Capital market imperfections in economic transition: empirical evidence from Ukrainian agriculture

This article investigates the link between financing and investment in Ukrainian agriculture during economic transition. The main contribution of the study is to provide empirical evidence for the coexistence of financial constraints and soft budget constraints (SBCs). This is of particular importance because credit constraints and SBCs have completely different economic effects. The lack of differentiation between these forms of capital market imperfections yields overlapping effects of financing on investment and may therefore cause a misinterpretation of econometric results. Our empirical analyses are based on an econometric estimation of the Euler investment equations for 529 large farms from three Ukrainian regions between 2001 and 2005. The results confirm that financial variables significantly influence farms' investment, providing empirical evidence of an imperfect capital market in Ukrainian agriculture. It turns out that credit constraints in the Ukrainian agricultural sector are more important than SBCs. We show that the estimated level of financial constraints for profitable farms with access to loans is higher if both types of capital market imperfections are appropriately distinguished.     

Cash transfer programs and agricultural production: the case of Malawi

Cash transfer programs are increasingly utilized to combat poverty and hunger while building the human capital of future generations; however, they have been faulted by some for failing to build the productive capacity of current generations. This article analyzes the impact of the Malawi Social Cash Transfer Scheme on agricultural production. The results show strong increases in ownership of productive agricultural assets, in time devoted to household farms, and in food types consumed from own production, coupled with a sharp decrease in ganyu labor, which is often used as a coping mechanism once food stores have been depleted. These results are most likely achieved by helping farmers overcome credit and liquidity constraints. This research shows that cash transfer programs can help the capacity of extremely poor farm households to expand agriculture production even if the goal of the program is focusing on other dimensions of poverty.     

Modern variety adoption and risk management in drought prone areas: insights from the sorghum farmers of eastern Ethiopia

Adoption rates of improved or modern varieties (MV) of sorghum in eastern Ethiopia are generally low. Although these MV may represent an effective means of coping with droughts, given their early maturing traits, landraces could prove to be more drought‐tolerant and better adapted to marginal production conditions. Whether MV adoption is a risk reducing technology is very much an empirical question which this article investigates using a unique dataset from eastern Ethiopia in a year of extreme weather conditions. Results show that risk‐factors coupled with access to markets and social capital drive farmers’ decisions to adopt MVs. On the one hand, it appears that farmers use MVs to mitigate moderate risks. On the other hand, farmers who have been most vulnerable to extreme weather events are less likely to use MVs suggesting that MV adoption does not necessarily represent an effective means of coping with drought. Finally, findings show that MV growers are more likely to be affected by sorghum failure once controlling for exogenous production factors.     

The impact of migration on rural poverty and inequality: a case study in China

Large numbers of agricultural labor moved from the countryside to cities after the economic reforms in China. Migration and remittances play an important role in transforming the structure of rural household income. This article examines the impact of rural‐to‐urban migration on rural poverty and inequality in a mountainous area of Hubei province using the data of a 2002 household survey. Since migration income is a potential substitute for farm income, we present counterfactual scenarios of what rural income, poverty, and inequality would have been in the absence of migration. Our results show that, by providing alternatives to households with lower marginal labor productivity in agriculture, migration leads to an increase in rural income. In contrast to many studies that suggest that the increasing share of nonfarm income in total income widens inequality, this article offers support for the hypothesis that migration tends to have egalitarian effects on rural income for three reasons: (1) migration is rational self‐selection—farmers with higher expected return in agricultural activities and/or in local nonfarm activities choose to remain in the countryside while those with higher expected return in urban nonfarm sectors migrate; (2) households facing binding constraints of land supply are more likely to migrate; (3) poorer households benefit disproportionately from migration.     

