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1.
Based on a random sample of 240 farm households in Chiang Mai province, Thailand, this study shows that—contrary to widespread belief—Karen farm households are well-integrated into markets. Average levels of market integration are 31% for gross farm output, 35% for variable inputs, 49% for food consumption, and 80% for net family income. By estimating a two-stage least squares (2SLS) regression model, this study finds that integration into output markets is positively associated with a diversification of land use away from rice monoculture, more intense contact with nearby urban centers, and a greater number of roads connecting the village to the outside world. Controlling for these factors, the distance to urban centers does not impede market integration; distant villages are equally well integrated into output markets. The study further finds that integration into output markets improves farm productivity and net per capita income. Concerns about market integration are discussed. Results have implications for Thai policy makers who have recently placed increasing emphasis on the concept of "sufficiency economy" in order to promote the well-being of rural people. 相似文献
2.
During the last three decades in sub‐Saharan Africa, development and research resources have concentrated on the higher‐rainfall and irrigated regions, especially on export crops and the principal food crops grown there. There has been much less concern and investment in semiarid regions without irrigation. Another negative factor has been the lack of public policy concern with the profitability of the basic food crops. With good weather, prices collapse. With bad weather, governments and NGOs dispense food crops as food aid or at subsidized prices. This article documents the importance of the demand side to facilitate diffusion of new technologies for the basic food commodities of semiarid regions—the traditional cereals. With farm programming models aggregated into a sector model, the combination of technological change and demand shifts for sorghum are evaluated in one semiarid region where the traditional cereals are concentrated. It focuses on combining policies to increase the prices farmers receive after introduction of technologies that use higher input levels. It also compares benefits of a strategy that focuses on yield and demand increases for a traditional cereal of the semiarid region, sorghum, with two alternative strategies for the higher‐rainfall zone. 相似文献
3.
Recently the managerial decision making process has been given new attention, both in theoretical studies as well as in empirical research explaining differences in farm results. However, while critical to explaining efficiency, managerial ability has been difficult to measure and therefore often ignored. This study attempts to measure managerial ability. It divides the decision making process into four steps: goal formulation, planning, monitoring and evaluation. The quality of each step is measured in a panel of 26 specialised flower producers, The impact of decision making on the firms' efficiencies is measured by means of a stochastic frontier production function. A one‐step procedure is used in which technical and decision making parameters are jointly estimated. The results show positive associations between firm efficiency and the quality of decision making (especially monitoring and firm evaluation), indicating that this procedure has been potentially successful and is a move towards successfully measuring a critical input. 相似文献
4.
C. C. de Lauwere 《Agricultural Economics》2005,33(2):229-238
It is thought that agricultural entrepreneurs have an important role to play in Dutch agriculture. They are currently being confronted with drastic changes and it is open to question whether or not they are willing and able to deal with such changes. A telephone survey was carried out in order to find an answer to this question. The data presented here are based on the answers from 752 farmers. The questions to be answered were: (1) Which strategies do agricultural entrepreneurs choose to keep up with business demands? (2) Which personal characteristics are related to these choices and to successful agricultural entrepreneurship in general? (3) Do agricultural entrepreneurs in the Netherlands meet the demands of “real” entrepreneurship according to economic theories? Agricultural entrepreneurship was conceptualized into the strategic orientations, social orientation, growth orientation, and financial conservatism. The data showed that five different types of farmers could be distinguished on the basis of their preferences for different strategic orientations. Social farmers had especially high scores for social orientation, traditional growers for growth orientation, prudent farmers for financial conservatism, new growers for both social orientation and growth orientation, and indecisive farmers for all strategic orientations. The latter group was eliminated from the data because farmers in this group had the highest scores for almost all items of the questionnaire, whether or not these concerned positive or negative aspects of entrepreneurship. Moreover, they gave contradictory answers to comparable questions. Based on future expectations and family income, it was concluded that social farmers and new growers were more successful than other farmers. According to economic theories, they also seemed to meet the “demands” of “real” entrepreneurship better than other farmers because they can be called “movers of the market,”“innovators,” and/or “discoverers of profit opportunities.” New growers and social farmers were also distinguishable from the other groups of farmers by their personal characteristics. In general, it could be concluded that positive personal characteristics (self‐criticism, leadership, creativity, perseverance, and initiative) affected agricultural entrepreneurship positively, and negative personal characteristics (love of ease and passivity) affected it negatively. 相似文献
5.
Abdourahmane Thiam Boris E. Bravo-Ureta Teodoro E. Rivas 《Agricultural Economics》2001,25(2-3):235-243
6.
