Applied Economic Perspectives and Policy最新文献

The aim of this paper is to discuss the challenges in attracting and securing adequate budgets for departments of agricultural and applied economics, while recognizing that the institutional and political contexts matter. Agricultural and applied economics departments that operate with an entrepreneurial mindset, that maintain and grow their student numbers, and that have a vibrant demand for their extension and research activities will thrive. The good news is we often have considerable control over the factors that contribute to our longer-term success.

This paper analyzed farmers' willingness to accept (WTA) payment and uncertainties toward carbon market through a 2021 U.S. Midwest farmer survey. The findings showed that farmer carbon supply was elastic at intermediate prices ($20–50/Mg), but inelastic at low ($10–20/Mg) and high ($50–70/Mg) price levels. While perceived co-benefits play significant roles in promoting participation at low-price levels, variables such as age, education, farm size, and soil quality are more likely to influence producers' choices at intermediate- and high-price levels. To enhance farmers' support for carbon programs, measures should be taken to improve benefit, while reducing cost and uncertainty.

Using National Agricultural Workers Survey (NAWS) data, we examine which farmworkers are unionized and whether their status differs systematically from non-unionized farmworkers. Logit results indicate farmworkers are less likely to be unionized if they are Black, unauthorized to work in the U.S., less educated, have English proficiency, work for farm labor contractors (versus growers), and cultivate field (vs. horticulture) crops. Blinder-Oaxaca decomposition reveals that union members earn $0.87 more in hourly wages, are 4.8% points more likely to receive a bonus, and are 15.6% points more likely to have employer-provided health insurance than comparable non-unionized farmworkers.

Blacks have been systematically under-represented in the Agricultural Economics profession, representing only 7% of agricultural economists in academia and between 5% and 10% in the private and public sectors, respectively. Although different policies and funding strategies have been implemented to increase the representation of minorities in the profession, these numbers have not shown significant improvements over time. This paper provides an overview of the history, role, and struggles of 1890 Land-Grant Historically Black Colleges and Universities in general, and in particular, their agricultural economics and business (AEB) Programs. Recommendations and thoughts on how to increase diversity in AEB programs are also discussed.

There is an international consensus that Africans consume less fruits and vegetables (FV), and animal products (AP) than they need for adequate nutrition, and that production and supply chains of these products are constrained. Yet, in this paper, we show that despite these problems, there is a lot of dynamism in demand and supply of these nutrient-dense products in Africa: (1) macro evidence of “domestic supply booms"—with supply growing as fast as or faster than in Asia and Latin America; (2) only 2–4% of FV, and 10% of AP consumption in Africa is imported, and only about 1–2% of the output of FV and AP is exported: the supply booms have thus been overwhelming domestically sourced, not imported; (3) micro evidence of substantial shares of consumption of FV and AP in total food consumption, similar to Asia's; (4) evidence of rapid development of spontaneous clusters of farms and off-farm SMEs (output wholesalers, logistics, processors, and agro-dealers supporting farmers). These clusters are important in fueling the supply booms. Illustrative cases from Ethiopia, Nigeria, Tanzania, and Zambia are presented. We recommend that African governments and international partners: (1) internalize the fact that these spontaneous clusters are forming and already fueling supply booms; (2) note that important drivers of the booms have been government investments in wholesale markets, roads, and other infrastructure like electrification, and agricultural research/extension; (3) leverage and support existing spontaneous clusters and help new ones to form by greatly increasing those three types of public investments.

We investigate the distinct associations between Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) participation and different experiences of food-related hardship. Using a generalization of the Rasch model with USDA Economic Research Service 2022 data for 10 adult-referenced food security survey items, we find evidence of uniform differential item function. The gap in odds of response between the first item (food-related worry) and the third item (difficulty acquiring balanced meals) was larger for SNAP households than for non-SNAP households. Similar differences were observed for other survey items. We consider whether SNAP policy or program changes could increase beneficial impacts differentially for particular food-related hardships.

The proposed reductions in farm input uses foreseen in the European Green Deal may penalize European farm production while increasing environmental leakages to foreign countries where production may expand. These expected impacts have led to calls for a more restrictive trade policy based on mirror clauses. This paper considers as a case study a potential ban on glyphosate in vegetable and fruits production. We develop an original computable general equilibrium model with endogenous adoption of new European production standards by foreign producers on currently latent markets. We find in our case study that adding mirror clauses to the Green Deal marginally improves European farm income and the global environmental footprint of food. We find that foreign producers as a whole can gain from these clauses and not lose as in a standard analysis. European households support these clauses by paying higher food bills while consuming vegetables and fruits produced without glyphosate.

This study discusses the modernization of smallholder agriculture in China, where most farms are small, and farms' parcels are fragmented. The study puts forward a framework of agricultural modernization by vertical division of labor and specialized production in agriculture. We posit that hiring machinery services could be a pathway to connect smallholders with modern agriculture and achieve food security in China. Using household-level data from China, this study examines how hiring machinery services affects farm productivity and rural households' welfare. Findings show that mechanization services increased rural Chinese families' food security and agricultural productivity. Hiring machinery services improves smallholders' income by influencing the input efficiency of maize production and increasing participation in off-farm work. Our findings highlight the importance of technology to improve smallholder agriculture and food security, not only in China but also in other South and Southeast Asian countries.

Agricultural and Applied Economics departments in the United States have evolved to serve traditional and new stakeholders under the three-legged land grant mission: extension, research, and teaching. Substantial shifts in the focus of faculty, sometimes matching demand from stakeholders and sometimes not, raise fundamental questions about their strategic direction. We argue agricultural and applied economics has a mission to solve problems, current and future, by working with physical sciences; specifically, the study of economic problems of the food supply chain and bioeconomy. By focusing on this mission, agricultural and applied economics will provide more value-added to society and may even improve economics while doing so.

In this paper, we use transaction data from a large grocery store retailer to describe changes in grocery shopping behavior associated with the progression of the COVID-19 pandemic before and after the vaccines were developed. We find that in general, households increased their spending and decreased their number of transactions early in the pandemic. Further, most households increased their reliance on online shopping during the pandemic and this shift persisted into the post-vaccine period. We find somewhat mixed results on how overall healthfulness of grocery store purchases changed during the pandemic, and we find that changes in healthfulness vary with market and household demographics. Perhaps most interestingly, we find that changes in a store's spending and transactions, along with the healthfulness of these purchases, vary significantly with the racial composition of a store's market and that these differential changes persisted after vaccines were available.