Adoption of precision farming tools: A context-related analysis

This paper deals with precision farming tools (PFTs), a way of farming which relies on specialized equipment, software and information technologies services, whose importance is underlined in recent documents of the European Union. Precision farming is an integrated and sustainable farm management system making use of modern technologies to increase farm’s profitability, by reducing environmental impact. In this paper we explore the complex mechanisms that affect PFT’s adoption by Italian farmers. More precisely, we try to analyse the context-related factors affecting adoption of PFTs in the Italian farms.Little research has been carried out in Italy on this topic, therefore our paper tries to fill a gap in literature. In order to investigate the process of technology adoption related to precision agriculture, a questionnaire was submitted to a sample of Italian farms. The questionnaire has been structured in order to apply the AKAP (Awareness, Knowledge, Adoption, Product) sequence. Our analysis underlines that context-related factors are fundamental dimensions to be explored in order to specify uptake of PFTs. Therefore, the paper has relevant policy implications, within the context of a new participatory approach to agricultural innovation characterized by bottom-up processes boosted by farmers, which has informed the recent policies of agricultural innovation at the EU level.     

Italian Consumers’ Preferences for Pasta and Consumption Trends: Tradition or Innovation?

Abstract

The aim of this study is to know Italian consumers’ preferences for Pasta and consumption habits. Food culture and concerns about food security and product innovation were investigated. A sample of Italian consumers was interviewed. Consumer’ profile, motivations and purchasing behavior were described. Relationships between observed variables and the latent constructs that explain the preferences were highlighted. There is asymmetric information between consumers and producers. Consumers believe Pasta is made with Italian grains, and therefore it is healthy and safe, although that’s not always the case. Intrinsic and extrinsic high quality, which derives from growing and production technologies, is required.     

Factors Affecting Farmers’ Participation in Agri‐environmental Measures: A Northern Italian Perspective

Agri‐environmental measures play an important role in Italian rural areas, as shown by the financial commitment to the Rural Development programmes. However, in contrast with other European Union (EU) countries, policy‐makers still have limited experience on how farmers approach environmental incentive schemes. This paper casts new light on this issue from a northern Italian perspective. The rationale of the farmers’ decision‐making process is explored using two multinomial models. The first explains the probability of non‐participation or participation in one of three specific agri‐environmental measures. The model outcomes show that labour‐intensive farming types and high dependency of household income on farming activity constrain farmers’ participation, whereas previous experience, easy‐to‐implement environmentally friendly farm practices and adequate compensation of extra costs encourage participation. The second model explores the effect of farmers’ attitudes and beliefs on their predispositions towards participation in any of the schemes. The results highlight that, besides income factors, the farm's future in the business, and the relationship with neighbouring farmers and their opinions on environmentally friendly practices all have significant effects on adoption of agri‐environmental measures. The paper concludes by suggesting that farmers’ attitudes and beliefs, as well as the local behavioural influences, have to be taken into account when designing and communicating agri‐environmental measures.     

临时收储政策对玉米生产技术效率的影响研究

文章采用超越对数形式的随机前沿生产函数测算了19个玉米主产省(区)的玉米生产技术效率,并利用双重差分模型检验临时收储政策对玉米生产技术效率的影响。研究发现:东北三省一区的玉米生产技术效率处于较高水平;南方丘陵和西南山地地区技术效率明显低于其他主产区。政策实施效果方面,临时收储政策对玉米生产技术效率有正向影响且这种正向影响不因时间的推移而逆转。因此,尽管临时收储政策会扭曲市场并增加财政负担,但是确实给农户提供了稳定的预期从而推动了技术效率的提高,随着玉米收储制度市场化改革进一步推进,应当避免政策改革中农户预期改变导致的技术效率损失。     

Exploring the influence of urban form on land-use efficiency from a spatiotemporal heterogeneity perspective: Evidence from 336 Chinese cities

Effective land-use is a prerequisite for sustainable urbanization. Land-use efficiency is intimately related to factors such as economic growth and industrial policies; however, limited studies focus on the spatial effects of urban form on land-use efficiency. Our empirical analysis includes 336 Chinese prefecture-level cities located in 31 provinces and four regions. We use five landscape metrics (patch density, mean patch size, edge density, mean shape index and patch cohesion index) to characterize urban form. Overall, China’s urban form metrics demonstrate significant regional differences from 2000 to 2015. Furthermore, land-use efficiency also demonstrates significant regional disparities. We prove the importance of the spatial effects of urban form on land-use efficiency using spatial regression models. Moreover, the impact of urban form metrics on land-use efficiency is sensitive to regional heterogeneity and city sizes. An urban form characterized by high patch density and large urban patch size is not conducive to increases in land-use efficiency in small cities although it is conducive to such increases in large cities. This research facilitates policymaking in the areas of spatial regulation and spatial planning in connection with national land-use.     

