Australian Journal of Agricultural and Resource Economics最新文献

We assess the responsiveness of market equilibrium agricultural output, price and land use to shocks in agricultural demand, land yield and arable land area and the role of road infrastructure policy in offsetting them. We adapt a partial equilibrium model in the agricultural composite good and lands markets to guide the specification and estimation of a simultaneous equation model (SEM) for agricultural demand, land yield and acreage, and calculate market equilibrium responsiveness. We estimate the SEM by the generalised method of moments three-stage least squares (GMM 3SLS) using a panel data set of the 10 biggest agricultural producer states in Brazil from 2001 to 2017. Using demand, land yield and acreage price elasticity estimates, we find that Brazil may expand equilibrium agricultural output while preserving its native vegetation land and dampening long-term agricultural price escalation under a scenario of increasing worldwide demand for food, fibre and fuel and adverse climate shocks. Using acreage and land yield freight rate elasticity estimates, we show how shocks may be offset by road infrastructure policies that reduce freight rates to specific destination states, as they may be designed to induce less equilibrium land use for the same equilibrium output or raise equilibrium output with less equilibrium land use.

Farming and natural resource extraction are the main livelihood strategies of the rural poor in developing countries. A better understanding of their relationship is needed to alleviate existing pressures on resources and to reduce poverty. To date, mainly monetary indicators have been used to measure environmental resource dependence. However, these are inadequate for poor people who consume rather than sell their environmental products. Therefore, we propose the Environmental Resource Dependence Index (ERDI) to better capture the multidimensionality of dependence. We analyse the relationship between farming efficiency and environmental resource dependence using a simultaneous equations model (SEM) and panel data for 2013, 2016 and 2017 from three rural provinces in Central Vietnam. Time-variant farming efficiency is estimated using a stochastic frontier model (SFM) with true random effects and Mundlak's adjustment. Our results show that monetary measures underestimate the extent of dependency. Therefore, policymakers should be careful to correctly identify those who are dependent on the environment. In addition, the results suggest that improved farming efficiency reduces the dependence on environmental resources. At the same time, higher dependence does not have a significant effect on farming efficiency.

On 8 January 2021, China's first live-animal and live-delivery futures product—in live hogs—was listed on the Dalian Commodity Exchange to serve as a risk management tool. We examine whether this newly established market exhibits good market quality and has realised its primary functions of price discovery and hedging. Our results suggest that the live hog futures market performs its price discovery function well and can hedge between 4% and 27% of the risk in the spot market, even though it is less actively traded, less liquid and more volatile than egg futures markets. To strengthen the hedging function of the live hog futures market, more effort—such as recruiting market makers and introducing night trading sessions—should be exerted to increase and smooth trading and stabilise volatility.

South Asia is one of the most vulnerable regions of the globe in terms of climate change, with agriculture the most affected economic sector of the region. This study employs an environmental Global Trade Analysis Project model to simulate the impact of an average global 2°C temperature increase by 2050, with a focus on South Asian countries. The economic costs of climate change in relation to crop productivity losses due to increasing temperature, land productivity losses caused by rising sea levels and heat stress-induced agricultural labour productivity losses are assessed based on model simulations. The results show that the unfavourable climate change impacts on agricultural productivity (crop, land and labour) will reduce food production and create upward pressure on food prices. This will lead to a reduction in food consumption at the household level, threatening future food security in the region. The results further predict a contraction in all South Asian economies by 2050, due to adverse climate change impacts on the agricultural sector. In addition, out of the three climate change damage factors considered, labour productivity causes the greatest economic losses, while land productivity losses caused by rising sea levels impact the least. The study also found that low-income countries would suffer most severely due to the impacts of climate change on the agricultural sector, while high-income countries would be impacted the least.

The mining industry is not only one of Australia's main economic sectors but also one that the country is considered to have managed well. However, little is known about the industry's potential to contribute to the structural change of Australia's economy. We use the national input–output (IO) tables and apply the partial hypothetical extraction method (P-HEM) within both the Leontief and Gosh IO frameworks to examine the inter-sectoral linkages of the Australian mining and quarrying sector. Ee find that this sector demonstrates strong backward linkages (BL), but forward linkages (FL) appear to be weak, and they mainly involve non-metallic materials. The mining and quarrying sector appears to generate linkages with the business services sector and the construction sector, which can potentially contribute to diversifying the economy. Such linkages may be realised via skilling and reallocating skilled labour and technical supplier capacity as well as via developing physical infrastructure that supports existing and new economic sectors. We find that the identified linkage pathways via the construction sector are tied to energy-intensive but coal-dependent sectors. Thus, these pathways are vulnerable because of the climate-related need to move away from combusting coal and invest in cleaner sources of energy.

