The factors influencing the profitability of leased land on dairy farms in Ireland

The Republic of Ireland possesses a land market that is constrained by minimal sales each year, less than 1%. In an effort to capitalise on milk quota abolition and to increase dairy production, a suite of tax incentives has recently been introduced in the Republic of Ireland to encourage land mobility and long-term leasing among Irish dairy farmers. Using Irish Farm Accountancy Database Network (FADN) data from 2011–2017 to examine this, a Heckman sample selection model explores two aspects; (i) the factors that influence a farmer’s decision to rent, or continue renting, land and (ii) the profitability of dairy farmers renting in land. We find self-selection into the rental market is driven by farm traits that include a high level of hired labour, the presence of a successor, intensive farming practices and dairy discussion group membership. The results show that rental agreements assist farms in achieving economies of scale. The findings provide evidence to support government intervention such as tax incentives for renting out land and knowledge sharing discussion groups.     

Retirement farming or sustainable growth – land transfer choices for farmers without a successor

Ireland’s agriculture is characterised by an ageing farmer population and small average farm sizes. These structural issues are shared by a number of European countries and have been identified as barriers to sustainable growth in the sector. While farms with an identified successor usually enter a path of expansion and growth, farms without a successor at some point follow a route of winding down and extensification. Such retirement farming could potentially become an issue for food security and sustainable land use. Understanding the retirement decisions of farmers without a successor is key to address this issue. To this end a survey was conducted with Irish farmers including questions surrounding succession and retirement. About half of the surveyed farmers did not have a successor and two thirds of those did not intend to fully retire from active farming in the future. A logistic regression analysis of the collected data showed that placing a high value on family tradition in farming and only receiving a state pension had a negative effect on the intention to retire, while being aware of changing pension ages had a positive effect. A follow up qualitative study explored the perceptions of farmers without a successor regarding various land transfer options. The participants mainly anticipated negative consequences arising from selling the farm and full retirement such as the loss of land and the end of the farming activity. Other options such as the long-term leasing of part of the land or entering into a partnership with a younger farmer were regarded as having more positive consequences. These included a lowering of the workload, allowing a continuing involvement in farm work, and the ability to be able to stay on the farm.     

Eco‐efficiency of high‐yielding variety rice cultivation after accounting for on‐farm environmental damage as an undesirable output: an empirical analysis from Bangladesh

This study computes the eco‐efficiency of high‐yielding variety (HYV) rice production by including an on‐farm environmental damage index (OFEDI) as an undesirable output using data envelopment analysis. It then identifies its determinants by applying an interval regression procedure on a sample of 317 farmers from north‐western Bangladesh. Results reveal that the mean level of the OFEDI‐adjusted production efficiency (i.e. eco‐efficiency) is 89 per cent, whereas ignoring OFEDI adjustment (i.e. with OFEDI = 0) reduces the mean level of efficiency to 69 per cent, implying that the production of undesirable output or on‐farm environmental damage induces an efficiency loss of 20 per cent with significant differences across regions. The proportion of farmers’ income from HYV rice agriculture, land ownership, extension services and socio‐environmental living standard are the significant determinants of improving eco‐efficiency. Policy implications include investments in extension services and land reform measures to increase land ownership, which will synergistically improve eco‐efficiency of HYV rice production in Bangladesh.     

成都市工业用地弹性出让改革中企业用地选择偏好分析

研究目的：以成都市为例,分析企业对工业用地使用年期的选择偏好及其影响因素,并探析发生用地偏好背后的原因。研究方法：混合logit模型。研究结果：相比劳动与技术密集型产业,资本密集型产业更倾向于选择50年工业用地使用权;相比大中企业,小微企业更偏向于租赁或20年短期工业用地使用权;地方政府工业用地供应制度、外部融资环境和税收政策对企业用地选择有约束作用。研究结论：政府放弃低价引资策略,增加工业用地供应量,提高土地供应占比均衡程度,降低土地抵押贷款等融资门槛和实行差别化税率均能引导企业理性选择工业用地,实现工业用地弹性出让制度改革目标。     

