Australian Journal of Agricultural and Resource Economics最新文献

The wedge-tailed eagle (Aquila audax) is the largest bird of prey in Australia. It has a unique Tasmanian subspecies (Aquila audax fleayi), which is listed as endangered. Conservation efforts are hampered by the Tasmanian subspecies being notoriously shy breeders that can easily be disturbed by human activity such as forestry, resulting in nest abandonment. Conservation efforts are currently focussed on restricting forestry activities around nesting sites. Other potential policies could target the use of rat poisons (especially single-dose, second generation rat poisons) which have the potential to bio-accumulate as wedge-tailed eagles are known to scavenge. Evaluating the potential benefits of these conservation strategies has been complicated by recent research which suggests that the two subspecies are genetically similar, and therefore the species' genome is not at risk of endangerment. This impacts the perceived ‘uniqueness’ of the Tasmanian subspecies. A research question that emerges from this conservation problem is whether respondents value conservation efforts differently depending on whether the subspecies is perceived as ‘unique’, with either differences or the similarities of the subspecies emphasised in a stated preference survey. We sample south-eastern states of mainland Australia (New South Wales, Victoria, and South Australia) as well as the island state of Tasmania to investigate differences in preferences across states based on proximity to the target species. The results suggest a positive willingness to pay for expanding reserve areas around nests, restricting forestry activity in proximity to nests, and restricting rat poisons, with some variability across mainland states relative to Tasmania.

We study the impact of oil windfalls on fiscal accountability, vis-à-vis the case of regimes with no term limits. A political economy model of oil windfalls, accountability and term limits indicates that term limit regimes distort the impact of windfalls on accountability, motivating a focus on regimes that impose no term limits. Employing a panel of US states with no term limits over the period 1963–2007, we show that oil windfalls trigger fiscal effects similar to those observed under binding term limits. Namely, taxes and spending increase, lowering state growth in a robust and economically meaningful magnitude, yet only when a Democrat is in office. We show that these patterns hold over the course of several years. Our results shed light on the potential adverse effects of oil windfalls in advanced democracies, as well as more generally on the disciplining effect of elections.

Sustainable intensification (SI) has been receiving policy attention for its potential to transform agri-food systems and improve rural livelihoods. However, little is known about how SI technology bundles influence system productivity, profitability and household welfare in the coupled rice-wheat crop rotations of the Indo-Gangetic Plains in South Asia. We investigate the combined impacts of direct seeded rice (mDSR) and zero-tillage (ZT) wheat on system productivity, profitability and household welfare in the rice-wheat system of Bihar and eastern Uttar Pradesh, India. Using a multinomial endogenous switching regression model to address selection bias, we find that the joint adoption of mDSR and ZT wheat significantly improves cropping system productivity by 19% (1148 kg per hectare), reduces production costs by 18% (US$ 159 per hectare), increases farm profits by 84% (US$ 502 per hectare) and raises household per capita income by 56%. However, these benefits are unevenly distributed, with poorer farms benefitting less from rice-wheat farming and more from off-farm income compared to richer farms. Our findings underscore the need for policy support to promote broader SI adoption and emphasise the importance of fostering off-farm jobs for equitable development.

Rising and unstable prices of rice and other staple foods threaten the food security of millions worldwide. These fluctuations raise concerns about market response to price changes, especially regarding incentives for food production. This study investigates how the price dynamics in the Asian rice markets are affected by crises in low-quality rice by analysing monthly export price data for 25% broken rice for Vietnam, Thailand, India, and Pakistan. We test the rice price transmission and rice market integration of these countries using a vector autoregression (VAR) model. The results reveal a tendency for price signals to move together across our sample countries, despite variations in their rice production and consumption patterns. This suggests that rice price shocks are transmitted between Asian exporting countries, particularly for low-quality rice. Furthermore, our analysis suggests that price dynamics in these markets are primarily influenced by crises affecting domestic agro-food chains and government policies related to price and trade. To improve production incentives during crises, governments could promote competition among traders, wholesalers, and input providers, and support farmers' income through supply oriented policies, including input vouchers and agricultural credit. These policies can mitigate price and trade distortions that can negatively affect price incentives and food security.

We investigate the economic implications of divergence between U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) organic certification procedures applied to U.S. producers and the certification procedures applied to products imported from abroad in the context of the U.S. honey market. The USDA does not have a process to recognise domestically produced honey as ‘USDA organic’. Thus, the consumer market for USDA organic-certified honey can only be accessed by foreign producers. To investigate the economic implications of this regulatory disharmony, we employ a choice experiment to assess the price premiums associated with organic certification for foreign honey imports. Our results indicate that disparate organic certification procedures generate a substantial premium for foreign producers—honey labelled as USDA organic receives a $7.13 price premium, relative to unlabelled honey. However, when respondents are aware that all organic-certified honey is imported from abroad, WTP for organic honey decreases by $1.32. These findings highlight a key distinction and potential hidden cost associated with standard ‘equivalence’—that is, mutual recognition that standards in one jurisdiction are ‘substantially similar’ to the standards in another jurisdiction—versus standard ‘harmonization’—that is, making regulations consistent across jurisdictions.

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.