrated approach documents the role of regional diversification and of productivity growth along with their effects on food security.

This article documents the existence of a leaky pipeline based on complete enumeration of faculty in two large public academic networks: state agricultural universities and institutions of the Indian Council of Social Science Research. We then examine if there are gender differences in the quantity and quality of research publications of women relative to men that can explain this. As proxies for quality and visibility, we use several metrics, including the number of citations, h-index, i10 index, and Scimago rank of the journal in which the research is featured. A novel aspect of the analysis is the comparison of time paths of cumulative publications over career paths of men and women professors. Our analysis of research performance is based on scraping publicly-available data sources, including faculty and institutional websites, and google scholar pages, and represents one-third (and likely positively selected) of all faculty in these institutions. Our results suggest that women are disadvantaged in terms of number of publications during early career years, however, the disadvantage is mitigated with seniority and women perform equally well or even surpass men later in their careers. Women are more likely to write single-authored articles and have fewer collaborators than men, indicating that they do not access collaborative spaces as much, and are less networked than men. In spite of this, there is suggestive evidence that women are more quality conscious than men. This nuanced look at research productivity suggests the source of the leaky pipeline does not arise from differences in performance.

Most of the empirical literature assessing the impacts of climate change on agriculture has modeled crop yields as a function of the levels or deviations in the growing-period rainfall. However, an aspect that has received little attention in the empirical literature relates to the relationship between the timing of monsoon rains and crop yields. Using a pan-India district-level panel dataset for 50 years, this article investigates two interrelated issues critical to understanding the impacts of weather-induced agricultural risks and their management. It first examines the impact of the timing of monsoon onset on crop yields and then assesses the role of irrigation in mitigating its effects. The article finds that the delayed onset of monsoon is detrimental to crops, and its effects are realized beyond the rainy season. The findings also demonstrate that irrigation helps mitigate the harmful effects of delayed monsoon. Finally, to link these findings to farm-level adjustments, the article shows that farmers explicitly adjust the timing of irrigation in response to delays in monsoon rains.

With rising physical and economic scarcity of water, increasing or sustaining agricultural production while limiting or reducing consumptive water use is an urgent challenge. This article examines the case of four countries—India, China, western United States, and Israel—where there is a long history of irrigated agriculture with significant public and private investments, to identify key themes for managing irrigation under increasing physical and economic water scarcity. The focus of irrigation management has expanded from investing in irrigation infrastructure to reforming institutions; strengthening policies pertaining to irrigation prices and rights; using incentives to reward reductions in irrigation application; and improving irrigation efficiency. However, this may not be sufficient to reduce consumptive use of water in agriculture. Reducing freshwater use in agriculture will require cost-effective harnessing of other water sources through processes such as desalination and wastewater reuse, which may be difficult to implement in most geographies. Changes to policies in other sectors will likely be needed, especially in food procurement and land-use, which require balancing water security with food security, and supporting potential losses in livelihoods and incomes from such changes. Finally, reductions in agricultural water use in a country will likely have implications for water use in other countries, through imports.

Research shows that risk management will be key if an agricultural transformation that includes the smallholder farm sector is to occur in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia. While the smallholder farm sector has historically had poor access to financial and other risk management tools, digital technologies are rapidly impacting the cost and availability of savings, credit, and insurance services in remote rural regions. While these services are all different ways of moving money through time, and thus would seem to be substitutes for each other, they are characterized by quite different pre-requisites in terms of trust and understanding, and in terms of required tangible and reputational assets. This observation suggests that resilience and an inclusive agricultural transformation might be best promoted by a flexible system that offers indexed risk management tools that can meet the needs of households that enjoy different assets and beliefs. This article lays out this logic and models the use and impacts of a system of flexible financial tools for risk management and an inclusive agricultural transformation. Key findings include that farmers will optimally combine all three financial instruments. The model also shows that these combined financial risk management tools are by themselves sufficient to induce agricultural intensification for less poor, but not for the deeply poor households who have already been decapitalized by shocks.