To plant or not to plant—Irish farmers’ goals and values with regard to afforestation

To encourage Irish farmers to transfer land into forestry, a premium scheme supporting farmers who afforest was implemented in 1989 and afforestation targets outlined in 1996. In the period from 1996 to 2006, however, only half of the targeted area was planted in Ireland. As the income of many farmers would improve when joining the scheme, a number of studies have been conducted to find out why the response was not as expected. However, to date the phenomenon has not been explained. Amongst the studies undertaken, a lack of qualitative approaches looking at farmers’ decision-making was identified. In order to understand farmers’ decisions regarding farm afforestation, in-depth interviews with 62 farmers in the North-West and Mid-Western regions of Ireland were conducted in winter and spring 2011. The interviews were based on the theory of farmers’ goals and values developed by Ruth Gasson in 1973 and relate specifically to their instrumental, intrinsic, social and expressive values about farming. The results of this study show that farmers exhibit complex, multiple and sometimes contradictory values in relation to farming. The biggest group in the study were guided by intrinsic values when it comes to farm afforestation. Their decision not to plant is made based on their values and beliefs about farming, e.g. that it is a shame to plant land used for food production, even if this returns a greater profit. A much smaller group were directed by profit maximisation when it comes to afforesting land. These farmers would plant if the financial incentives for forestry were more attractive, e.g. if the premiums available for afforestation were higher or if the outlook for agricultural profits was not as good as anticipated.     

基于农户调查的重庆市农村土地流转研究

研究目的：探明农村土地流转形式、影响因素和流转后农民的生活保障,了解农民对土地流转的意愿。研究方法：问卷调查,统计分析。研究结果：户主的文化程度对土地流转的影响不大;家庭人均收入水平越高,发生土地流转的比例也越高;离城镇或交通线路近,发生土地流转的比例高;土地流转实现形式主要是自己联系、承租人联系和集体组织;土地转让后的生活保障主要靠外出务工。土地流转的期望收益平均在540元/亩,土地流转方式以免费送给亲戚和租给他人或企业为主,土地流转的时间以1 — 2年为主,土地流转的管理方式希望通过集体组织管理。研究结论：农村土地流转受农户家庭收入、农户所处的区位条件等影响;政府应加强法律、法规建设,加快土地流转市场化;尽快健全与完善农村社会保障体系;发挥政府公共服务职能,规范土地流转管理,引导农民对土地流转的新认识。     

Editorial - Decision rules, government rules, and the costs of vegetation protection in New South Wales

