Australian Journal of Agricultural and Resource Economics最新文献

We argue that it is both possible and timely to relax the assumption of anthropocentrism in agricultural and resource economics. We advocate for the incorporation of sentientist principles by including the welfare of sentient animals within the social welfare function. To exemplify this non-anthropocentric stance, we build on our recent works that incorporate the intrinsic value of farmed animals into food production and consumption. By recognising the externalities affecting animals, we justify the implementation of specific policies, such as a meat tax, which redistributes welfare from consumers and producers to farmed animals. Furthermore, we delve into the quantitative assessment of animal welfare and demonstrate its application to food policy, revealing the substantial economic and welfare impacts at stake. Expanding on our earlier model, we also emphasize the importance of introducing a ‘sentience premium’ within species conservation policies. This additional consideration ensures that the conservation efforts appropriately account for the intrinsic value of sentient beings living in the wild.

This paper presents a methodology for defining the spot price of temporary water allocation rights for trading zones within the water market in the southern Murray–Darling Basin situated in Australia. The historical spot price is then used to calibrate a stochastic process depicting the dynamics of the water price, allowing the computation of prices of options on the underlying water price with the aim of producing reference prices to catalyse an options trading market. The most suitable stochastic model representing the water price dynamics is selected through comparing the option prices generated from four different models. Using the selected stochastic model, the most liquid trading zone in the Murray–Darling Basin water market (Zone 7) is used to demonstrate how the methodologies developed in the paper are used to calibrate the log-mean stochastic model representing the stochastic spot price dynamics and compute prices for call and put options on the underlying water spot prices. Sensitivities of the water options prices to market input data can be calculated from the formulae provided in the paper. The results presented in this work can serve as a reference tool by industry practitioners and the farming community in using options for effective risk management of water resources.

This paper presents an analysis of the heterogeneous preferences of farmers towards groundwater pump technologies. The research uses primary field data drawn from West Bengal, India, where the progressive feminisation of agriculture has been well-documented. We employ a paired comparison technique to explore how gender impacts the preferences towards different attributes of pumping technology. Our findings illustrate that preferences for irrigation pump attributes vary significantly between farmer groups, and policies that put technologies in the hands of some groups versus others could have significantly different impacts on how pumps are ultimately used.

This study examines the impact of urban waterway conditions on property market prices. In general, similar revealed preference studies typically focus on identifying the value associated with changes in attributes such as riparian vegetation or water quality. Using an index that classifies waterways based on the vegetation and channel conditions, we analyse both attributes. Our spatial hedonic property price model findings indicate that buyers are willing to pay premiums ranging from 2.7% to 8.5%, depending on vegetation and channel conditions. However, when the proximity to the waterway is accounted for, we found that properties adjacent to the highest-ranked vegetation and channel conditions attract a higher premium of 12.8%. Overall, the implicit marginal effects for the distance–condition interaction variables indicate that for lower-ranked waterway conditions, there is a relative aversion to being adjacent to waterways. The results suggest that there are significant gains to be realised from removing concrete-lined channels and replacing them with stones for banks, or re-creating unmodified channels, even if there is only limited scope for increasing vegetation.

Using panel data from 510 Brazilian micro-regions in three census years (1995, 2006 and 2017), this study presents a productivity decomposition for the Brazilian agricultural sector using stochastic production frontier methods that account for the effects of rainfall, temperature and the land suitability index. We also calculated the total factor productivity (TFP) index and decomposed it into technical efficiency, technological change, scale efficiency and environmental efficiency. This article thus provides a new and more realistic assessment of recent Brazilian agricultural productivity growth. In recent decades, Brazilian agriculture has become widely known for presenting fast productivity growth; however, our results suggest that a lower TFP growth rate than previous estimates (1.96% per annum) and the overall effects of climate change could potentially compromise Brazilian agricultural TFP growth in the long run. Our findings might thus generate insights for agricultural and regional policies to increase efficiency in the sector and promote sustainable agricultural development in Brazil, which will contribute to the sector's competitiveness in international markets, the country's social and economic welfare, and environmental conservancy.

