Some Lessons from the Modelling of the Spanish Rice Market

Spanish accession to the European Comminity (EC) will lead to many changes in Spain's agricultural sector. Predicting the nature of these changes is difficult because the new policy regime differs significantly from historic Spanish policies. In this paper, conventional econometric models of the Spanish rice sector are constrated with a model designed specifically to reflect the pervasive impact of Spanish rice policies. This policy model predicts the historical evolution of production, consumption and trade more accurately than the conventional models. However, the policy model cannot be used to predict the impact of the radical policy changes in Spain resulting from the introduction of the EC rice regime because the historical relationships no longer hold. It is argued that alternative approaches relying more on institutional analysis and expert opinion need to be developed to understand the future of the Spanish rice sector.     

The Spanish path of agrarian change, 1950–2005: From authoritarian to export‐oriented productivism

The aim of this study is to determine whether the evolution of Spain's agrarian change, between 1950 and 2005, exhibits any features important enough to differentiate it from the common model of developed countries in Western Europe. On the one hand, the Spanish agrarian transformations share the main features of the changes in Western Europe: technological innovation, increased production and productivity, the diminishing importance of the agricultural sector, close integration with the industrial sector, and a high environmental impact. On the other hand, a series of important peculiarities can be observed in Spain's agrarian change: strong expansion of intensive livestock farming; the role of increased irrigation in explaining the transformation of agriculture; policies that offered very little support to the agricultural sector under a dictatorship that denied a voice to farmers; and the prominent role of agriculture in the economy despite its small contribution to GDP.     

The Transformation of the Spanish Livestock System in the Second and Third Food Regimes

The present paper contains an analysis of the special characteristics of livestock systems in Spain, in the context of the domestic and international food relations that prevailed during the so‐called Second and Third Food Regimes. Spanish livestock is an interesting case because patterns of meat production and consumption have changed dramatically since the 1960s, as Spain has become one of Europe's major meat producers. There were also successive periods of transformation in Spain throughout the historical periods analysed herein, from an extensive to an intensive industrial model as well as from a domestically focused to an internationally oriented sector. In particular, the international context has been crucial in the development of Spanish livestock because of Spain's dependence on imported livestock feed and the increasing relevance of exports, especially to other European countries following Spain's accession to the European Union in 1986.     

Quality Policy and Consumer Behavior

Summary

A broad view of the European Union (EU) quality policy to the meat sector is given in this article. It analyses the links between quality policy and consumer attitudes and behavior in the Spanish meat market. Quality programs allow traceability within the chain, which is an important improvement, compared to the traditional way of marketing meat. For this reason, we study the evolution and performance of Spanish meat market from the view of consumer behavior. This paper mentions some basic information in quality policies in Spain, including the results of a survey carried out in 1997, with some practical conclusions.     

Impact of national policies on patterns of built-up development: an assessment over three decades

Globally, built-up development is taking place at unprecedented rates. To mitigate and limit its effects, recent scientific and spatial planning communities call for built-up management to be addressed on broader scales, from regional to national, and coordinated with multiple policy domains. In this paper, we aimed to analyze the evolution and impact of Romania’s national policies on built-up management during the entire period from the fall of the communist regime to the present. The new perspective offered by our study concerns the use of spatiotemporal built-up development assessment with policy analysis and visualization. Moreover, policies and built-up land changes are addressed in direct relationship with major political events and global economic influences. Our findings reveal that policies were influenced by the communist legacy, accession to the EU and the global economic crisis. Most effective were the policies adopted during the pre-EU accession period and after the economic crisis. The strongest impact on patterns of development came from policies in the domains of transportation, regional development, public administration and the environment.     

Trade liberalisation and greenhouse gas emissions: the case of dairying in the European Union and New Zealand*

The link between trade and the environment has aroused considerable interest both in terms of the impact of trade liberalisation on the environment, and also the impact of environmental policy on production and trade. Of key environmental concern at present is global warming and its association with greenhouse gas emissions. Agriculture is a sector of the economy that both contributes to, and will be affected by, climate change. This paper models the impact of agricultural trade liberalisation on greenhouse gas emissions from agriculture around the world, focusing particularly on the effects on New Zealand, a small economy highly dependent on agricultural trade. A partial equilibrium agricultural multicountry, multicommodity trade model is used for the analysis, extended to include physical production systems and their greenhouse gas emissions. Two simulations are performed: removal of agricultural policies in the EU and in all OECD countries. The results indicate that although producer returns in New Zealand increase, greenhouse gas emissions also increase significantly. EU producers face lower returns but also lower greenhouse gas emissions.     