Governments regularly spend public funds to purchase environmental amenities. They might purchase land to add to the public estate, pay to fence stock out of endangered native forest, or offer stewardship payments as incentives to conservation. Governments also regularly introduce policies to achieve environmental goals, even though these policies impose costs on firms, households or farms. The basic decision rule, to maximise environmental benefits from a given budget, in all these cases is received wisdom within the economics profession. In the case of purchase of land to add to the public estate:Maximise environmental benefits by purchasing land in descending order of the ratio of benefit to cost until the budget is exhausted.More generally, funds should be allocated to individual activities within a programme in order of the decreasing ratio of benefits to costs until the budget is exhausted. This rule can be applied when benefits can be measured in any monetary or non-monetary quantitative index. In the case of conservation of vegetation, it can be applied relatively simply in the field when vegetation types and land values can be mapped jointly through GIS techniques.This simple decision rule is not always followed by government agencies that manage environmental programmes. Consider the protection of native vegetation, which is defined to include native forest, native woodland and native grassland. To meet international obligations to protect this kind of environment, most countries must involve private landholders in conservation because there are insufficient government reserves to meet the international commitments. Indeed, most countries have already introduced many policies to encourage private landholders to protect native vegetation on their forests and farms.The New South Wales state government, in Australia, has introduced the Native Vegetation Conservation Act (1998) to ensure that private landholders protect vegetation. The Act constrains farmers to retain all the native forest, native woodland, and native grassland, on their land irrespective of the costs to them. Farmers can then apply for consent to clear and crop this land, but consent is rarely granted in full and often not at all. The Act is consistent with a decision rule of “maximise-benefits-only” - protect all vegetation irrespective of the costs to those who have to conserve it.Constraints of this kind will inevitably lead to a loss of income and land value when they restrict the farm enterprises, and so will impose opportunity costs on the farmer. There is already ample published evidence on the sizes of these costs - from publications of the relevant state agency itself, consultants' reports, farmer submissions and independent research. For example, in a large region in the northwest of New South Wales, where land could be cropped very productively:- some farmers bear only small losses (a quarter lose less than five per cent of their potential income),- some farmers bear very large losses (another quarter lose more than half of their potential income),- the overall losses of income per farm are high (an average loss of almost 30 per cent of potential income across the region), and- the losses are highest for those who have already conserved most woodland.Consider now the problem of reducing these costs by applying the benefit-cost rule as opposed to the maximise-benefits-only rule that has led to this position. There are three economic decision rules that might be used to rank projects or activities.The benefit-cost rule: Impose the constraint on the farm with the highest ratio of environmental benefit per dollar of opportunity cost first, then on the farm with the next highest ratio, etc., until the environmental goal is met. And so maximise the ratio of benefits to opportunity costs.The benefit-only rule: Impose the constraint on the farm with the highest environmental benefits first, then on the farm with the next highest benefits, etc., until the environmental goal is met. And so maximise benefits.The cost-only rule: Impose the constraint on the farm with the lowest opportunity costs first, then the next lowest cost, etc, until the environmental goal is met. And so minimise opportunity costs.But do these rules normally lead to different outcomes? If the “budget” or willingness to impose opportunity costs were large enough, all three would lead to the same outcome because constraints would be imposed on all suitable land. Otherwise the outcomes differ - that is the different rules lead to different levels of environmental benefit from the imposition of a given level of opportunity cost (or from the expenditure of a given budget).Both the benefit-only and cost-only rules lead to inefficiencies (see Babcock et al (1997) and Wu et al (2000) for a discussion of the associated statistical issues). Benefit-only targeting leads to the retirement of highly-productive land from agricultural uses - which is a major reason why opportunity costs are often high when native vegetation is conserved under the Act in New South Wales. The cost-only rule can lead to the reservation or purchase of land with few environmental benefits, even though expenditure or opportunity cost is minimised.A comparison of the benefit-cost rule and the benefit-only rule in the northwest of New South Wales illustrates the problem. The region is potentially highly-productive crop land but large areas of it are presently covered by native forest and woodland which cannot now be cleared. Much of this vegetation is under various degrees of threat even though it is not rare or endangered. The farm is the unit of assessment under the Act, so is used in the example. Benefits are measured as the percentages of species that are saved on each farm when its vegetation is protected rather than cleared to crops. The total benefit is the aggregate of percentage species saved across the farms - again following the present administration of the Act. The opportunity costs are measured as the losses in land value because land cannot now be cleared due to the Act.The comparison of the two rules indicates substantial savings with the benefit-cost rule. For example, 90 per cent of the total benefits can be obtained by imposing 93 per cent of the total opportunity costs with the benefit-only rule, and by imposing only 54 per cent of the total opportunity costs with the benefit-cost rule. The benefit-cost rule saves 39 per cent of the total costs at this level of benefits. Again, 80 cent of the total benefits can be obtained by imposing 86 per cent of the total opportunity costs with the benefit-only rule, but by imposing only 46 per cent of the total opportunity costs with the benefit-cost rule. The benefit-cost rule saves 40 per cent of costs at this level of benefits.While such results can only be indicative of the magnitudes, they do serve to highlight the inefficiencies of decision rules used by government agencies. In New South Wales, the Native Vegetation Conservation Act imposes high opportunity costs on farmers, partly because it is implemented through a high-cost decision rule. Now that suitable GIS technology, vegetation maps, and spatial land value data, are becoming available, these costs can be lowered with a more rational decision rule to guide choices in the field.The environmental goal is not at issue, but the cost of achieving it is. We can identify who bears the opportunity costs of environmental conservation, and often value the magnitude of these costs. Now we can also reduce the levels of these costs with the use of the benefit-cost decision rule.Jack SindenAgricultural and Resource EconomicsUniversity of New EnglandArmidale, New South WalesReferencesBabcock Bruce A, Lackshminarayan PG, Wu JunJie and Silberman D (1997) “Targeting Tools for the Purchase of Environmental Amenities”, Land Economics, 73, 325-339.Wu JunJie, Adams Richard M., Zilberman David, and Bruce Babcock (2000) “Targeting Resource Conservation Expenditures”, Choices, Second Quarter, 2000, 3-8.     