We integrate a model that simulates biophysical processes in soils and water with spatial and temporal heterogeneity at the basin scale with an economic model of decisions under uncertainty, to simultaneously evaluate the economic and environmental effects of farming practices and land uses that characterise agricultural intensification. The introduction of uncertainty allows the evaluation of economic impacts both due to changes in average profits and in their volatility. Through our model integration, we endogenously tackle the trade-offs between economic benefits and environmental outcomes, in terms of nutrient levels in water. Results show that a sizable increase in economic benefits from supplemental irrigation comes from lower risk premiums. Medium-to-high increments of fertiliser rates in irrigated crops are dominated in terms of economic benefits by low fertiliser rate increments. We find that water quality deteriorates with intensive farming practices. However, the magnitude of the trade-offs between economic benefits and water quality is mixed and depends on the nutrient and level of risk aversion considered. The ability of our model to quantify and document the mentioned effects is a relevant input to inform the decision-making process of agricultural and environmental authorities, often characterised by competing and opposing objectives.

As concerns over African swine fever (ASF) in China continue, measures have been taken to regulate the inter-provincial transport of live hogs, yet entrenched non-chilled fresh pork consumption habits make it challenging to expand the chilled pork in the market. To address this issue, our study employed multiple rounds of random Nth-price auction experiments to measure participants' quality perceptions of, and willingness to pay (WTP) for chilled pork under different packaging, storage temperature and duration labels. By comparing the results with physicochemical lab testing outcomes, we confirmed the existence of a quality perception bias among the participants. Notably, consumers who regularly consume chilled meat demonstrated a higher average WTP, while consumers born in the 1980s exhibited significantly higher bids. Furthermore, access to emerging purchase channels positively influences consumer WTP for chilled meat, particularly through branded product purchasing experiences. Consequently, it is recommended that the public sector takes steps to balance the distribution of pork production capacity and supports the development of cold chain transportation technology to meet the growing demand for high-quality chilled pork, especially from younger consumers.

This study assesses individuals' preferences for the use of forest sites for recreational purposes by means of the logit-mixed logit (LML) model. The appeal of the LML is that the analyst does not need to assume any specific functional form for the mixing distributions of random preferences. The empirical analysis generates a data-driven nonparametric representation of individuals' preference heterogeneity. We apply this approach to data collected using an unlabelled discrete choice experiment (DCE), consisting of three recreational options, two of which are in two hypothetical forest sites. Forest destinations are described by means of six attributes: forest type, signposting, hiking time, access to rivers or lakes, wildlife watch hides for visitors and cost of access. The empirical findings reveal that the signpost for each trail is the attribute for which respondents are on average willing to pay the most (6.565€). Further evidence suggests that respondents have strong positive preferences for those forest sites that offer amenities such as wildlife watching hides and access to rivers or lakes. Finally, the histograms derived from the semi-parametric LML estimation reveal multimodality of random taste amongst respondents for different hypothetical forest sites.

The promotion of improved maize varieties and chemical fertilisers underscores many policy approaches addressing multiple production risks such as poor soil fertility and drought. However, the unsustainable use of chemical fertilisers has important implications for soil degradation. The synergies between improved maize varieties and sustainable land use management practices such as the use of organic fertilisers (e.g., manure) are poorly documented, despite the role of manure in enhancing soil organic matter. Employing nationally representative household survey data in Nigeria, this study utilises multivalued inverse probability weighted regression adjustment, entropy balancing and a multinomial endogenous switching regression model to determine the effects of the adoption of drought-tolerant maize varieties (DTMVs) and organic fertiliser on farm households' productivity, per capita total expenditure and per capita food expenditure. Controlling for farm households' observables and unobservables, the estimation results of the average treatment effects show that the highest pay-off on productivity and welfare outcomes is achieved when DTMVs and manure are jointly adopted. Also, wealth indicators, access to loans and access to extension services significantly influenced individual and combinatory packages of DTMVs and manure application adoption. This study underlines the significance of the joint adoption of DTMVs and manure application on rural farmers' productivity and welfare and a substantial contribution to achieving sustainable agricultural practices.

The 2015 EU milk quota abolition initiated considerable expansion in the dairy sector. This expansion has increased the demand for additional labour in some EU countries, most significantly in Ireland. This paper explores the role of hired labour on Irish dairy farms' technical efficiency (TE). We use a detailed farm-level panel data set of a representative sample from 2000 to 2018. To estimate transient, persistent, and overall TE over time, we apply a 4-component stochastic frontier model. Our findings show significant variation in TE scores over the period. We also control for endogeneity to obtain marginal effects of hired labour on TE. The results reveal that hired labour has a significant yet small, positive effect on farms' TE. Our findings suggest that the effect of hired labour on TE is larger for small and medium-sized farms. This effect is larger when herd size increases.