IMPACTS OF THE COMMON AGRICULTURAL POLICY ON INTERNATIONAL WHEAT PRICES

The emergence of the EC as a major exporter of cereals in the 1980s and the escalation of international agricultural trade confrontations emphasize the importance of understanding the effects of EC policy actions. Several important features of the EC wheat market are incorporated in an analytical and empirical model including imperfect substitutability in demand between imports and domestic supplies, the simultaneous import and export of wheat by the EC, the distinct impact of threshold versus intervention policy prices, MCAs, and the imperfect transmission between market and intervention prices. Results indicate that EC policies have a smaller impact on world price than found in previous studies.     

Impacts of Trade and Agricultural Policies on the World Malt and Malting Barley Market

Major changes have been occurring in agricultural policies affecting world malt and malting barley production and trade. This paper analyzes effects of these changes on international trade and competition. A spatially disaggregated linear programing model of the world malt and malting barley sector is constructed and used to analyze effects of changes in European Union supply, European Union restitutions, the U.S. Export Enhancement Program subsidy regime, and import tariffs on malt and malting barley. Policy changes are found to generate substantial changes in trade flows and competitiveness between producing and exporting regions.     

Agriculture’s Inter‐industry Linkages,Aggregation Bias and Rural Policy Reforms

As agricultural policy reform and its effects have become increasingly territorialised, analyses that attempt to explain or predict impacts need to be both more localised and to identify spill‐over effects. Local and regional general equilibrium approaches have become increasingly popular because they can extend predictions of policy shocks obtainable from partial equilibrium sectoral models to identify the wider effects. However, agriculture is usually described as a single sector in input–output accounts, whereas policy shocks that affect constituent commodities with differential impacts will have inter‐industry effects that are different to those implied by average input–output coefficients. Regionalisation of aggregated input–output tables adds further to these difficulties. The objective of this study is to develop a practical method for dealing with these problems. It describes the theoretical basis of aggregation bias and shows how it can be measured, in two contrasting case study regions in the UK and Sweden. Having established that this is a significant issue, a simple but effective procedure is demonstrated, based on additional information on variable costs, which transforms policy shocks from a direct change in agricultural output to that transmitted to the suppliers of inputs. This method provides an impact close to that which could be calculated if the general equilibrium system had indeed been disaggregated, and supports use of this approach in impact studies where insufficient time or funding are available for complete disaggregation of an agricultural sector’s regional accounts.     

State Trading and China's Agricultural Import Policies

WTO rules on state trading operating through provisions on state trading (Article XVII) and on tariff bindings (Article II) discipline import protection in line with countries' tariff bindings as long as sufficient information is available to monitor the behavior of state trading enterprises. China's economic reforms have left state trading a minor part of its trade regime overall, although it applies to trade in important agricultural commodities, and oil. China's commitments in its WTO accession package will make policy much more transparent and allow China to develop a highly efficient agricultural sector. This policy stance also highlights the pressing need for improved policies to counter rural poverty.     

Rice Production,Trade and the Poor: Regional Effects of Rice Export Policy on Households in Vietnam

Analysing Vietnam's rice export policy and recent export ban in the context of rising food prices, this study combines insights from a regionally‐disaggregated or ‘bottom‐up’ CGE model and a micro‐simulation using household data. Three main conclusions are drawn. First, although there is little impact on GDP, there are substantial distributional impacts across regions and households from different export policies and market conditions. Second, both rural and urban households, including poor households, benefit from free trade, even though domestic rice prices are higher. Finally, under free trade, relatively large gains accrue to rural households, where poverty is most pervasive in Vietnam.     