Assessing policy tools for encouraging farm afforestation in Ireland

To encourage Irish farmers to afforest agricultural land, a premium scheme supporting such planting was implemented in 1989 and afforestation targets outlined in 1996. In the period from 1996 to 2009, however, only half of the targeted area was planted although the income of many farmers would have improved on joining the scheme. A multi-method study was undertaken looking at farmers’ decision-making with regard to afforestation under the scheme. In this paper we focus on one particular element of the study, which is about identifying policy tools that best match farmers’ behaviour with regard to afforestation. Based on previous work, which we undertook on farmers’ goals and values with regard to afforestation and which was presented in this journal, a postal survey was designed and distributed in spring 2012 to farmers all over Ireland. The results indicate that the majority of those surveyed do not make their decision to afforest based on profit maximisation goals. Offering only an incentive tool – such as the current premium scheme – will not be sufficient to encourage those farmers to plant trees. Additionally capacity tools such as group plantings of neighbouring fields and symbolic tools such as information and PR- or image-building campaigns should be deployed to further encourage afforestation by farmers.     

Effects of European Union agricultural policies on the sustainability of grazingland use in a typical Greek rural area

Recent changes in the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) introduced different definitions regarding the eligibility of various types of land used by grazing animals. In particular, shrublands and other low-quality areas which have traditionally been used as grazinglands are now not eligible for European Union income support payments. Subject to these changes, a large part of livestock farms will be affected, being partially or fully deprived of EU income support. In addition to these policy-driven changes, pasture-fed livestock farms in Greece are faced with a unique system of grazingland allocation, as all grazing areas in the country are state-owned. These areas are allocated for a short period either directly to farmers who are permanent residents of the Municipalities or to other livestock farmers through an auction system, which does not take into account the grazing capacity thus bringing about environmental degradation. This paper investigates the effects of CAP changes and of this communal land allocation system based on the findings of a typological analysis. The study focuses on a typical Greek territory in terms of land uses, economic activities and sociodemographic developments. Data from a questionnaire survey are used to build a typology of local livestock farms in terms of their nutritional management and land use characteristics and then the profile of each type is investigated through the estimation of a Multinomial Logit Model where the dependent variable is the cluster participation. Three distinct types of farms (clusters) are determined. Cluster 1 includes traditional farms which rear sheep and goats and bovine for meat, which are highly dependent on grazingland uses and EU income support. Cluster 2 farms – mainly sheep and goat – have evolved a ‘double’ dependency on land in the form of grazingland but also of cropland for feedstuff production, which renders them more resilient to policy changes. Finally, Cluster 3 farms are intensive dairy cattle farms and use artificial (cultivated) privately-owned grazinglands and cropland for feedstuff production. Market-oriented measures are proposed for each type and suggestions for an integrated land use plan are made, including long-term leasing of land and the consideration of environmental criteria for land allocation, thus rendering farmers responsible for keeping their land in a good production state.     

The introduction of Entry Level Stewardship in England: Extension or dilution in agri-environment policy?