贫困地区农户对自然灾害风险规避和响应分析

[目的]研究影响贫困地区农户应对自然灾害风险,减少经济损失的因素,并分析农户采取应对损失的措施。[方法]利用2015年云南、贵州和陕西3省6县经历过自然灾害的819农户作为研究对象。采用Logit模型研究影响贫困地区农户有效规避自然灾害风险的因素,并进一步分析农户在遭受自然灾害后采取的响应策略。[结果]研究表明农户户主的受教育程度越高、与外界市场接触越紧密,则农户规避自然灾害风险能力越强;农户收入中农业收入比重高、家庭贫穷、家庭收入来源过于集中均不利于农户规避自然灾害风险。通过分析农户应对自然灾害损失的策略发现,农户在自然灾害冲击下,较多采用被动的应对策略,不善于拓展新的收入来源。采用降低生活质量、减少生活必要支出、寻找新的收入来源、金融手段和出售生产生活资料这5种应对策略的农户分别占整体受灾农户的16.36%、6.47%、14.65%、5.37%、4.03%和11.35%。[结论]为了增强贫困地区农户规避自然灾害风险的能力,首先需要加大对贫困地区的教育投资;其次,增加贫困地区与外界沟通交流的渠道,可以在偏远地区多修公路等;最后,应当积极引导农户拓展农业生产以外的收入来源,将收入来源多样化,降低农户农业收入在家庭收入中的比重,有效增强贫困地区农户应对自然灾害风险的能力。     

Can structural adjustment work for women farmers

This article discusses the impact of structural adjustment programs (SAPs) on women farmers in developing countries. SAPs aim to improve economic efficiency and promote more rapid economic growth. SAPs are introduced in two phases. The first phase involves short-term loans with the condition that the country adopt monetary restraints and currency devaluation measures. In the second phase, long-term loans are given with the provision that the country deregulate their economy and open up markets. The agricultural sector is affected by SAPs because of their importance in employment, income generation, and export earnings. SAPs result in lower farm commodity prices due to currency devaluations and in removal of subsidies, which results in market-sensitive pricing or higher food prices. The impact of SAPs on agriculture vary between countries. In Morocco and Algeria, agriculture expanded under SAPs. In Indonesia, Bolivia, Costa Rica, and Mexico, the agriculture stagnated or declined. Agricultural growth was slowest in Africa. SAPs were somewhat successful in increasing agricultural exports. Food production grew slowly in many adjusting countries. Blame for failures of SAPs has been placed on government failure to implement reforms properly and overly optimistic assumptions about the timing of productive gains. Little attention has focused on the constraints facing women farmers, who are a large proportion of farmers, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa. This article focuses on the issues of limited access to resources, credit, agricultural extension and information, land ownership, education, and time as constraints to women farmers. Women also must ensure household food security. For SAPs to work effectively, complementary policies must be implemented that reallocate available productive resources and new technologies to women and that deal with women's constraints.     

农户资本禀赋对水稻生产生态效率的影响以湖北省为例

[目的]农户资本禀赋约束对水稻生产生态效率会产生重要的影响。为更全面和准确地分析资本禀赋对水稻生产生态效率的影响。[方法]文章基于长江中游湖北省农户调研数据,利用生命周期评价方法、超效率SBM模型、熵值法、Tobit和OLS回归等多种模型和方法,在理论分析基础上从多个角度就资本禀赋对水稻生产生态效率的影响进行研究。[结果]（1）农户资本禀赋存在较大差异,各类别资本禀赋排序为人力资本（0.37）>社会资本（0.17）>金融资本（0.16）>物质资本（0.14）>自然资本（0.10）。强资本型的农户比例在综合资本禀赋和分类别资本禀赋上均少于弱资本型的农户比例。（2）单季水稻系统生命周期环境影响综合指数为2.10,水稻生产生态效率为0.64。（3）农户综合资本禀赋提升有利于提升水稻生产生态效率。综合资本禀赋对水稻生产生态效率的提升效应主要得益于物质资本、社会资本和金融资本的正向影响。[结论]从物质资本、社会资本、金融资本等方面加强农户资本禀赋积累,以促进水稻生产方式绿色转型。     

