What Do Farmers Want From Agri‐Environmental Scheme Design? A Choice Experiment Approach

Agri‐environmental schemes (AES) have had a limited effect on European agriculture due to farmers’ reluctance to participate. Information on how farmers react when AES characteristics are modified can be an important input to the design of such policies. This article investigates farmers’ preferences for different design options in a specific AES aimed at encouraging nitrogen fixing crops in marginal dry‐land areas in Spain. We use a choice experiment survey conducted in two regions (Aragón and Andalusia). The analysis employs an error component random parameter logit model allowing for preference heterogeneity and correlation amongst the non‐status quo alternatives. Farmers show a strong preference for maintaining their current management strategies; however, significant savings in cost or increased participation can be obtained by modifying some AES attributes.     

Smallholder Farmers and Collective Action: What Determines the Intensity of Participation?

Collective action through farmer groups can be an important strategy for smallholders to remain competitive in rapidly changing markets. Previous research has analysed determinants of farmer participation in groups, equating participation with group membership. However, within groups the commitment of members can vary, as marginal benefits and costs are not the same for all individuals, and opportunities to free‐ride exist. Low participation in collective activities may reduce the ability of groups to provide useful services to its members. This article investigates determinants of member participation intensity, using the example of farmer groups in Kenya. The role of individual and group characteristics is analysed with survey data and regression models. Previous benefits that members received through the group positively influence their intensity of participation in group meetings and collective marketing, suggesting that reciprocity motives play a role. Low participation can mostly be attributed to structural and institutional conditions, such as group size and the timing of payments for collective product sales. More diversified farmers are less likely to sell collectively when group marketing activities only concentrate on one particular commodity. Since smallholders are often highly diversified, the focus of farmer groups should also be broadened. Further policy implications are discussed.     

Do Farmers Internalise Environmental Spillovers of Pesticides in Production?

Pesticides are used in agriculture to protect crops from pests and diseases, with indiscriminate pesticide use having several adverse effects on the environment and human health. An important question is whether the environmental spillovers of pesticides also affect the farmers’ production environment. We use a model of optimal pesticide use that explicitly incorporates the symmetric and asymmetric effect of pesticides’ environmental spillovers on crop production. The application focuses on panel data from Dutch cash crop producers. We show that pesticides have a positive direct impact on output and a negative indirect impact through their effects on the production environment.     

Farmers and Consumers: Towards Symbiosis?

Public declarations on the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) have recently become more consumer-oriented, aiming at transparency and defence of consumer interests. Even demonstrations have changed: fewer occupations of railways, motorways, and airports, and more free distribution of grilled steaks, milk, and fruit to citizens.     

Willingness to Pay and QALYs: What Can We Learn about Valuing Foodborne Risk?

This paper examines the value of reducing foodborne risk. Previous research on the valuation of health risk has been dominated by the study of mortality risk. However, in most cases foodborne illnesses are non‐fatal, so we focus on individuals' preferences for reducing morbidity risk, while also including a realistic, if remote, chance of death. We use a contingent valuation method on a Swedish sample and we estimate a value of a statistical illness consistent with previous findings in the literature. We also examine how willingness to pay (WTP) varies with the expected change in quality‐adjusted life years (QALYs) and estimate the WTP per QALY. We find that WTP increases with, though less than proportionally to, a change in QALYs. However, our results also suggest that respondents may have found it difficult to evaluate compound risks of both morbidity and mortality simultaneously.     

Climate change versus land-use change—What affects the mountain landscapes more?

Land use and climate change are both strong drivers of landscape transformation. Using a representative valley of the Central Alps (Stubai Valley, Tyrol, Austria) we assess (1) the historical and likely future spatial patterns of land use/land cover (LULC), (2) the influence of temperature increase on the LULC distribution, and (3) the speed at which these changes will occur. Based on the historical landscape development and spatially explicit models, the effects of various land use and climate scenarios were modelled. Employing a pan-Alpine model, we were able to detect the temporal trajectory of spatial reforestation. The results show that land-use changes that already occurred during the last decades are responsible for the main future LULC changes (by secondary succession). Only an extreme land abandonment scenario and extreme climate scenarios (5 K temperature increase) would bring about similar changes in LULC distribution and expansion of the forested areas. While alpine grasslands, alpine pioneer formation and glaciers would shrink drastically, especially deciduous forests would spread. To a considerable degree, such changes might take place over the next 300 years. By contrast, the increase in forest areas triggered by temperature changes would be slower and longer termed (up to 700–800 years).The effects and intensity of land-use change in the investigated valley, that is comparable to many regions in the Alps, will be at least equally severe and responsible for transformation of the landscape as those of a projected temperature increase.     

The Economic Impacts of Climate Change on Canadian Agriculture and the World: How Big are the Impacts Really?

A computable general equilibrium model was used to assess the impacts of global climate change on Canadian Agriculture. The assumption of ceteris paribus was relaxed. The results indicated that many supply and demand factors have potentially larger impacts on the Canadian and world economies over the next 5 decades than climate change. The distribution of regional impacts varied substantially. Such information is valuable for the agricultural sector and policymakers trying to allocate limited resources .     

Why Do Some Bt-Cotton Farmers in China Continue to Use High Levels of Pesticides?

