Agricultural Economics最新文献

We use barcode-level data in the US between 2012 and 2020 to document the evolution of trans fat content in manufactured food products before and after the Food and Drug Administration's (FDA) 2015 determination that trans fats are not safe for human consumption (effectively a “trans fat ban”). First, we document how the number of products containing trans fat has declined over time. Second, using detailed information on household food purchases in retail stores, we quantify the corresponding reduction in total trans fat purchases. We find that although the number of trans fat products on the market has declined over time, products with a positive trans fat content continued to exist beyond the FDA's deadline for trans fat removal. We find a larger presence of trans fat products in small-scale retailers (Dollar and Convenience stores) than in larger outlets (mass merchandisers and warehouse clubs). Similarly, trans fat products are relatively more prevalent in private label products and in products with a local presence. While trans fat purchases have declined over time, lower income households purchase product baskets with significantly larger amounts of trans fat. The findings can be used to guide more effective and efficient enforcement efforts.

Gender gaps in productivity and food security persist in the face of climate change, necessitating effective strategies for empowering women and reducing their vulnerability. This study examines the gender-specific impacts of climate-smart agriculture (CSA) adoption on productivity, food security, and resilience to climate shocks in Tanzania. Using panel data from the World Bank's Tanzanian Living Standard Measurement Survey (LSMS) spanning 2008–2013, we employ a multinomial switching regression model (MSRM) approach to identify the effects of CSA adoption on agricultural outcomes. Our findings reveal that CSA non-adoption exacerbates the gender gap in yields and food security, favoring men. However, CSA adoption leads to more equitable outcomes, bridging the gender gap and improving productivity and food security for both men and women. Additionally, adopters of CSA techniques exhibit greater resilience to climate shocks, experiencing smaller yield declines during periods of low rainfall. This study contributes to the literature by providing empirical evidence on the gendered impacts of CSA adoption, testing the risk reduction capacity of CSA technologies, and addressing the limited research on Tanzania. The findings emphasize the importance of gender-responsive CSA policies in promoting agricultural resilience and food security in the face of climate change.

Despite increasing agricultural productivity, malnutrition remains high among food producers in many developing countries. This study examines how the difference between agricultural household nutrition requirements and production kept for home consumption, the Nutritient deficiency from own production (NDOP), impacts children's height-for-age z-scores (HAZ) using a unique survey of 528 households in Zambia. The study also investigates the relationship between NDOP and market-bought nutrition and the role of intra-season price changes in nutrition. To address the endogeneity of NDOP, we use a control function approach. We find that NDOP is associated with lower HAZ. Both energy (calories) NDOP and nutrient-specific NDOP, resulting from underproduction relative to nutritional requirements and from selling more than surplus food crops, are negatively correlated with HAZ. This result suggests that higher productivity and market participation do not always lead to better nutrition. We also find that crop sales (commercialization) only benefit nutrition if the household only sells surplus output relative to its nutritional requirements. Finally, we also find that NDOP does not correlate with market food purchases, and that the seasonal price increases for cereals further dampens market food purchases. The findings highlight that policies promoting smallholder commercialisation may overlook detrimental nutrition trade-offs when own-production falls short of household needs. Accounting for post-harvest allocation of nutrients between own-consumption, sales, and purchases can help ensure agricultural interventions improve farmer livelihoods and child nutrition.

Restaurants can nudge their customers toward more sustainable actions. However, implementing nudges may affect consumer patronage. Using a discrete choice experiment, we propose a means-ends framework to shed light on the conditional (on patronage) impact of sustainability nudges on consumer preference for restaurants. The findings reveal that while preserving the subtleness of a specific sustainability nudge, disclosing the means or the mechanism of the nudges leads to a negative impact on consumer restaurant patronage, while revealing the ends or the goodwill behind the sustainability nudges may suggest positive effects on patronage which may in turn lead to an unconditional gain in sustainability. Furthermore, some nudges may only improve patronage if both the means and the ends of nudges are revealed. By examining two types of restaurants, we show that the type of restaurant also significantly influences the effects of sustainability nudges on patronage. This research quantifies the nuanced dynamics of how revealing the means and the ends of nudges may affect the restaurant business and provides insights for designing effective sustainability strategies in the restaurant industry.

Although cooperatives are major actors in the transformation of agricultural systems, very little attention has been paid to the conditions that facilitate or hinder their involvement in the sustainable transition. Drawing on theoretical and empirical approaches, we analyze the effect of social capital on the propensity and proportion of investment in environmental assets in the case of agricultural machinery cooperatives (CUMAs) in France. The number of producers within their CUMA is used as a proxy of the bonding social capital and the CUMA's relationships with external organizations as a proxy of the bridging social capital. Our results show a nonmonotonic relationship between the proxies of social capital and investment in environmental assets by CUMAs. However, the effect differs depending on the subdimension of social capital considered. Interestingly, our results show that the effect of social capital within CUMAs remains even when the cooperatives carry out investment renewals that involve less risk for members.

Geographical Indication (GI) is a rising policy in developing countries, which has been relatively neglected in the existing literature. This article studies Chinese agricultural GIs and its impact on firms’ exports. By relating newly authorized GIs with firm-product-location-destination level customs trade data according to GIs’ geographical coverage and product type, we estimate the impact of these new GIs on firm's exports. Importantly, we can distinguish GIs with and without quality supervision. For the latter we find negative impacts on export quality, which is not the case for GIs with quality supervision. We interpret this in the context of our theoretical framework as evidence for quality free-riding, where individual firms have an incentive to lower the quality of the export product. We show that this negative effect is less, the more concentrated an industry is or the more GIs there are for a particular product. Furthermore, our results suggest that the China-EU agreement on Geographical Indications may play the role of quality supervision and prevent the possibility of free-riding.

Disease outbreaks are one of the major issues in the aquaculture sector and can lead to significant economic losses. Although the source of the disease is difficult to trace, understanding how it occurs is important to mitigate the problem. A crucial factor that has not received sufficient attention is the presence of spillovers among fish farmers connected by waterways. This study examines the presence of spillovers among shrimp farmers in Southern Vietnam based on primary data. In particular, it quantifies the effects of contaminated water spillovers from one farm to another and the peer effects of farming practices among neighbors. We solve the reflection problem by employing a method developed in social network analyses. The findings indicate that a farmer's practices are affected by their neighbors’ farming practices. Further, the disease outbreak in a farmer's pond is affected by those in their neighbors’ ponds, even after controlling for contextual peer effects and correlated effects. The negative effects of neighbors’ ponds on the probability of disease outbreaks in a farmer's pond may offset the positive effects of the farmer's good farming practices, suggesting the importance of considering neighboring farmers as a group when addressing the issue of disease control.

Climate change poses a significant threat to agriculture and challenges farmers’ adaptive capacity. Understanding how farmers evaluate and prioritize different climate change adaptation measures under consideration of their natural environment is crucial yet widely overlooked. This study determines the relative importance that farmers attach to different adaptation measures and explores the role of climatic and soil conditions in this context. It uses a best-worst scaling experiment with German arable farmers in combination with geospatial climate and soil information. Findings reveal a preference for incremental adaptation measures over more transformative ones. However, preferences varied considerably with average local temperature, precipitation, and soil quality. The finding that farmers’ adaptation preferences are highly diverse and context-specific calls for tailored policies. It is crucial for policymakers to have a thorough understanding of farmers’ adaptation preferences. Based on the results, the study discusses multiple actions that policymakers can take to incentivize farmers to favor more effective adaptation measures.

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.