房价对城乡财产性收入差距的影响研究

住房问题关乎国计民生,房价成为影响城乡发展差距变动的重要因素。文章聚焦房价上涨对城乡家庭财产性收入差距变动的影响,并基于2005—2018年我国31个省级行政区域面板数据,采用固定效应模型与动态面板系统GMM估计方法,对房价如何影响城乡财产性收入差距变动进行实证研究。研究发现,房价上涨会显著拉大城乡财产性收入差距,并且这种影响存在区域差异性。文章认为应调整预防房价上涨的相关政策,落实中央"房住不炒"定位,以缓解房价上涨导致的城乡家庭财产性收入差距过大现象,助力推进社会高质量发展。     

Modeling the Reforms of the Common Agricultural Policy for Arable Crops under Uncertainty

The size of the insurance and wealth effects of a change in the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) for arable crops is estimated. The impact of price uncertainty is accounted for in the specific decision-making structure of the European Union (EU) arable crop producers under nonlinear mean-variance risk preferences. A system of output supply, input demand, and land allocation equations is estimated on a sample of Italian specialized arable crop farms. The simulation of the impact of the recent reforms confirms that farmers' output responses are consistently affected by the size of the insurance and wealth effects.     

Factors and scenarios affecting a farmer’s grain harvest logistics

This paper explores how changes in Australia’s grain industry supply chains are likely to impact on the nature and profitability of an Australian farmer’s grain harvest logistics. A simulation model is used to show how receival site rationalisation, cheaper on‐farm storage, larger trucks, higher‐yielding crops and new harvest technologies, separately and in combination, affect the nature and profitability of a farmer’s grain harvest logistics. Applying the model to a typical Australian grain farm shows that many of these changes unambiguously advantage the farm business, and often, the combination of these changes increases a farmer’s harvest profits by at least 10 per cent. For many farmers, the task of efficiently designing and managing harvest logistics will be an increasingly difficult yet important series of choices due to the range of storage options, grain pathways, crop portfolios and market opportunities that are arising. A farmer’s decisions about cost‐effective on‐farm storage and transport, and their judicious use, will be a key contributor to additional profit in future years.     

Impact of CAP Subsidies on Technical Efficiency of Crop Farms in Germany,the Netherlands and Sweden

This paper analyses the impacts of CAP reforms, particularly subsidies on technical efficiency of crop farms. An output distance function is employed and estimated together with an inefficiency effects model to capture the effects of CAP subsidies and farmer characteristics on farm efficiency. The model is applied to FADN data (period 1995–2004) of crop farms in Germany, the Netherlands and Sweden. The study shows that the 10‐year average technical efficiency is 64% in Germany, 76% in the Netherlands and 71% in Sweden. The average annual changes in technical efficiency are 0.1%, 0.4% and 2.3%, respectively. The share of crop subsidies in total subsidies has a negative impact on technical efficiency in Germany but a positive impact in Sweden, although insignificant in the Netherlands. The share of total subsidies in total farm revenues has negative impacts on technical efficiency in all three countries, consistent with income and insurance effects. Positive (negative) change in technical efficiency is mainly attributable to farm size (degree of specialisation) in Germany, and degree of specialisation (degree of subsidy dependence) in the Netherlands and Sweden.     

Effects of redistributing policy support on farmers’ technical efficiency

The objective of this article is twofold: first, investigating the relationship between technical efficiency and decoupled direct payments of a sample of Italian farms prior to the application of the 2014–2020 Common Agricultural Policy reform; second, evaluating possible implications of alternative scenarios about distribution of direct payments on technical efficiency. To these aims, a stochastic frontier analysis is adopted. Results indicate that direct payments produce significant effects on technical efficiency in specialized farms, which received higher levels of support. However, effects are contrasting. Moreover, results show that redistribution of policy subsidies may negatively impact on technical efficiency to an extent depending upon the criterion of redistribution applied. Finally, some policy suggestions are given.     

The impact of the 2008 financial crisis on dynamic productivity growth of the Spanish food manufacturing industry. An impulse response analysis

The emergence of a financial crisis is an event that can impact the fortunes of nearly all economic agents. The focus here is on the 2008 financial crisis and how firms’ productivity growth was impacted by this crisis in the years that followed. This article focuses on dynamic productivity growth and its components using a firm‐level data set of Spanish meat processing, dairy processing, and oils and fats firms. The impulse response analysis shows that the impact of the crisis on dynamic productivity growth is negative and persistent in the oils and fats industry, initially positive but then negative in the meat processing industry, and positive in the dairy processing industry. The observed magnitudes of change in indicator are between 2% and 5% for oils and fats industries, and of 1% in both dairy and meat industries. Our analysis further confirms that firms’ size is an important factor in explaining how crisis impacts dynamic productivity growth and its components, while we find only slight evidence regarding the firms’ experience in the market.     

Changing Policies,Shifting Livelihoods: The Fate of Agriculture in Guinea‐Bissau

How do African agricultural livelihoods change under stressful conditions? How do market and agricultural policies and development interventions impact on both agricultural and social change, and consequently on food self‐sufficiency? Which long‐term factors can contribute to ‘depeasantization’? Is the ‘New Green Revolution’ the best and only solution for African food insecurity? These are the main questions this paper sets out to address, using southern Guinea‐Bissau as a case study. On the basis of long‐term ethnographic fieldwork, we look at farmers' responses to external and internal pressures, and analyse how ‘depeasantization’ progresses and livelihoods have been losing their resilience. Chances to reverse this trend, although difficult to implement, may still be feasible.     