China was the first developing country to introduce Bt cotton on a large scale. This paper provides an indepth economic analysis of Bt cotton production by small-scale farmers in China. Data were collected in 2002 in Linqing County, in Shandong Province and comprised a season-long cotton production monitoring with 150 farmers and complementary household interviews. For quality assessment, the Bt toxin concentration of the various Bt varieties used by the farmers was determined for each plot. All farmers were growing insect resistant Bt cotton varieties. Yet, they sprayed high amounts of chemical insecticides, out of which 40% were extremely or highly hazardous. The paper reviews methodological issues inherent to impact assessment of crop biotechnology and identifies market and institutional failure as possible reasons for continued high pesticide use. Using the damage function methodology the coefficients for both damage control inputs, i.e., Bt varieties (measured as toxin concentration), and insecticide quantity were not significantly different from zero. Results show that absence of enabling institutions and lack of farmer knowledge can considerably limit the benefits of Bt cotton for small-scale farmers. The paper points out the importance to include the institutional conditions in the evaluation of agricultural biotechnology in developing countries.     

Data, Information, and Rural Environmental Policy: What Will the Next Ten Years Bring?

The next ten years will see an acceleration of three current trends: (1) the growing use of geographical information systems, (2) increasingly detailed farm-level record keeping, tracking the location and timing of fertilizer, pesticide, and water use, and (3) increased reporting requirements for farm-level chemical use. Combined, these changes will reduce the costs of monitoring and regulating farmer behavior. Yet, they may also allow information to substitute for both inputs and for regulation. Improved linkage of agronomic, economic, and environmental data can help ago-environmental subsidy programs achieve greater environmental benefits at lower budgetary cost and can help in the design of more flexible, less costly environmental regulations.     

What If You Stop and Think About It? Nutrition Logos and Product Selection Behavior

This study explores the effect of a health involvement manipulation on food choices and how food choices are influenced by front-of-pack nutrition labels. The results show that without health involvement, choice was significantly affected by both nutrition labels and product type, but the product choice with health involvement was affected only by whether the product was selected as the healthier one in the involvement manipulation stage. Moreover, selection of the healthiest product during the manipulation stage was affected by the product type but not the front-of-pack (FOP) labels, potentially because participants relied on their own knowledge or the product perception to assess the healthiness of the product rather than the label information. The implication is that consumers seem to behave differently when pushed into a “choose healthy” state of mind, and their reliance on label information to assess product healthiness may be product and context dependent.     

Do Farmers and the Environment Benefit from Adopting Integrated Pest Management Practices? Evidence from Kenya

We estimate the impacts of a bundle of integrated pest management (IPM) practices on mango yield, mango net income, insecticide use, human health and the environment, using recent household survey data of mango growers in Kenya. We employ a multinomial endogenous switching treatment regression model with an ordered probit selection rule to establish counterfactual outcomes. Our results indicate that IPM‐adopting farmers have higher mango yields and mango net income, and also use lower quantities of insecticide and cause less damage to the environment and to human health. In addition, switching from one IPM to multiple IPM practices generates greater economic, environmental and human health benefits. These results suggest intensification of IPM‐adoption efforts and encouragement of the use of multiple IPM practices. These positive outcomes could be achieved through greater provision of technical support and extension services to farmers.     

Do Japanese consumers care about sustainable fisheries? Evidence from an auction of ecolabelled seafood

This paper investigates Japanese consumers' willingness to pay for Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) ecolabelled seafood using a sealed bid, second price auction. Participants in an experiment in Tokyo were provided varying degrees of information about the status of world and Japanese fisheries and the MSC program in sequential rounds of bidding on ecolabelled and nonlabelled salmon products. A random‐effects tobit regression shows that there is a statistically significant premium of about 20 per cent for MSC‐ecolabelled salmon over nonlabelled salmon when consumers are provided information on both the status of global fish stocks and the purpose of the MSC program. This premium arises from a combination of an increased willingness to pay for labelled products and a decreased willingness to pay for unlabelled products. However, in the absence of experimenter‐provided information, or when provided information about the purpose of the MSC program alone without concurrent information about the need for the MSC program, there is no statistically significant premium.     

Farmers and their groves: Will cost inefficiency lead to land use change?

Increased forest areas and climate change mitigation are policy goals enhanced by expanding private forest ownership. This study shows transfer of land from farms owning forested acreage associated with low quality land and high production costs achieves such goals. Calculated cost efficiency scores show a large gap between the most and least efficient farms, and farms with forests are less cost efficient. Land reforestation through subsidy programs could replace income from agricultural production. We illustrate that farms from the applied FADN panel could reforest 45,000 hectares, binding about 0.5 mln tons of carbon annually without limiting food or feed supply.     

Determinants of dairy-product trade: Do subsidies matter?

Given the recent changes in the supply and demand of dairy products, many opportunities arise for exporting and importing countries. This paper examines determinants of dairy-product trade by applying the Poisson Pseudo-Maximum Likelihood (PPML) method to the gravity model using panel data on 49 exporting and 235 importing countries for the 17 years from 2000 to 2016. The gravity model is estimated using both interval data and dynamic analyses. The results show that domestic subsidies have a modest, but significant, impact on dairy-product trade across the models. For example, a 1% increase in subsidies leads to a roughly 0.02% increase in trade for an average country. Memberships in trade agreements, market size factors, and government institutions also positively affect dairy-product trade. However, tariffs are insignificant in the main model specification. Results from the lag-policy analysis show that the impact of subsidies disappears after the second year of distribution; whereas for the lead-policy analysis, results suggest at least 3 years of anticipatory effects on domestic subsidies.