Agri-environment schemes were introduced in the mid-1980s. Their primary objectives have developed from initially aiming to hold back intensification towards stimulating environmental enhancement. The introduction of Entry Level Stewardship (ELS) in England represents a third stage in seeking to extend the coverage of schemes across the majority of agricultural land. This aims to influence land use along the whole of the intensive margin. The ELS offers a wide range of options for which farmers are awarded points. Selection of options equivalent to 30 points per ha in lowland areas entitles farmers to a payment of £30 per ha. By September 2007, 4.4 million ha had been entered into the scheme, equivalent to 47% of the agricultural area. From amongst the options on offer, 34% of points were for boundary options, 20% for intensive grass options, 16% for management plans and 13% for options taking arable land out of production. The choice of options varies across the country with a higher proportion of the agricultural area entered in the East. Entry into the scheme is associated with total agricultural area, cereals farming, larger farms, a lower proportion of area in Environmentally Sensitive Area and Countryside Stewardship schemes and grazing livestock numbers. While the ELS has introduced a large number of new entrants into agri-environment schemes, the extent of the environmental impact is uncertain. Given the large number of options available, it is likely that farmers will have chosen options that involve relatively little change and incur limited cost. At the same time, it would be surprising if the environmental gains were of the types most valued within local areas. The ELS approach implies that public goods provided from agricultural land should be paid for irrespective of what would have happened in the absence of the scheme. While this may be a fairer approach, it may also undermine the idea of land stewardship and imply that payments will continue to be required in the long term in order to sustain provision. The ELS does establish a framework within which incentives could be targeted to deliver specific benefits within particular contexts and suggestions are made as to how policy might be developed for this.     

福建省农户分化对林地流转行为的影响研究

基于集体林权制度改革后福建省10个县(市)274户农户的抽样调查数据,运用二元Logistic回归模型,分别建立农户林地转入模型、转出模型,实证检验农户分化对林地流转的影响。研究将农户分化分为农户收入水平上的分化和农户职业上的分化。研究表明:农户分化对农户林地流转行为影响显著,其中农户收入水平对福建省农户的林地转入行为在统计上有显著的负向影响,同时,对农户林地转出行为也有负向显著的影响;农户职业分化对农户林地转入行为有显著的负向影响,却对农户林地转出有正向影响。基于研究提出以城乡发展一体化推进林地流转、建立林地流转市场、建立健全林地流转保障体系、完善林地产权管理制度、合理引导林地租赁等建议。     

Commonage land and farmer uptake of the rural environment protection scheme in Ireland

This paper looks at some of the factors which may influence REPS participation among commonage farmers in the west of The Republic of Ireland and on the impact REPS has had on participating farmers’ income and on their environmental practices and attitudes. Commonage is land held in common ownership on which two or more farmers have grazing rights. There are about 4500 commonages in Ireland and they are important to Irish agriculture, to conservation of the uplands, in managing the environment and in sustaining rural livelihoods. The study reveals that sheep farmers are less likely to join REPS than cattle farmers and that being in receipt of other sources of State income acted as a deterrent to participation. REPS appears to have had a positive impact on participants’ income and seems to have been successful in changing farmer practices in a more environmentally benign direction, when doing so imposed no additional costs on the farmer. Environmental awareness among all farmers appears to be poor although REPS farmers display more appreciation of the degraded state of commonage than do non-REPS farmers. Farmers preference for a continuation of the status quo with respect to commonage management and a lack of discontent with respect to the distribution of past commonage rights points to the potential of building on a more co-operative approach to environmental management.     

Agriculture and land use: Demand for and supply of agricultural commodities,characteristics of the farming and food industries,and implications for land use in the UK

