Australian Journal of Agricultural and Resource Economics最新文献

Milk is a near-universal source of essential nutrients and contributes significantly to global nutrient availability. Global demand for milk continues to rise, driven by population growth, rising household incomes and favourable consumption patterns. Plant-based alternatives (PBAs) to milk seek to cater to the preferences of a share of consumers regarding sustainability, lifestyle or health-related matters (e.g. allergies and lactose intolerance). Though popular, PBAs do not stand as suitable nutritional substitutes for milk. These considerations emphasise the complex relationships between nutritional content and consumer preferences. This paper estimates a demand system for milk and PBAs in the New Zealand (NZ) market. We explore patterns of complementarity or substitutability between standard milk, reduced-fat milk and organic milk, and an aggregate group of PBAs. We use these results to calculate nutrient elasticities and assess changes in nutrient availability in response to prices and expenditure variations. We estimate a Quadratic Almost Ideal Demand System using purchase records for 2460 NZ households in 2021. We find that demand for standard milk does not show any substitutional relationship with PBAs. On the contrary, increases in the PBAs price lead households to switch towards standard milk, thereby increasing the availability of essential nutrients. That is, in the case of price increases, milk effectively offsets the reduction in essential nutrients as households switch away from PBAs, but PBAs cannot offset any reduction in essential nutrients as households do not find them to be adequate substitutes for milk.

This study enhances our comprehension of the performance of farm businesses in Western Australia by estimating persistent and transient technical efficiency measures in the presence of firm-level effects. The analysis is based on a balanced panel data set of 54 farm businesses from the years 2002 to 2011. We employ Kumbhakar et al.'s (2014, Journal of Productivity Analysis, 41, 321) model to estimate persistent efficiency and firm effects separately, as well as Kumbhakar's and Heshmati's (1995, American Journal of Agricultural Economics, 77, 660) model where these two factors are confounded. Furthermore, we investigate the factors that influence transient and persistent technical efficiency. Our findings reveal that failing to differentiate between persistent technical efficiency and firm effects underestimates the estimates of persistent and overall technical efficiency. This underestimation may result in misguided policy recommendations for improving the technical performance of farm businesses. We also find that persistent efficiency dominates overall technical efficiency. The significant determinants of persistent overall technical efficiency include the regional rainfall zone where a farm business is located, the managerial competency of the farm operator denoted by their age and off-farm activities. Off-farm income plays a crucial role in determining transient technical efficiency.

This work investigates the linkages among conventional and organic milk markets in France and Germany using the flexible TVP-VAR connectedness approach. Price connectedness tends to be stronger in the spatial than in the quality dimension of the market network. The bulk of the adjustments to incoming price innovations are completed beyond the 3-month frequency range. Organic milk markets are more likely to be net-transmitters of shocks to conventional markets. Total connectedness has not been increasing. The strength of price spillovers between market pairs varies widely with time; their pattern does not, thus pointing to a fairly stable internal network structure.

Our study investigates the impact of genetically modified organism (GMO) regulations on international agricultural trade, with a specific focus on GMO approvals. We analyse the effects of GMO regulations on bilateral trade through three main pathways: productivity enhancements in the exporting country, regulatory dissimilarities between trading partners and the influence of GMO approvals on demand in the importing country. Using a panel data set on corn trade and employing advanced econometric techniques, our findings reveal that GMO cultivation approvals in exporting countries have the most substantial and consistent positive effect on trade. Conversely, the impact of GMO demand approvals in importing countries is relatively smaller and negative. Additionally, regulatory dissimilarities between any two countries become negligible when accounting for the effects of cultivation and demand approvals. Thus, GMO approval regulations exert more significant multilateral effects on trade than bilateral ones.

In an ever-more-competitive global beverage market, vignerons compete for the attention of consumers by trying to differentiate their wine from others while also responding to technological advances, climate change and evolving demand patterns. In doing so, they highlight their regional and varietal distinctiveness while keeping an eye on changes in consumer preferences for different varieties. This paper examines and seeks to explain the extent to which winegrape varietal mixes vary across regions and over time within Australia and relative to the rest of the world. It reports changes in indices of similarity across regions and indices of concentration in the winegrape varietal mix within regions. Nationally, the varietal mix has become less differentiated and closer to that of France and the world as a whole. However, individual regions within Australia are becoming more concentrated in their mix of varieties and more differentiated from other Australian regions. We estimate supply response models based on a Nerlovian adaptive profit expectations and partial acreage adjustment framework. These models do not provide insights into many of the variables influencing vignerons' planting decisions, but they help explain recent changes in varietal mixes. The results suggest that changes in varietal mixes are more motivated by expected revenues than by what may work best based on the climate of each region. In the wake of climate change and global wine demand premiumising, some Australian vignerons may find their region is too warm for producing high-quality wine with the winegrape varieties planted there.

