American Journal of Agricultural Economics最新文献

We explore ethnic and gender disparities in U.S. agriculture by comparing productivity gaps between male- and female-headed family farms, and between non-Hispanic White and minority-headed family farms. Using Agricultural Resource Management Survey data from 2017 to 2020, propensity score matching techniques are applied to obtain comparable samples based on observable covariates. Statistical tests reveal structural differences in production technologies between male- and female-headed farms, and between non-Hispanic White and minority-headed farms, thus requiring the estimation of separate production technologies for each group. Accordingly, a stochastic metafrontier framework is used to envelop the group frontiers and assess technology gaps. The results indicate that female and minority-principal operators not only use different production technologies but are also less proficient at combining inputs to maximize farm output. The results also reveal within-group gender and ethnic differences—ceteris paribus, among non-Hispanic White and minority-led farms, female producers generated substantially less output compared to their male counterparts. Similarly, among male principal operators, Hispanic producers generated more output compared to their non-Hispanic White and non-Hispanic non-White counterparts.

This article delineates a synthetic population generation scheme in an attempt to estimate individual nitrate leaching rates among Greek farms in the region of Thessaly. The proposed scheme relies upon the construction of a Bayesian network describing farming activities in the region, which, coupled with the use of nonparametric regression models, facilitate the consistent generation of synthetic farm data. Then, building upon the sequential generalized maximum entropy approach suggested by Kaplan et al., enhanced with the multiple production relations model proposed by Murty et al., we obtain econometric estimates of the unified farm production and nitrate leaching technology for the synthetic population of farms. The estimation of individual nitrate emissions leads, thus, to the formulation of an optimal taxation scheme aiming to mitigate the negative externality created by chemical fertilization in agricultural activities.

We estimate how the COVID-19 pandemic altered school-aged children's diet quality from March 2020 to July 2022 through the lens of food acquisitions. Because nationally representative food-consumption data are absent during this time, we use several data sources to predict changes in diet quality. We first estimate a model of diet quality as a function of food source acquisitions using prepandemic food-consumption surveys. These estimates are applied to observed changes in monthly acquisitions across five food sources: grocery, fast food, restaurant, school, and other sources. Although we predict the average school-aged child experienced a loss in daily diet quality by 2%–3% on a typical school day, results are largely driven by those receiving free or reduced-price school meals. Specifically, students in the full-price category maintained comparable diet quality from March 2020 to July 2022, deviating no more than 1% from prepandemic levels. Students typically receiving free/reduced-price meals, however, had lower-quality diets by at least 3% during each school month, upwards of 5.5%. The lower bound prediction is driven by the reduced consumption of school meals, whereas the upper bound is driven by the degree to which schools opted to relax the nutritional standards for school meals due to COVID-19 federal waivers. Results highlight the important effects of school meal programs on diet quality, especially for children from lower-income households.

Belay, D. Abate, T. Jensen, J. 2020 A Montero Auction Mechanism to Regulate Antimicrobial Consumption in Agriculture American Journal of Agricultural Economics 102(5): 1448–1467 https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/ajae.12079

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Food insecurity is a widespread problem faced by American families, particularly those with children. It is clear that poverty contributes to food insecurity, but extant research focuses almost exclusively on income poverty (IP). We move beyond income-centric conceptions of poverty to propose that net worth poverty (NWP) is an important, but overlooked, measure of marginalization and financial hardship that puts families at risk of food insecurity. A family is NWP if they have insufficient net worth to meet basic needs for 3 months, and NWP has increased in recent decades even while IP declined. This paper explores how NWP and its two subcomponents—asset and debt poverty—relate to food insecurity using data from the 2015–2021 Panel Study of Income Dynamics on 5762 households with at least one resident child under 18. Net worth poor households were 11.3% more likely than households that were neither net worth nor income poor to be food insecure. Although asset poverty and debt poverty were associated with increased risks, asset poverty more than doubled the risk of food insecurity relative to debt poverty. Black and Hispanic child households were more likely to be NWP and food insecure than White households, but associations between poverty and food insecurity did not vary by racial and ethnic subgroup. Findings demonstrate how low wealth, including financial assets and debts, affect risks of food insecurity.

Farmworkers are often subject to hazardous working conditions, experience a disparity in health insurance coverage, and are vulnerable to chronic health conditions and injury. Although recent health care mandates have improved access to healthcare, many agricultural employers still do not offer coverage for their employees. Because farmworkers tend to be seasonal, and sometimes migratory, worker health is often considered a common property resource. If farmers cannot retain the benefits due to offering worker healthcare coverage, the market for firm-provided coverage fails and workers are not covered. We estimate the economic value of offering health coverage to farmworkers and their employers using a structural search, match, and bargaining model. We find that farmworkers with employer-provided health coverage are significantly more productive than those without and, on average, generate an additional $��\text{\$}�0.85�$ in economic surplus for each hour worked. Employers who offer health coverage retain an additional $��\text{\$}�0.65�$ of economic surplus for each hour of work performed by their employees due to a health productivity premium, after accounting for the cost of offering insurance. Farmworker healthcare coverage, therefore, is not a common property resource and represents a viable strategy to attract, retain, and care for valuable employees.