The agricultural sector's share of gross domestic product (GDP) in growing economies typically declines but, for a century from the early 1850s, Australia's did not. Drawing on recent structural transformation literature, this paper seeks explanations for this unusual phenomenon, which is all the more striking because agriculture's share of employment continued to decline throughout and growth in manufacturing was being stimulated by tariff protection from imports. Several factors contributed, including a huge land frontier that took more than a century for settlers to explore, rapid declines in initially crippling domestic and ocean trade costs for farm products, the absence of a need to do any processing of the two main exports during that period (gold and wool) and innovations by farmers and via a strong public agricultural R&D system that contributed to farm labour productivity nearly doubling over those 10 decades. The ban on iron ore exports from 1938 and low export prices for fuels, minerals and metals during the two world wars and in the intervening decades also contributed.

The trade-off between accuracy and complexity is a common issue faced in farm systems analysis. To provide insights into the importance of representing weather-year sequence in farm modelling, two whole-farm optimisation models are constructed and applied to a mixed enterprise farming system in a subregion of Western Australia. The frameworks are (i) four-stage single-sequence stochastic programming with recourse (4-SPR) to capture weather-year variation and management tactics tailored to each weather-year and (ii) eight-stage multi-sequence stochastic programming with recourse (8-SPR) to outline weather-year sequences and management tactics tailored to particular weather-year sequences. Results show that single-year stochastic programming generates similar expected profit and strategic management as multi-year stochastic programming. However, optimal tactical farm management is affected by the outcome of the previous year. Tactical decision-making in response to the outcome of the preceding weather-year increases profitability by 14%. Technology changes over the last decade, particularly the increase in computer speed and computational power, increase the ease of construction and application of the 4-SPR and 8-SPR frameworks. Nonetheless, choosing which framework is best to apply to a particular issue or opportunity remains a challenge.

In most developing countries, agricultural policies and programs are designed to promote productivity growth with modern inputs and technologies, and the success of these policies is measured primarily along the dimensions of technology adoption, with limited reference to the ancillary impacts on behavioural outcomes that may be a prerequisite to adoption. We test whether grassroots programs can additionally relax behavioural constraints, potentially enhancing the adoption of diversified production systems. In Odisha, India, using a series of laboratory-in-field experiments and survey instruments to elicit farmers' preferences for risk, agency and aspirations for themselves and their children, we find that respondents in villages where grassroots interventions were promoted showed significantly lower levels of risk aversion and higher aspirations for themselves and their children, along with improvements in production and consumption diversity. However, we do not find a mediating role of reduced risk aversion in improving direct program outcomes. Our results show that grassroots approaches are effective in inducing a shift towards changing production systems, and relaxing behavioural constraints, that can be leveraged over time to strengthen impacts.

The dissemination of conservation agriculture (CA) technologies has become the objective of a growing number of projects aimed at reducing food insecurity in vulnerable areas of the world. While many studies have found that CA increases farm productivity, little is known about the components of the productivity gains related to CA adoption. CA is a knowledge-intensive technology, and it is expected to affect both technical efficiency (TE) and input productivity positively. Using cross-sectional farm-level data of 220 maize farmers in Bangladesh, we measure the impact of CA on farmers' TE. We first apply propensity score matching (PSM) to create comparable counterfactual groups of CA and non-CA farmers. Then, we use a stochastic frontier with correction for self-selection bias to analyse TE. Finally, we fit a stochastic meta-frontier (SMF) model to the data and use it to compare TE across the two farmer groups. The analysis showed that CA farmers exhibit greater TE levels than non-CA farmers. This can be attributed to enhancements in farm management, leading to 8% and 9% increases in their productivity and TE, respectively. Thus, there is a case for policymakers to strengthen programs delivering CA technologies that improve food security in Bangladesh.

The study investigates the effects of public stockholding on price dynamics and volatility in the Indian wheat market. A quantile autoregression method is used as a flexible representation of price dynamics and is based on a reduced-form methodology. The findings reveal that public stockholdings have significant price effects, but the results vary significantly in price distribution. Further, we show local dynamic stability in the price distribution for all quantiles. However, dynamic adjustments tend to be qualitatively different across stockholding regimes, suggesting that price stability becomes less pronounced when stocks are low. Given the limitation of public stockholding in smoothing price fluctuations over time and the program's high costs, our analysis highlights the need to explore other alternative mechanisms such as trade, for example, in achieving stability in food prices.