Journal of the Agricultural and Applied Economics Association最新文献

The U.S. urban-rural export gap is important given the share of manufactured goods in exports, the rural concentration of manufacturing activity, and recent federal investments in place-based policy. These investments raise questions about the size of the export gap and whether it is explained by differences in endowments or inherent rural disadvantages. Confidential trade data linked with business survey data alongside county-level variables allow an Oaxaca-Blinder decomposition of the export gapUrban factors compensate for a less trade favorable industry mix, including the advantages of urban scale in export performance which may be insurmountable for rural areas.

Farmers' markets (FM) must be able to adapt to keep up with changing consumer preferences. Using 274 in-person surveys of consumers in several FMs our objective is to identify the influence of respondents' lifestyle characteristics, distance from the FM, and FM characteristics on the likelihood of being a frequent FM customer and spending over $50. Results indicate that the likelihood of visiting FM over five times per season and spending more than $50 increases with FMs open on weekends and that have 11–50 vendors and a wide variety of products. We also provide suggestions for policymakers and FM managers.

We analyze how salinity affects rice profitability and land use in the Vietnam Mekong Delta with a 3-year data set from 758 rice-producing households. Our findings reveal a substantial impact of salinity exposure on rice profits at the field level, with high salinity reducing average profits by over 75%. Additionally, declines in expected profitability due to salinity contribute significantly to farmer exits from rice production, especially when anticipated profits drop below 20 million VND per hectare. Further, profit expectations appear to be adjusted based on salinity impacts both in the most recent cropping season and from past extreme salinity events.

Improved germplasm is a recognized adaptation strategy to climate change. We assessed the adoption, and impacts of CGIAR maize varieties on livelihoods in Zambia using fixed effects regression and a difference-in-differences framework. Three-waves of nationally representative panel data indicate that 24% of smallholders used CGIAR germplasm on about 225,000 hectares in 2019. Relative to other non-CGIAR maize varieties, the use of CGIAR maize varieties was associated with 26–35% yield increase, and 2–10% reduction in the depth of poverty on average. Thus, while improved varieties can increase crop productivity effectively, they are not substitutes for broad-based poverty reduction strategies.

This paper employs a 25-year panel of Chinese counties to examine the nonlinear impacts of rising temperatures on cropping frequency and acreages. We find that growing degree days have no significant effects, while extreme heat, measured by harmful degree days, reduces cropping frequency mainly through a reduction in total planted area. Improved irrigation conditions, higher levels of mechanization, and adequate precipitation can mitigate these adverse impacts. Simulations based on uniform warming scenarios ranging from 0.5°C to 2.0°C predict that future warming will reduce cropping frequency by 0.02–0.10, driven by a decline in planted area (1.0%–6.3%).

We present a framework for estimating global import demand across 22 product categories. By aggregating bilateral import data by exporting source, we assessed the worldwide impact of prices on import demand by source. This methodology facilitated the analysis of all exporting countries within a unified estimation framework, simplifying the process compared to estimating separate models for each importing country. Results indicate that estimating global demand within a single framework captures the competitive dynamics among exporters while yielding statistically significant and robust estimates. A global approach is especially useful when analyzing factors with global implications.

Fruit harvesting is labor intensive and relies heavily on a decreasing immigrant farm labor supply. This study develops a model to compare robotic and manual apple-harvesting profits. Given the anticipated performance of robotic prototypes, we find that a grower could spend $248.42 per acre per year on a robotic harvester and obtain the same profit as manual harvest. Marginal improvements in the percent of fruit harvested, harvester speed, and robot-induced damage would greatly enhance robot profitability and farmers could spend more on the harvester and still obtain the same profit as manual harvest.

Past studies of agricultural land prices and rents in Japan focused on the temporal relations characterizing price and rent dynamics. Several authors have shown that farmland prices respond to shocks to rents, but not vice-versa. We revisit this relationship with a Bayesian time-varying parameter vector autoregression (TVP-VAR). The TVP-VAR provides nuance by permitting the relationship between prices and rents to vary through time and allowing for stochastic volatility. Impulse response functions indicate that rents adjust to price shocks, but prices do not adjust to rent shocks. The TVP-VAR suggests both changes in volatility and time variation in the lag coefficients.

We examine the role of charitable food assistance during periods of economic distress by looking at donations to a large Midwestern food bank. We explore the determinants of in-kind food provisions and financial donations during the COVID-19 pandemic and find that both types of assistance dramatically increased at the onset of the pandemic. However, these increases were not persistent. We argue that this is evidence that the charitable food system serves a critical role in facilitating the transmission of federal provisions and charitable donations to households in need during times of crisis.

We assess the effects of trade liberalization in animal genetic resources on farm-level productivity using a natural experiment on the Island of Jersey. For over 200 years, Jersey banned the import of bovine animals and semen to preserve breed purity. In 2008, the ban was lifted, allowing the import of Jersey-certified sires and semen. Over the next 15 years, increased genetic access improved animal productivity, health, and genotype but slightly reduced reproductive performance.