Recent public health events have brought to the forefront the challenges of incorporating collective action behaviors and information seeking and processing behaviors to motivate personal protections to an environmental risk. The economic and social costs of large-scale spread of disease when there is no cure for the disease, only preventative measures implemented in coordination and cooperation with others, will be effective at addressing the problem. To better understand these challenges in an agricultural context, we create an agent-based model (ABM) coupling ecological, epidemiological, and economic factors to simulate Huanglongbing (HLB) spread in California. The ABM is used to evaluate how participation in collective action through coordinated area-wide insecticide spraying is influenced by perception of other growers' participation and confidence in scientific information about the disease. We find a grower's participation in coordinated spraying has little influence on when the infection reaches them but depends primarily on the other growers' action. We discover that over time more growers cooperate in area-wide coordinated spraying, but after the disease has sufficiently spread, some growers stop cooperating. Moreover, as beliefs in other growers' participation becomes stronger, some growers cooperate less, leading to greater HLB spread. We observe that increased confidence in scientific information lowers HLB spread, as more growers are motivated to cooperate through increased expected cumulative profits. As such, a successful strategy to combat an incurable infectious disease, like HLB, and collective action problems, in general, requires careful consideration of growers' perceptions of their neighbors' behavior and trust in scientific information.

Habits are key determinants of consumer behavior across a range of domains, such as food consumption, brand selection, transportation choice, technology usage, and health-related behaviors. Habits may also affect consumer responses to exogenous shocks, including changes in policies targeted at consumers. Adequately defining and measuring habits is therefore important for both understanding and predicting consumer behavior. In this paper, we develop a habit index that is based on regularity of observed purchases. Our index is suitable for comparing habitualness across product groups and types of households. We estimate the index using Danish home-scan food purchase data and find that across product groups, habitualness is higher for breakfast foods and products with short shelf lives. Across households, habitualness decreases with household income and is higher for households whose main shopper is male. We also examine how habitualness affects price sensitivity and responsiveness to Danish fat and sugar taxes. We find that habitual consumers are less sensitive to general price fluctuations, but more responsive to tax changes.

Sandstorms, exacerbated by global warming and distinct from industrial sources of air pollution, have significant detrimental effects on various socio-economic factors. However, evidence of their impact on agricultural production and the adaptation strategies employed by farmers remains limited. This paper estimates the impacts of sandstorms on crop yields and examines the associated adaptation strategies. Using data from 288 counties in China's winter wheat production regions spanning 2000 to 2007, we uncover a substantial 14.8% reduction in winter wheat yields in northern China due to sandstorms. Each additional hour of sandstorm during the winter wheat growing season corresponds to a 1.4% decrease in yield. Household-level data further reveal that sandstorms not only threaten food security by reducing crop yields, but also lead to a significant decrease in planted areas. Furthermore, we find that farmers increase their investments in fertilizer and labor as adaptation measures to mitigate the negative impacts of sandstorms on crop yields. Our results suggest that timely irrigation following a sandstorm, especially in areas with less precipitation, can effectively mitigate its adverse effects, offering valuable insights for reducing the economic impact of sandstorm events. These findings underscore the need for adaptive strategies to safeguard agricultural productivity in the face of increasing sandstorm risks, offering valuable insights for policymakers and stakeholders engaged in agricultural resilience planning.

This study employs Berry, Levinsohn, and Pakes' (1995; hereafter BLP) model to estimate the impacts of organic equivalency agreements (OEAs) on the market share of exporting countries that shipped organic agrifood products to the markets of the U.S., Canada, and Denmark from 2011 to 2019. The BLP model accounts for variations in the trade impacts of OEAs by considering unobserved, product-specific, agro-ecological comparative advantages and bilateral trade costs. The BLP estimation offers a more realistic trade pattern, showing that exporters producing and selling close substitutes for organic agrifood products with the competitors in the market would be more sensitive to the establishment of OEAs between the competitors and the market. Results indicate that OEA partners of the importer would achieve a higher share in this market than non-OEA partners. The simulation results suggest that Peru would have captured 23.8% of the 2019 U.S. market share if Peru had signed an OEA with the U.S. in 2017. Additionally, Mexico and Turkey would have secured 35.1% and 1.8% of the 2019 Canadian and Danish markets, respectively, had the Mexico–Canada and Turkey–Denmark OEAs been in effect since 2017. These findings, along with changes in the market shares of other exporters under a hypothetically established OEA, provide new insights into organic trade patterns and highlight the potential for further development of OEAs.