We present a simple model of internal and external balance that incorporates key features of resource-rich developing countries (RRDCs). The main result is that ‘government take’—the ratio of fiscal resource revenue to resource output—is a key determinant of the equilibrium real exchange rate (ERER) in these countries. Examining the case of Papua New Guinea, which has grappled with foreign exchange restrictions since 2015, we find that about half of the RER overvaluation estimated at 26% in 2019 would disappear if the current low level of government take was to be lifted to its long-term average. The analysis has two key takeaways for RRDCs. First, changes in the government take require adjustments to the RER and fiscal policy to maintain internal and external balance. Second, economic adjustments to falls in the take are difficult; therefore, policies seeking to stabilise the take over time to promote macroeconomic stability are recommended.

The frequency and severity of drought has been increasing in Southern Africa against the backdrop of an increase in the population of both humans and wildlife, most notably elephants. This has increased the incidents of human–wildlife conflict (HWC) due to competition for food and water, further complicating both conservation efforts and food security for farmer-households juxtaposed to wildlife corridors. We seek insights into these issues by examining the role of drought in inducing HWC in rural Zimbabwe and investigate the effect of HWC on the food-security status of rural households. We utilise data from the 2023 nationally representative survey of rural Zimbabwean households in this endeavour. To avoid the confounding problem associated with self-selection into a HWC household and taking into account the count nature of our outcome variable, we employ the endogenous switching regression model with count data. The results provide three major insights. First, drought occurrence increases the likelihood of HWC among rural farmer-households. Second, HWC increases rural household vulnerability to food insecurity. Finally, the HWC shock is inconsequential on farmer-household food insecurity if the farmer-household has already suffered the drought shock.

The quantity of ecosystem services produced from land cannot be readily measured at the site level needed for participation in ecosystem markets, or at a regional level needed to create ecosystem accounts. This paper applies biological scaling principles to develop a quantity metric in which areas of ecosystem (extent) scale allometrically to ecosystem services (a capacity measure) according to a scaling exponent defined by the fractal dimension of ecosystem vegetation. A key conclusion of this paper is that the quantity of ecosystem services arising from ecosystem degradation and conservation activities cannot be estimated unless information about the space-filling properties of vegetation is observed and included in the quantity measurement methodology. The paper demonstrates how remote sensing techniques can be applied to systematically measure ecosystem extent and fractal dimension. It illustrates the economic efficiency and environmental outcome implications of such a quantity metric through comparison with current quantity estimation methods that assume isometric scaling. The quantity metric proposed has potential applications to ecosystem accounting. It enables information currently reported in land accounts to be combined with information reported in ecosystem condition accounts to create ecosystem stock accounts measured in physical units.

The emergence of variable renewable energy (VRE) technologies has created a range of different energy contracting techniques. Within Australia's National Electricity Market (NEM), Run-of-Plant (RoP) Power Purchase Agreements (PPAs) became the most common form of contract with purchasers of wind and solar energy agreeing to pay a fixed price for energy irrespective of when it is produced and, therefore, its actual value to the market. In November 2023, the Commonwealth Government adopted a 32 GW RoP PPA Contract-for-Difference (CfD) underwriting policy that aims to effectively shield the generator from market price risk. This article discusses different contract structures and their impact on participant behaviour during periods of material oversupply and negative prices. We find that embedded solar PV exports into the distribution network, which are not required to dynamically participate in the wholesale market, have increased wholesale energy supply, enabling profit maximising vertically integrated renewable firms to drive prices lower in a manner that partially strands the output of RoP PPA CfD generators with a $0/MWh price floor. A key conclusion from our analysis is that requiring embedded solar PV to effectively participate in the wholesale market appears to be a pre-condition for the efficacy of government-initiated RoP PPA CfDs.

Although crop insurance is widely acknowledged as an effective risk management strategy for safeguarding food security, the causality between crop insurance premium subsidies and cropland abandonment remains inadequately investigated. This study employs a staggered difference-in-differences model to investigate the impact of the Crop Insurance Premium Subsidies Program (CISP) on cropland abandonment using representative household-level panel data from China spanning from 2004 to 2012. Our analysis reveals that crop insurance premium subsidies significantly mitigate cropland abandonment. This relationship is primarily due to the stabilisation of household income growth, which incentivises farmers to augment agricultural inputs and enhance development resilience. Furthermore, our heterogeneous analysis indicates that the effect of the CISP is more pronounced in households located in non-grain-producing regions or areas with lower economic development. These findings underscore the previously overlooked role of crop insurance premium subsidies in preventing cropland abandonment and offer new insights into measures aimed at ensuring food security.