Australian Journal of Agricultural and Resource Economics最新文献

Farmers often make farming decisions under risk and uncertainty, and their risk attitudes influence agricultural practices. Their risk attitudes may not be constant at the individual level and might be influenced by information acquisition, a crucial determinant of agricultural decision-making associated with uncertainties. We study the relationship between farmers' general risk attitudes and information provision by examining the impact of a government-led soil health information provision programme on their risk attitudes, conducting field experiments and surveys in India. We analyse the collected data using both non-parametric inferential techniques, such as the Mann-Whitney and chi-squared tests, and parametric methods, including probit and negative binomial regressions. The result shows that the soil health information provision influences farmers to be risk-averse, possibly by enhancing their confidence in combatting land degradation, as it provides additional information and recommendations on soil health and fertiliser usage (dosages and types). We also find that the perception of farmland degradation encourages farmers to take risks, while climate change experiences make them more risk-averse, suggesting an adaptive shift in their risk attitudes aimed at minimising economic loss. Farmers' risk attitudes significantly influence long-term sustainability and short-term economic loss management in agriculture. Our findings suggest that static (e.g., soil health) and dynamic (e.g., farmland degradation with future consequences) information can be leveraged through information provision mechanisms to influence farmers' risk attitudes, helping to balance long-term sustainability with short-term economic outcomes in agriculture.

Central Asian agriculture faces significant challenges, including low adoption rates of sustainable agricultural practices (SAPs). One contributing factor is the inefficiency of agricultural extension systems, which struggle to meet farmers' informational needs due to outdated content and ineffective communication. In this context, informal cooperation among farmers plays a crucial role in sharing agricultural knowledge. Focussing on Uzbekistan's irrigated areas, our study investigates the impact of farmers' participation in informal water management cooperation on the intensity of SAP adoption. Using pooled two-year survey data of 858 farmers, we employ the Marginal Treatment Effects model to account for potential selection bias and heterogeneity across farmers. The results indicate that participation in informal cooperation positively influences SAP adoption intensity, particularly among farmers with larger land holdings and better soil quality. Moreover, farmers already inclined to participate in informal cooperation benefit the most in terms of increased intensity of SAP adoption. Our findings suggest that promoting community-managed irrigation can be an effective strategy to enhance SAP adoption in Uzbekistan. However, the effects of informal cooperation are not uniform across all farmers, necessitating differentiated support mechanisms that address the specific needs, challenges and unobservable characteristics of various farmer groups.

We employ state-space models to analyse the trend, seasonal component and cycle of farmgate milk prices in Balkan countries, namely Greece, Bulgaria and Slovenia, and in Hungary. We split the time span in 2016 to assess whether the dairy policies undertaken until the abolition of the milk quota system have affected the price cycles. We find price cycles of length close to 30 months after 2016, excluding Slovenia, where we find no cycle. Price cycles entail various challenges and opportunities for the actors in the dairy supply chains, and farm expansions may be advantageously adapted to the cycles. The development of appropriate forecasting models accounting for the cyclical price behaviour may provide insight into the sources and responses to the cycles and support policymaking that seeks to enhance the economic resilience of dairy farms and processors.

Climate change has significantly influenced the intensity and frequency of extreme weather events impacting the globe, including Australia. This has implications for various sectors, including the housing market. Utilising postcode-level climate risk data—including for cyclones, floods, heatwaves, water stress, and wildfires—and data from the 2006, 2011, 2016, and 2021 censuses, we examine the susceptibility of Australia's stock to such hazards. Our investigation focuses on three main questions. First, we try to understand how the exposure of the housing sector to different climate hazards is dispersed geographically and how the vulnerability to extreme weather events evolved over time. Second, we investigate the extent to which the location of new homes throughout this period has raised or lowered the vulnerability of the housing stock. Third, we outline the historical trajectory of the housing sector's climate susceptibility and use our data to estimate how this is likely to evolve out to 2100. Our analysis reveals that the Australian housing stock displays pronounced susceptibility to water stress, moderate vulnerability to wildfires, and slight susceptibility to floods, cyclones and heatwaves. Furthermore, our findings indicate that growth in the Australian housing stock shows a negative correlation with the risk posed by heatwaves and the anticipated shifts in wildfire risk, whereas it exhibits no discernible association with other hazards.

We apply index decomposition methods to decompose nitrogen and phosphorus leakage trends from Swedish arable land. The results show considerable heterogeneity; changes in nutrient pollution coefficients (kg leakage/SEK of crop value produced) and crop rotations caused leakage to increase in some areas and decrease in others. Crucially, we find only modest pollution-decreasing technique effects, mainly driven by increased yields rather than reductions in per-hectare nutrient leakage. We argue that lax regulation of agricultural pollutants is one determining factor behind these results. Despite an increased focus on environmental considerations in agricultural policy, the cost of emitting has remained low.