Australian Journal of Agricultural and Resource Economics最新文献

This study uncovers some important stylised facts about the structural changes in the rural nonfarm (RNF) economy in Bangladesh for the period 2000–2016 and identifies some broad determinants. Our work uses household-level, secondary sources such as Household Income and Expenditure Survey, Labour Force Survey and Bangladesh Integrated Household Survey. We find that the positive relationship between landownership and rural income has become weaker in recent years, indicating the increasing role of nonland inputs in generating rural income. The share of RNF income in total rural income has increased substantially over the years. The increase in nonfarm income is largely driven by the nonfarm wage income of the richer households, indicating adverse distributional consequences. There are also indications for specialisation in nonfarm activities—the share of income from the ‘mixed’ sources of farm and nonfarm has decreased, and the ‘only nonfarm’ source has increased. Households tend to move away from agriculture and specialise in RNF occupations as the education level increases. Our results offer important insights into rural development strategies and contribute to the broader questions of the development discourse on the structural changes in developing countries.

Reducing the use of chemical pesticide while preserving crop yield is a practical strategy that makes agricultural production economically, socially and environmentally sustainable. Although the adoption of green pest control practices can help achieve such a goal, its adoption rate remains quite low. This study explores whether membership in agricultural cooperatives improves smallholder farmers' adoption of green pest control practices, utilising farm-level data surveyed from rice farmers in China. To enrich our understanding, we also investigate how the adoption of green pest control practices mediates the effects of cooperative membership on chemical pesticide expenditures. An endogenous switching probit model and a bootstrap-based mediation method are employed to achieve these goals. The empirical results show that cooperative membership significantly increases the probability of adopting physical pest control practices (e.g. pest-killing lamps or sticky plate traps) and biological pest control practices (e.g. biopesticides) by 6% and 19%, respectively. Cooperative membership significantly reduces chemical pesticide expenditures through its mediation effect on improving the probability of adopting biological pest control practices. There is also a complementary relationship between physical and biological pest control practices in pest management of rice production. The adoption of physical pest control practices significantly increases rice yield, while the adoption of biological pest control practices does not.

The pig meat production plays a significant role in the Spanish agrofood system. The assessment of the efficiency performance with which farmers are operating is necessary to define adequate policy and management strategies. In this context, this study aimed to determine the technical efficiency (TE) performance of pig farms and to examine the key factors that may affect the production system in Spain. To do so, the analysis relies on the quantile stochastic frontier model using a sample of Spanish pig farms. Results show a significant difference between production frontier parameters across the selected quantiles, which support the relevance of using the quantile regression approach. The optimal quantile for the stochastic frontier indicates an average TE level of 75%. In addition, empirical findings suggest that pig farmers in Spain give more importance to the adoption of high technology to improve their economic and technical performance as well as their competitiveness at the European pig market.

This research introduces a novel empirical application to the assessment of farm productivity growth. While the existing research on productivity change has primarily focussed on ex post output observations, it has been shown that ignoring production uncertainty can lead to unreliable results. Using a state-contingent framework to represent the stochastic production environment, we extend the recent line of research that merged the state-contingent approach and efficiency measurement to productivity change using the Malmquist and Luenberger productivity indices. Using a balanced panel of 117 arable crop farms surveyed in 2011 and 2015, we show through the study results that productivity decreased, with technological regress being the major source of productivity change. Differences in productivity change between nonstochastic and stochastic modelling show the relevance to consider the state-contingent framework when assessing farms' productivity.

Poverty remains a substantial threat in rural areas of many developing countries, and solving this problem requires an in-depth understanding of the income generating capacity that determines poverty. This paper examines the impact of agricultural commercialisation on the capability of rural households to accumulate and productively use assets and reduce structural and multidimensional poverty. A longitudinal dataset of around 2000 households with a total of 9781 observations from five rural surveys undertaken in the period 2008–2017 in Vietnam is used. Results from a fixed effects regression with an instrumental variable and a control function approach show that agricultural commercialisation has a positive effect on the accumulation of assets and reduces multidimensional and structural poverty over time. However, the effect is not homogeneous and is larger for households that are not mainly engaged in rice commercialisation. This suggests that commercialisation can be a path out of poverty, especially if policy makers move towards utilising other crops instead of rice.

