Agribusiness最新文献

In recent years concerns have been raised regarding the environmental consequences of over-use of nitrogen fertilizers on a global level. However, the balance between sustainability and agricultural productivity, a central concern for policy makers in developing countries, has not been sufficiently addressed. In this paper, I evaluate farmers’ fertilization practices and their effect on yield using unique plot level data from India. I estimate quadratic crop response functions for different crops and cropping systems. To address endogenous input choices, I use input prices and cost shifters from the fertilizer industry as instrumental variables for the fertilization practice. I find that a large share of Indian cultivators overuse nitrogen relative to the other two nutrients, and could benefit from simply reducing the amount of nitrogen used while keeping the other nutrients fixed. This suggests a potential win-win situation where both productivity and sustainability can be improved by changing fertilizer application. The widespread “nitrogen-only” fertilization pattern is rejected as optimal in most cases. [EconLit Citations: Q12, Q15, Q16, E23, C26, C14].

Transformation of the previous centrally growth-oriented economic systems to a sustainable bio-economy is a global political trend, where public policy is a key factor in making this successful. Designing effective and efficient policies requires understanding the linkages between policy choices and outcomes. Most existing studies are missing a direct link to policy choices and ignore fundamental model uncertainty present in policy analysis. We empirically estimate a sector-specific, nested two-stage policy impact function to address these shortcomings. We apply a Bayesian estimation approach that combines existing statistical data with a priori information from political experts, thus reducing data and estimation problems. This is linked with a Computable General Equilibrium to model the entire link from policies to outcomes. We derive a theoretical framework that allows the definition of indicators for key sectors of an efficient Pro-Poor-Growth strategy. In our generalized framework, we show that indicators based only on growth-poverty linkages might be misleading. To deal with model uncertainty inherent in the application, we derive a set of metamodels via simulations conducted under different model parameter settings and apply Markov Chain Monte Carlo sampling. Applying Bayesian model selection allows drawing statistical inferences on competing models to generate relatively robust policy-relevant messages even under model uncertainty. The approach is empirically applied to Ghana, Senegal, and Uganda, analyzing the allocation of public spending on agriculture under the Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Programme. [EconLit Citations: C11—Bayesian Analysis: General; C63—Computational Techniques, Simulation Modeling; D58—Computable and Other Applied General Equilibrium Models; O55—Africa; Q01—Sustainable Development; Q18—Agricultural Policy].

This paper examines how India's national lockdown (March 25–May 31, 2020), in response to the spread of Covid-19, affected the on-farm family labor supply of 351 farm households in the rural–urban interface of Bangalore. We combine face-to-face survey data collected just before the start of the lockdown with phone survey data collected during the last 2 weeks of the lockdown. We find that 66% of farm households reduced their daily on-farm family labor supply during the lockdown, by on average almost 40% compared with prelockdown levels. Changes in on-farm family labor supply differed by key pre-Covid-19 household characteristics. Farm households that were engaged in crop marketing decreased their on-farm family labor supply by an average of 3–4 h/day. In turn, farm households that relied on off-farm income increased their on-farm family labor supply by on average 3–4 h/day [EconLit Citations: J22, J43, Q12, Q13, Q54].

The agricultural economics profession plays an essential role in the transition towards more sustainable and resilient food systems. The interdisciplinary perspective of the profession, the rapidly evolving methods and new data, as well as the diverse agricultural, climatic, and political and cultural landscapes of the European Union member states and associated countries pose specific challenges. In this study, we summarize what this implies for Early-Career researchers and how the European Network of Early Career Agricultural Economists (AgEconMeet) tries to support these youngsters in their career development. Finally, we introduce the articles of this special issue that represent the diverse landscape of agricultural economics in Europe. [EconLit Citations: A11, Q1, Q18].

Climate-smart agricultural (CSA) practices are increasingly being promoted as nature-based solutions to improve the livelihoods of smallholder farm households amid a sharp increase in climate-change anomalies. However, the extent to which CSA practices contribute to smallholder food security and dietary diversity remains unclear. In this study, we use panel and nationally representative data from Tanzania to examine the association between two climate-smart agricultural practices, namely, improved maize varieties and maize-legume intercropping, and food security in smallholder farm households. We use maize yield per acre, adult-equivalent food expenditure, and household dietary diversity scores to measure household food security, representing three of the four food security pillars: availability, access, and utilization. We also examine the complementarity and potential advantages of combining improved maize seeds with fertilizers. Using standard panel data estimation approaches, we find a positive association between the adoption of improved maize varieties and maize-legume intercropping and an increase in food production measured through higher crop productivity. However, we do not find a corresponding improvement in household dietary diversity or increased food expenditure, despite the higher crop production. Several factors might explain this outcome, including the challenges faced by farmers in accessing markets to sell surplus produce, the influence of established dietary habits, gender issues, and other local factors that promote the consumption of cereal-based foods such as maize. Our findings suggest that CSA practices may help improve food production and availability, but more effort is needed to translate increased food production into improved dietary diversity and better food security among smallholder farmers in sub-Saharan Africa. [EconLit Citations: C23, D12, D13, D24, Q12, Q16, Q18, Q54].