玉米补贴政策调整对宏观经济的影响*——基于CGE模型的分析

[目的]寻求玉米补贴政策改变对宏观经济和粮食安全的影响,并厘清影响的幅度,寻求玉米政策调整的合理方向。[方法]对现有的中国可计算一般均衡模型进行了改进,引入库存积累、临时存储库存入市、库存销售和顺价机制,加入玉米实物量模块。通过设定政策模拟情景,运用2012年中国投入产出表、农业农村部、中国统计年鉴等资料将数据库进行了更新,对农业部门的玉米补贴减少政策的影响进行了模拟。[结果]降低玉米种植补贴后,玉米种植面积和产量都将改变。短期内,补贴减少将减少财政压力。中长期来看,减少补贴政策将对GDP产生负面影响,且远大于财政补贴减少的幅度。而玉米占经济量的份额很小,玉米相关行业的变化,对宏观经济的影响较弱。[结论]实现去库存、调结构、降低种植面积,进行市场化决策,就要坚持玉米价格市场化改革,注重政策的时效性和针对性,加强信息监测预警。提高政府对玉米市场的宏观调控能力,实施多策并举的政策,有助于实现宏观经济改善,保持农业生产持续健康良好运行。     

The estimation of agricultural policy effects on soil erosion—An application for the bio-economic model MODAM

As agricultural policies affect land use, they have effects on the amount of soil erosion in agricultural regions through changes of the economic conditions of agricultural production. Prices of inputs and outputs, regulations and incentives can change, forcing or encouraging farmers to adopt new crop rotations. This paper shows how a bio-economic model can be used to describe and estimate the effects of policies on agricultural production and the risk of soil erosion at the example of a region in North-Eastern Germany. The model uses both an assessment tool that is based on a fuzzy-logic approach for the estimation of soil erosion risk of cropping practices, and a linear programming model, that simulates farmers’ economic behaviour under the assumption of gross margin maximisation being the main goal of farmers’ actions.The analysed policy options were both a targeted and an untargeted incentive programme for reduced tillage, and a restriction option where high erosive crops are not allowed on high erodible field types. The results show that policy changes can have an impact on soil erosion. Furthermore, soil conservation policies are shown to have different levels of efficiency in terms of reduced soil erosion related to the costs of the policy. In the case of this study, a restriction option was more efficient than the incentive options. The results of such simulations can serve as a decision support for the development of soil conservation policies and help to foresee the effects of general changes of agricultural policies.     

Total factor productivity change in China's grain production sector: 1980–2018

This study analyses changes in total factor productivity (TFP) of grains as an aggregate commodity and major grain crops including rice, wheat, and corn, using pooled provincial and time-series data from 1980 to 2018 for China. Results show that the growth of TFP in the grain sector was driven by technical improvements. Moreover, the grain output and wheat production benefited more from TFP growth, whereas the growth in the usage of inputs drove the growth in rice and corn production. Findings also indicate that the laissez-faire market-oriented policy led to a dramatic fall in output while the intervention-led policy resulted in a substantial rise in output, but neither of them fostered the growth of productivity. Conversely, the incentive-led policy in a market-oriented environment that raised the comparative profitability in grain production promoted the growth in both output and productivity in the grain sector. As the comparative advantage shifts away from agriculture in China, an appropriate support is thus necessary to stimulate farmers' incentive in growing grain crops.     

Farmers’ objectives as determinants of organic farming adoption: the case of Catalonian vineyard production

This article assesses the decision to adopt organic farming practices. We use Duration Analysis (DA) to determine why farmers adopt organic farming practices and what influences the timing of adoption. We extend previous studies by including farmers’ objectives, risk preferences, and agricultural policies as covariates in the DA model. The Analytical Hierarchy Process is used as a multicriteria decision‐making methodology to measure farmers’ objectives. The empirical analysis uses farm‐level data from a sample of vineyard farms in the Spanish region of Catalonia. Farmers’ objectives are found to influence the conversion decision. Moreover, farmers who are not risk averse are more likely to adopt organic farming. Results point to the policy changes that have been most relevant in motivating adoption of organic practices.     