林农生计资本对林地利用方式的影响研究

基于陕西省500户农户的调查数据,在可持续生计分析框架基础上,构建林农生计资本指标体系,运用多元Logit模型实证分析了林农生计资本对林地利用方式的影响。研究表明:第一,不同类型的林农生计资本结构差异会影响其对林地利用方式的选择;第二,在林农林地利用方式的选择上,各生计资本要素的影响存在显著差异,其中金融资本要素是改善林农生计的关键。在此基础上,从林农生计资本要素出发,提出了鼓励林地流转、发展规模经营、加快林业社会化服务体系建设等政策建议。     

Does migration raise agricultural investment? An empirical analysis for rural Mexico

The effect of remittances on capital accumulation remains a contested topic. This article uses a panel data set from rural Mexico to investigate the impact of remittances on agriculture and livestock investments. After controlling for the endogeneity of migration through an instrumental variable estimation our empirical results show that international migration has a significantly positive effect on the accumulated agricultural assets but not on livestock capital. This suggests that households use the capital obtained from international migration only to overcome liquidity constraints for subsistence production whereas migration itself seems to be the superior investment option compared to other productive activities such as livestock husbandry.     

Welfare impacts of maize–pigeonpea intensification in Tanzania

This article examines the driving forces behind farmers’ decisions to adopt improved pigeonpea and maize and estimates the causal impact of technology adoption on household welfare using data obtained from a random cross‐section sample of 613 small‐scale farmers in Tanzania. We use seemingly unrelated and recursive bivariate probit regressions to test the endogeneity and joint decision making of pigeonpea–maize production. A double hurdle model is used to analyze the determinants of the intensity of technology adoption conditional on overcoming seed access constraints. To address the impact of adoption on welfare, the article employs both propensity score matching and switching regression techniques. Results from bivariate probit models show that unobservable factors cause both decisions to be correlated but the finding does not support the conjecture that both decisions are made jointly. Overall the analysis of the determinants of adoption identifies inadequate local supply of seed, access to information, human capital, and access to private productive asset as key constraints for pigeonpea technology adoption. The causal impact estimation from both the propensity score matching and switching regression suggests that maize/pigeonpea adoption has a positive and significant impact on income and consumption expenditure among sample households.     

贫困山区不同生计策略类型脱贫农户生计风险识别与评估

[目的]尽管2020年后我国已经全面脱贫,但脱贫农户仍然面临自然、市场、政策等多重生计风险冲击,非常容易再次掉入贫困陷阱。识别与评估贫困山区不同生计策略类型脱贫农户生计风险,为政府更好地制定相关政策,巩固脱贫成果提供实证依据,具有必要性和现实意义。[方法]文章以武陵山连片特困地区的768户脱贫农户调查问卷为样本数据,运用ESI为综合评价指数,识别与评估不同生计策略类型脱贫农户的生计风险。[结果]（1）样本区农业兼业型脱贫农户的户主平均年龄最大、家庭规模最小、劳动力数量最少、受教育程度相对最低;非农业兼业型脱贫农户的家庭规模最大;纯农型脱贫农户的家庭劳动力数量最多,且劳动力受教育程度相对最高。（2）不同生计策略类型脱贫的生计风险总值依次是纯农型>农业兼业型>非农业兼业型>非农业型,呈现出兼业程度越高,生计风险越小的特征;纯农型是所有类型脱贫农户中最脆弱的群体,生计风险和返贫风险都最大。[结论]当地政府一方面应积极帮助脱贫农户增强非农生计的能力;另一方面应完善农业生产配套设施,营造良好的外部基础设施环境,引导脱贫农户寻求适合自身资源的产业发展方式,提高其兼业水平和兼业质量...     