农业产业化龙头企业标准化的思考

该文以前景理论为视角,通过分析农民在不确定条件下的决策过程,强调农民所面临环境的不确定性对行为选择的影响,能使农民的诸多土地流转决策行为得到合理的解释。研究发现,受不确定性的影响,农户是否参与流转以及选择怎样的路径实现流转,都是特定环境下所做出的主观决策。     

A dynamic analysis of cost-share agri-environmental programs

The purpose of this paper is to theoretically examine the efficiency of a cost-share agri-environmental program through a farm life cycle lens. Faced with a growing environmental impact from agricultural production, the farmer must decide when and how aggressively to invest in environmental capital. The steady state of the optimal control problem reveals the trade-off between allocating farm profits to consumption versus environmental improvements. A payment from a cost-share program reduces the time to investment in environmental capital, and also permanently increases the farmer's level of investment. A lack of targeting results in inframarginal farmers being paid more than the minimum amount that is required to induce investment. The portion of both the marginal payment and the average payment that induces new investment declines as the government's share of the payment increases, and this decline decreases overall program efficiency. Despite this inefficiency, a larger payment from a cost-share program is shown to decrease the farm's environmental impact in both the short and long run.     

Ownership,autonomy, incentives and efficiency: Evidence from the forest product processing industry in China

Using enterprise-level data from China's Northeast-Inner Mongolia state-owned forest area for the year 2004, this paper investigates the technical efficiency of forest product processing mills and the relationship between institutional and managerial practices and efficiency. A two-stage procedure proposed by Simar and Wilson (2007) is adopted. In the first stage, a bootstrapped data envelopment analysis (DEA) model is used to compute the efficiency scores. In the second stage, the bootstrapped DEA scores are estimated over a set of mills’ institutional and managerial systems and other characteristics with a bootstrapped truncated regression. The results show that there is a wide dispersion in the technical efficiency among mills. Private ownership, autonomy and mill size have statistically significant positive impacts on efficiency. These results provide support for the ongoing reform and implications for future development of this area.     

造纸业上市企业经营效率及影响因素实证分析——基于DEA-Tobit两步法的实证分析

研究采用DEA-Tobit两步法,基于2011-2016年29家造纸上市企业的面板数据,分析了影响造纸业上市企业经营效率的因素,研究表明:产权属性和企业规模对综合效率和技术效率有显著正向影响;市场化总指数对综合效率和规模效率有显著正向影响;广告密度和财务杠杆对综合效率和技术效率有显著负向影响;企业规模对规模效率有显著负向影响。     

Russian to modern world history: Teodor Shanin and peasant studies

This paper is a retrospective of Teodor Shanin's work, mostly in the 1970s and 1980s, the principal period of his publications in English. It may also serve as a guide to tracing Shanin's main themes and issues, which included establishing a ‘generic’ peasant studies (‘peasantology’) and how he aimed to do so; his explorations of the development of capitalism and its impact on peasantries in Russia from the late 19th century to the contemporary Third World; similarly, his ideas of the promotion of ‘modernization’ of peasant agriculture by states; his relationship to Marxism in the historic Russian context and beyond; his views of peasant ‘classness’ and politics; and his vision of an alternative path of agricultural development based in peasant farming, which he drew largely from Chayanov.     

An actor-oriented approach to understanding dairy farming in a liberalised regime: A case study of Ireland’s New Entrants’ Scheme

With the abolition of dairy quotas in 2015 major change in Europe’s dairy industry is anticipated at the level of individual farms, with consequences for how land is utilised and managed. Critical questions in this context are how farmers react to the myriad challenges coming forth from changed policy circumstances and, more specifically, the factors that influence their responses to these challenges at farm level. As part of a broader multi-disciplinary research project, this paper presents a narrative analysis of dairy farmers participating in Ireland’s New Entrants’ Scheme, an initiative that has facilitated the establishment of over two hundred new dairy farms. Salient with an increasing literature on Agriculture Knowledge and Innovation Systems (AKISs) within agriculture, the paper focuses specifically on the actors who influence the decisions of the New Entrants (NEs) at this critical juncture in the transformation of dairy policy. Led by Norman Long’s actor-oriented approach, we examine social interfaces involving NEs and different categories of actors. We found that interfaces conditioned by coercive behaviour on the part of actors had a narrow scope of influence on farmers’ decisions compared to interfaces characterised by relatively equal power relations. The latter interfaces had the capacity to be strongly influential on broad habitual production and management decisions. Interfaces involving family members, however, had ultimate influence on major strategic decision-making, including decisions to establish new enterprises. Overall, our analysis suggests that NEs are empowered decision-makers in their social interfaces with other AKIS actors and our biographical approach to the analysis indicates that quota deregulation itself has not led to radical changes in who influences NEs’ decision-making.