We conduct an experiment to determine competitiveness among shrimpers who engage in collecting shrimp seeds in the southwestern coastal region of Bangladesh. We then examine how competitiveness affects the labour supply decisions and labour market performance of these shrimpers. Our results show that shrimpers who prefer competition are more productive than shrimpers who do not prefer competition. Competitive shrimpers secure better prices and earn higher incomes selling their catches. We estimate that their wage elasticity of participation ranges from 0.4 to 0.5, which is consistent with preferences under neoclassical assumptions. Competitive shrimpers have a slightly greater wage elasticity than non-competitive shrimpers, suggesting that they might be more responsive to expected earnings. Our results have important policy implications for the efficient management of common pool resources.

The search for improved water pricing is central to urban water reform in many countries. Establishing efficient water prices is notoriously difficult, not least because different customers have different demands for water and yet they are presently faced with a one-size-fits-all approach to pricing and service. This is especially challenging where water availability fluctuates widely, as is the case in many parts of Australia, because the impacts of exposure to episodic periods of scarcity can differ markedly. There is now substantial interest in the notion of ‘unbundling’ the water product to provide a better fit between customers' preferences and the level of service received. Following this trend, this study provides important insights into householders' willingness to pay for a range of flexible water options using a choice experiment. The paper reports a relatively underemployed extension to the latent class modelling framework to investigate preference heterogeneity towards urban water products, including purchasing services that involve the provision of environmental and amenity outcomes. The work adds to studies that use choice data to reveal heterogeneity while improving our understanding of household customers' demands. Overall, it also brings into focus questions about the future management of water in urban contexts.

Consolidating and expanding poverty alleviation while simultaneously reducing carbon emissions has become one of the main issues facing China. The Chinese Certified Emission Reduction (CCER) trading programme is an important supplementary mechanism to China's carbon trading market. Based on the data of 1782 counties in China from 2006 to 2017 and a difference-in-differences model, this study investigates the rural poverty reduction effect of CCER trading. We find that: (1) during the sample period, CCER trading has increased the per capita net income of rural residents by at least 2.5% or 187.5 RMB (about 27.8 USD or 39.3 AUD) per year. (2) The poverty reduction effect of CCER trading in poor counties is greater than that in nonpoor counties. (3) Some relevant heterogeneous effects are also measured. We find that CCER trading of hydropower projects has played a significant poverty reduction effect; the poverty reduction effect is further enhanced when the county has additional CCER projects; we also identify regional differences with CCER trading having a greater poverty reduction effect in the western and central regions. (4) Compared with the implementation of the CCER project, trading the emission reductions generated by the CCER project has brought more significant poverty reduction effects.

The relationship between information and communication technology (ICT) and farm productivity remains unresolved and often debated with limited evidence. While ICT is generally accepted by many to be a positive driver of productivity, others question it. Realistically, truth is likely somewhere in between. Certain ICT investments are likely to facilitate productivity improvement, whereas others may offer some other benefits such as improved safety or reduced emissions. It is also undeniable that some ICT investments may fail or offer little more than a temporary novelty. Using a sample of Australian farm-level data, analysis in this paper finds a positive relationship between ICT investment and productivity. Specifically, the use of precision agriculture and machinery infused with ICT (such as GPS autosteering tractors) is found to be statistically significant. Moreover, digital internet access or access to the National Broadband Network (NBN) is found to be beneficial—and conversely, farms that reported mobile and internet connectivity problems tended to achieve lower productivity.

Poverty is endemic in the highly populated Eastern Gangetic Plains where agriculture is critical to more than half the population. However, the mechanisms to support agriculture for development are contested. For example, some have advocated a strong role for government support and assistance due to market weaknesses, while others have promoted the need for more market-oriented approaches. We use an elicitation process focussed on expert policymaking communities, employing stated preference techniques to explore these options. Differences in perceptions about the effectiveness of policies and their delivery are reported between countries, while also empirically examining the influence of the respondents' organisational background. The results show support for policies that improve farmers' access to inputs, especially when delivered by private sector actors. The research provides an important contribution to the literature on policies for agricultural development.