The impact of the 1999 CAP reforms on the efficiency of the COP sector in Spain

The cereal, oilseeds, and protein crop sector (COP) occupies a prominent position within the European Union's agricultural sector. Within Spain, the COP sector accounts for almost a third of total Agricultural Guidance and Guarantee Fund expenses, and half of the utilized agricultural area (UAA). The COP sector is not only relevant because of its physical and economic magnitude, but also because of the political attention it receives. The Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) reforms that occurred during the 1990s paid special attention to this sector. This article aims to determine the impacts of Agenda 2000 on a sample of Spanish COP farmers' production decisions by using an output-oriented stochastic distance function. The distance function allows for an assessment of the reform-motivated changes on total output, input used, input composition, and crop mix. It also permits an assessment of the impacts of the reform on farms' technical efficiency.
Results show that the reform has shifted the production frontier inward and changed output composition in favor of voluntary set-aside land. With respect to input composition, Agenda 2000 induced a decrease in land, fertilizers, pesticides, and other inputs in favor of labor. In addition, Agenda 2000 has had a negative impact on technical efficiency.     

Conditioning trends shaping the agricultural and rural landscape in Africa

African countries continue to face deepening food crises that have been accentuated by the global food, energy, and financial crises. This situation is part of a long‐term structural problem: decades of under‐investments in agricultural sector and poor policies of support for smallholder farmers who form the bulk of the farming population. The inability of these farmers to achieve a supply response when commodity prices were high and market access was less of a problem suggests that there are multiple sets of binding constraints that continue to limit the potential of agricultural growth to reduce food security and poverty on the continent. This article reviews some of the historical trends that have hampered the performance of the agriculture sector. In addition, it reviews the impacts of more positive trends that could stimulate agricultural growth in Africa that could change the African agricultural landscape. The article however warns that there are more recent global developments and some continental challenges that could prevent or slow agricultural growth. These include the global financial crisis, public sector investments, inequities in global agricultural development policies, rush for agricultural lands by foreign investors, domestic commercial financing markets, climate change, and emerging carbon markets. The article argues that while opportunities for accelerated growth exists for African agriculture, new sets of policy instruments will be needed to support smallholder farmers to access new agricultural technologies, finance, reduce impacts of climate change, and adopt sustainable land use practices that can allow them to benefit from emerging global carbon markets.     

COMPOSITE FORECASTING METHODS: AN APPLICATION TO SPANISH MAIZE PRICES

This paper investigates alternative forecasting methods when few observations are available. An illustration is provided by Spanish monthly maize prices after Spanish accession into the EC. Sophisticated multiple-equation models are difficult to specify in situations of limited data, and simpler models have to be considered. In this paper, several individual and composite forecasting methods are compared, based on 24 one-period-ahead forecasts generated from these models. Results based on different quantitative and qualitative measures show that composite forecasting methods are more accurate. In situations where severe multicollinearity exists, forecasting performance is improved by modelling this problem explicitly.     

AIDS,Economic Growth and the Epidemic Trap in Africa

Most studies find that AIDS has a relatively weak impact on economic growth because they assume that it affects only one flow variable and only in the short term (the flow of labour available and capable of working at a time t in the economy). But AIDS also has a long-term impact on stock variables that existing models do not take into account, specifically, on both human and physical capital. Integrating these two impacts in a growth model with multiple accumulation factors reverses the findings of standard impact evaluations. A fairly wide range of epidemic effects modifies the economy's long-term growth regime, creating what we might call an epidemic or regressive “trap”. Government action should be designed in view of this risk and should intervene preferentially in favour of human capital, through health and educational spending. Finally, this model changes the cost-efficiency calculations about expanding antiretroviral therapies to a large part of the working population and indicates that such treatment is substantially more cost-efficient than initially thought.     

Agricultural Marketing in Spain

The paper deals with the analysis of marketing in the Spanish agrofood sector. The methodology follows the industrial organization paradigm: structure, conduct and performance. It gives a first analysis of market environment, monetary fiscal policies, and consumer's demand. Market structure shows a dominance of minifundia at farmer and retail level. A concentration process is going on at wholesale and industrial level. Conduct and performance of agrofood marketing are being studied, with special attention to competitiveness and rice evolution. Finally some observations are made on marketing characteristics in some of the traditional food sectors.