Agriculture is the largest type of land use in the UK, accounting for about 77 per cent of the total area, compared with an average 50 per cent for the EU27. But in common with most high-income countries, agriculture's contribution to UK GDP and employment is low, at about 0.5 and 1.8 per cent, respectively, although the regional importance of the sector (and its associated food and farming industries) varies considerably.Of the 17.5 million ha used for agriculture, about 28 per cent is allocated to crops, and 67 per cent is grassland. The grassland includes 4.4 million ha of sole-owned rough grazing and 1.1 million ha of common land in mainly upland “disadvantaged areas,” primarily used for beef and sheep production. This has a major influence on land use, especially in the northern and western parts of the UK.From the 1930s until the mid-1980s, UK policy promoted increases in agricultural productivity to feed the nation from its own resources. An array of income and production support measures encouraged intensive farming, including a relative switch to arable farming in eastern areas. Since the early-1990s, policies have sought simultaneously to make UK agriculture internationally competitive and environmentally benign. These policies, evident in the Agenda 2000 Reforms of the Common Agricultural Policy, point the way forward for the future. It is likely that a greater distinction will emerge between policies to protect natural resources and enhance the flow of non-market ecosystem services from rural land, and agriculture and food policies intended to encourage an appropriate proportion of national food requirements to be met from domestic sources.It seems likely that over the next 50 years, the UK's land area will be required to deliver an increasingly diverse range of private and public goods to meet growing human needs and aspirations. This will require a balance of policy-driven goals and market forces. It will also need a much improved understanding of the trade-offs between food production and environmental goals and of the institutional arrangements required to achieve a balance of economic, social and environmental outcomes.     

Landowner response to policies regulating land improvements in Finland: Lease or search for other options?

Land improvements with long pay-back periods are often delayed on leased agricultural land. The delay in improvements has been found to result in land degradation, decreased land productivity and environmental problems. An important question is thus how landowners would respond to regulations and mandates concerning land improvements. Based on a Finnish landowner survey, we analysed landowner choices under certain land improvement regulations, using the currently dominant choice of leasing land for agricultural use as the benchmark. The results indicated that land leasing will continue to increase in the future, but if the landowner mandate to co-finance costly land improvements is increased, landowners are predicted to respond significantly to these mandates and search for other land management options. Three heterogeneous landowner groups were identified based on their land use choices. Current leasers and amenity owners, in particular, were sensitive to land improvement mandates, and would avoid compulsory investment expenses by selling or afforesting their land.     

Does carbon farming provide a cost‐effective option to mitigate GHG emissions? Evidence from China

In this study, we apply a whole farm bioeconomic analysis to explore the changes in land use, farm practices and on‐farm greenhouse gas (GHG) emission under varying levels of agricultural greenhouse gas abatement incentives in the form of a carbon tax for a semi‐arid crop‐livestock farming system in China's Loess Plateau. Our results show that the optimised agricultural enterprises move towards being cropping‐dominated reducing on‐farm emission since livestock perform is the major source of emission. Farmers employ less oats‐based and rapeseed‐based rotations but more dry pea‐based rotations in the optimal enterprise mix. A substantial reduction in on‐farm greenhouse gas emission can be achieved at low cost with a small increase in carbon incentives. Our estimates indicate that crop‐livestock farmers in China's Loess Plateau may reduce their on‐farm GHG emission between 16.6 and 33 per cent with marginal abatement costs <￥100/t CO₂e and ￥150/t CO₂e in 2015 Chinese Yuan. The analysis implies that reducing greenhouse gas emission in China's semi‐arid crop‐livestock agriculture is potentially a low‐cost option.     

Logs or permits? Forestry land use decisions in an emissions trading scheme

Negative carbon emissions options are required to meet long-term climate goals in many countries. One way to incentivise these options is by paying farmers for carbon sequestered by forests through an emissions trading scheme (ETS). New Zealand has a comprehensive ETS, which includes incentives for farmers to plant permanent exotic forests. This research uses an economy-wide model, a forestry model and land use change functions to measure the expected proportion of farmers with trees at harvesting age that will change land use from production to permanent forests in New Zealand from 2014 to 2050. We also estimate the impacts on carbon sequestration, the carbon price, gross emissions, GDP and welfare. When there is forestry land use change, the results indicate that the responsiveness of land owners to the carbon price has a measured impact on carbon sequestration. For example, under the fastest land use change scenario, carbon sequestration reaches 29.93 Mt CO₂e by 2050 compared to 23.41 Mt CO₂e in the no land use change scenario (a 28% increase). Even under the slowest land use change scenario, carbon sequestration is 25.89 Mt CO₂e by 2050 (an 11% increase compared with no land use change). This is because, if foresters decide not to switch to permanent forests in 1 year, carbon prices and ultimately incentives to convert to permanent forests will be higher in future years.     