茶农生计资本、风险感知及其生计策略关系分析

以DFID模型为理论基础,引入茶农风险感知,构建茶农可持续生计分析框架,运用福建4个茶叶主产区228份茶农数据进行实证分析。结果表明:生计资本是影响茶农生计策略选择的核心要素,其中自然资本对其生计策略选择的影响最大,其次是物质资本和金融资本;而茶农风险感知对其生计策略选择有重要影响,其中自然风险和市场价格波动风险对其影响最大。生计资本、风险感知以及生计策略等对茶农生计结果具有一定影响。     

Should farmers invest in financial assets as a risk management strategy? Some evidence from New Zealand*

This study explores the potential for risk reduction by New Zealand farmers through the diversification of their farm asset portfolios to include financial investments such as ordinary industrial shares, government bonds and bank bills. Low correlations between rates of return on farm and these financial assets suggest that significant reduction of income variability might follow their inclusion in farmers’ portfolios. Stochastic efficiency analysis is used to analyse alternative portfolios of ordinary shares, government bonds and bank bills and New Zealand farmland, using coefficients of absolute risk aversion derived from a negative exponential utility function. The results suggest that those farmers showing high degrees of risk aversion would gain utility by including financial assets in their portfolios. Deregulation of the New Zealand economy in the 1980s appeared to reduce the potential gains from diversification. Bonds rather than ordinary shares are the main contributors to portfolios which maximise utility for individuals classified as ‘somewhat’ risk averse.     

Is participation in agri-environmental programs affected by liquidity and solvency?

Financial constraints, both in the short and long run, have an impact on economic well-being of farm families. Additionally, financial constraints have an impact on production efficiency and technology adoption. This study investigates factors affecting farmers’ participation in the agri-environmental programs like Conservation Reserve Program (CRP) and the Environmental Quality Incentives Programs (EQIPs) in the U.S. particular attention is given to the roles of liquidity and solvency on participation in CRP and EQIP. Results show that both liquidity and solvency have a negative impact on participation in such programs. Additionally, we found that access to the Internet plays an important role in the farmer's decision to participate in CRP and EQIP. Our results also suggested that beginning farmers are more likely to participate in EQIP program.     

Financiers in the forests on Vancouver Island,British Columbia: On fixes and colonial enclosures

Starting in the mid 2000s, a financial asset management company and institutional investors began to invest in timberlands in British Columbia, Canada's most western province. In a period of political economic crisis, investors looked to real assets—“dirt and trees” in the words of one research participant—as a means of accumulating capital through securing access to huge parcels of the most productive and valuable forestland in North America. This article analyses these investments as a socioecological fix for finance capital suggesting that investments in land represent a means for capital and the state to negotiate moments of crisis. The article complicates existing accounts of fixes by demonstrating how the survival of capital in a settler context is fully dependent on an ongoing settler‐colonial project of separating Indigenous people from their land base. The article focuses on the explicitly “private” nature of the land under examination and how this is central to the strategies of investors, the state's deregulation of forest policies, and the marginalization of First Nations' claims to land. The article demonstrates that in settler contexts, discussions of fixes need to be much more attentive to the historic and enduring colonial threads woven through investments in land.     

Risk aversion in agricultural water management investments in Northern Ghana: experimental evidence

Sub‐Saharan Africa (SSA) is one of the regions in the world most affected by food price volatility and production variability. Poor small‐scale farmers in this region are particularly vulnerable to this variability. As a result, households may be reluctant to adopt new agricultural water management (AWM) technologies when they involve more risk than what they mitigate. Despite risk's role in AWM investments, there have been few attempts to estimate the magnitude and nature of risk aversion in relation to this type of farm decisions. To partially close this gap, this article uses an experimental approach applied to 137 households in Northern Ghana. We find that more than 70% of households are moderately or slightly risk averse. This contrasts with other studies in SSA, where most household decision‐makers exhibit severe to extreme risk aversion. We also find that households that stand to lose as well as gain something from participation in games are less risk averse than households playing gains‐only games. This result suggests that most farmers’ current wealth put them at risk of falling into a poverty trap. Thus, the losses from the riskiest investments on AWM technologies may fall more heavily on the poor, suggesting that additional efforts be given to the creation of viable insurance mechanisms.     