Payments for environmental services in Indonesia: What if economic signals were lost in translation?

This article provides an analysis of a payment for environmental services (PES) scheme in the Cidanau watershed, Indonesia. It contributes to the debate on the alleged effectiveness of such economic incentives to actually change decisions among land users. Building on the standard PES theory of change, one would assume that farmers respond to payments and change their land use decisions accordingly for the delivery of environmental services. However, at the project level the impacts of economic incentives depend on how the signal is transmitted to decision-makers. An extensive household survey was undertaken among 270 participating farmers in order to investigate these assumptions. Results indicate that farmers join the scheme for intrinsic motivations rather than because of economic incentives. Besides, the scheme does not target farmers whose decisions could be changed for the sake of service provision. Finally, farmer group leaders display disproportionate power of decision while individual farmers have a low level of understanding of the PES programme. As a consequence, land use patterns might not depend on the economic incentive only; rather they are likely to be determined by the local social context, traditions and economic dependency on forests. This in turn casts some doubts on the strong (yet contested) economic assumptions that underlie the emergence of PES schemes and on their modus operandi in developing countries.     

Modelling the origins of managerial ability in agricultural production*

The efficiency of production from a farm’s land, labour and capital is critically dependent on the ability of the farm manager. Yet, while there are studies correlating a wide range of manager‐related variables with returns, and, therefore, probably ability, little understanding of the basic determinants of managerial ability exists. Questions such as ‘what is the importance of a farmer’s family experiences and training in determining the farmer’s managerial ability?’ need answering. The solution to this, and other, questions will enable determining ways of improving farmers’ inherent ability developed both in early, and later, life. In that most decisions on a farm are made intuitively, in contrast to the use of a formal analysis, improving farmers’ inherent ability will have a significant payoff. The research reported here uses data from a large stratified random survey of 740 developed farmers (29 per cent had tertiary education, 30 per cent had 4 or more years secondary education) to create a structural equation model of the determinants of managerial ability. The results suggest that a farmer’s exposure to experiences is a significant factor in ability, as is the farmer’s management style and the family influence on early life experience.     

PRODUCER COOPERATIVES,INPUT PRICING AND LAND ALLOCATION

This paper considers input pricing rules for a producer cooperative which supplies its members with two inputs: a publicly provided private input (water), and a local public input (road services). An Israeli Moshav which allocates land equally among producers is a good example. The cooperative uses a two-part pricing rule: a product-dependent uniform fee (head tax) and a user charge per unit of the private input. Discrimination of head tax among the producer groups is shown to dominate that of user charge in the short run. However, land reallocation among producers can result in a Pareto-superior pricing rule and the Henry George theorem emerges in the long run. Thus, allowing land leasing while maintaining equal rights to land increases producer welfare.     

农户向家庭农场流转土地的续约意愿及影响因素研究

当前,农地流转期限普遍较短、流转合同不规范、合同违约率高等问题导致家庭农场土地经营权不稳定,严重抑制了家庭农场主对流入土地的长期投入。因此,如何引导农户向家庭农场长期稳定地流转土地,成为推动家庭农场可持续发展的关键所在。本文基于湖南省498家农户土地流转数据,运用计划行为理论和结构方程模型分析了农户向家庭农场流转土地的续约意愿及其影响因素。研究结果表明:①在农户向家庭农场流转土地的续约意愿模型中,行为态度是主要影响因素,主观行为规范和知觉行为控制也是重要影响因素;②在农户行为态度方面,农户对土地流转预期收益越有信心,或农户对家庭农场上一轮土地流转行为越满意,在此基础上构建起的行为态度越能促进农户土地流转续约意愿的形成;③在主观行为规范方面,当农户感知到来自周围的人特别是亲人对农户续约的支持态度越强烈,在此基础上构建的主观行为规范越能促进农户土地流转续约意愿的形成;④在知觉行为控制方面,农户对农户禀赋和环境禀赋两方面的感知会影响农户土地流转续约意愿的形成,其中户主工作性质和上一轮流转期限影响最大。