Vertical coordination,access to capital,and producer loyalty in the Polish dairy sector

Numerous studies have shown that processing and retail industries have actively assisted farmers in joining the modern food marketing systems. Data from the Polish dairy sector show that assistance is provided not only for the traditional‐channel farmers wishing to modernize, but also for farmers already included in the modern marketing channel. Two explanations can be provided to account for this phenomenon. One, even modern‐channel farmers may lack sufficient funds to maintain required quality/quantity on their own. Two, it may be the case that even after undertaking necessary adjustments, modern‐channel farmers are more likely to quit their relationship with a processor and turn elsewhere, in which case assistance is provided to prevent them from defecting. Using farm‐level data, we investigate the impact of supply chain modernization on farmers’ access to credit and their loyalty toward processors. Our results do not provide compelling evidence to support either hypothesis, suggesting at most a partial explanation for the existence of vertical linkages between processors and modern‐channel farmers in Poland.     

Derivatives for Development? Small‐Farmer Vulnerability and the Financialization of Climate Risk Management

While agricultural production has always been a risky endeavour, it has become even more so in the current context of climatic change and increasing market uncertainty. Meanwhile, the rollback of state protections has rendered small‐scale farmers, especially marginalized peasant producers in the Global South, particularly vulnerable to these contemporary stressors. This essay critically evaluates the contemporary roll‐out of financial derivatives that purportedly aim to mitigate smallholder vulnerability. It gives particular attention to a novel type of derivative known as index‐based agricultural insurance (IBAI) that plays an increasingly prominent role in initiatives to ‘climate proof’ agriculture. The creation of IBAI markets has required significant work, including (1) technical interventions to debundle environmental risk from agricultural production and rebundle it in novel ways that support private financial capital and agricultural input suppliers, (2) extensive state support in the creation of risk markets, and (3) the construction of an accommodating ‘insurance culture’ among small‐scale producers. In addition to mitigating weather‐based risk, a primary objective of IBAI is to spur agricultural modernization. In promoting this agenda, IBAI initiatives may have the paradoxical effect of exposing smallholders to new risks while expanding their overall vulnerability to environmental and economic stressors.     

Supermarkets, wholesalers, and tomato growers in Guatemala

The article shows the asset‐related determinants and the impacts of the participation of small farmers in supermarkets versus traditional market channels in Guatemala. Compared to farmers selling only to the traditional market channels, farmers selling to supermarket channels are larger (but are in the upper tier of the “small farmer” category), have more capital, and are much more specialized in commercial horticulture in general and in tomatoes in particular. While they have higher yields, they also have higher input use, including use of chemicals. In fact, they severely overuse pesticides and fungicides. Moreover, these greater input expenditures mean that their profit rates are roughly similar to those of farmers in the traditional market channel. Supermarket‐channel farmers prefer the more demanding wholesale‐supermarket channel because it offers lower risks and lower transaction costs to market, a variety of quality grades of tomatoes, all year long. In turn, the supermarkets, who do not buy direct but rather source from a few specialized‐dedicated wholesalers, rely on this year‐round supply, lower transaction costs, and consistency of quality.     

PROBLEMS OF INVESTMENT FOR TECHNOLOGICAL ADVANCE: THE CASE OF INDONESIAN RUBBER SMALLHOLDERS

The Indonesian rubber case illustrates major problems of technological advance where perennials are cultivated by small farmers. Despite the availability of new and socially profitable technologies, farmers have not shifted from traditional methods owing to credit and information constraints and to high private time-preferences. Some form of public assistance by the state is required if this shift is to take place. Possible Indonesian government approaches to encouraging improvement are discussed, and the currently favoured ‘focus’ strategy of capital and management-intensive development in large co-ordinated blocks is compared with the ‘dispersal’ strategy of attempting to spread government assistance more widely according to the initiative of individual producers. These and other alternative strategies are conceptualised as points on a ‘meta’ production function envelope, portraying the transition to higher inputs of added capital per hectare. The dispersal strategy employs a less capital-intensive intermediate technology, which may be adopted more easily by traditional farmers in the first instance. It may then be used as a base for moving up the learning ‘gradient’ to a higher technological level. It is shown that a major constraint on government acceptance of the dispersal strategy is lack of knowledge about its probable rate of diffusion. It is thus argued that further studies should be made of this aspect. The results of such work would then enable policies to be geared more optimally to resource endowments and social goals.