Stages and determinants of fertilizer use in semiarid African agriculture: the Niger experience 总被引：2，自引：0，他引：2
Fertilization is a stepwise decision in Niger. Survey data from a representative sample of 100 households were utilized with individual and joint estimation to evaluate the determinants of fertilizer use at its three different stages: manure alone and two different types of inorganic fertilizer application. The fertilizer price relative to the millet price was always a highly significant determinant of fertilizer adoption. Farmers' experience in seeing the results of fertilization in the field was a principal factor influencing the use of manure and of the micro‐fertilization. Other studies in semiarid regions have emphasized risk, liquidity, or fertilizer responsiveness under harsh conditions but the shift to the micro doses of inorganic fertilizer was statistically associated here with the demonstration trials and the price ratios (fertilizer/millet). A variable reflecting the millet price recovery approximately 6 months after harvest was the most important factor in the decision to raise further inorganic fertilizer use with side dressing. Policy implications were focused on the importance of demonstration trials and improvements in the economic conditions (millet–fertilizer price ratios). 相似文献
7.
The relationship between technical efficiency and size might be affected by farm heterogeneity. We analyse this relationship conditional on a set of control variables. These control variables are chosen using a production model where technical efficiency is introduced as a parameter. As a result, technical efficiency affects both the input demand and the output supply of a profit maximising producer. The empirical application explores these issues using panel data of dairy farms in Spain. 相似文献
8.
Jon T. Biermacher B. Wade Brorsen Francis M. Epplin John B. Solie William R. Raun 《Agricultural Economics》2009,40(4):397-407
Plant-based precision nitrogen fertilizer application technologies have been developed as a way to predict and precisely meet nitrogen needs. Equipment necessary for precision application of nitrogen, based on sensing of growing wheat plants in late winter, is available commercially, but adoption has been slow. This article determines the expected profit from using a plant-sensing system to determine winter wheat nitrogen requirements. We find that plant-sensing systems have the potential to be more profitable than traditional nonprecise systems, but the existing system simulated was roughly breakeven with a traditional system. 相似文献
9.
10.
Ardian Harri John Michael Riley John D. Anderson Keith H. Coble † 《Agricultural Economics》2009,40(3):295-306
This research investigates optimal price risk management strategies for fed cattle producers engaged in grid pricing. Stochastic simulation is used to determine optimal hedge ratios for fed cattle priced on a live weight basis or on a series of grids that vary in terms of premium/discount structure as well as base price. Results indicate that the optimal hedging strategy is greatly affected by the base price used in a particular grid. This has significant implications for pricing efficiency in the cattle market. Base prices that are linked more closely with downstream markets offer the potential to improve pricing efficiency; however, the risk associated with these prices is difficult to manage effectively with existing futures instruments. 相似文献
11.
Tom Hertz 《Agricultural Economics》2009,40(2):161-176
This article documents a relationship between nonfarm income (primarily earnings and pensions) and agricultural investment in Bulgaria, specifically, expenditures on working capital (variable inputs such as feed, seed, and herbicides) and investment in livestock. Among those with positive spending on farm inputs, the estimated elasticity of these expenditures with respect to nonfarm income is 0.14. Nonfarm income also has an effect on the number of households that purchase farm animals, with an estimated elasticity of 0.35. The use of nonfarm income for farm investment is consistent with the presence of credit constraints, as is the fact that less than one percent of farmers report outstanding debts for agricultural purposes. Yet many farm households take out large unsecured loans for other purposes, primarily to cover consumption expenditures, implying that credit is available, but that farmers prefer not to use borrowed funds to finance agricultural investment. This would suggest that increases in the availability of agricultural credit may have little effect on farm outcomes, whereas increases in nondebt-financed sources of liquidity, such as subsidies or transfers, may better stimulate investment. 相似文献
12.
On June 2003 the final version of the Common Agricultural Policy Mid‐Term Review (CAP MTR) was published. The driving forces of this policy change include inter alia the compliance with World Trade Organization (WTO) negotiations' requirements, improvement of social support for agricultural policy, adjustment to budget constraints and adaptation of agricultural practices to environmental requirements. This article reviews how this policy performs in marginal areas regarding one of those objectives: the provision of environmental outputs related to agricultural activity. As an alternative to this reform, a policy based on agri‐environmental measures designed to maximize environmental outputs, is proposed. Both options are evaluated from a cost‐effectiveness point of view. Data from a farm survey and a positive mathematical programming model for a cereal steppes agro‐system in Spain are combined in order to simulate the effects of this reform and our alternative instrument on several environmental indicators. Results show that in marginal areas, where land abandonment is a clear threat, more environmental output can be achieved for the same cost, while maintaining, if not increasing, the levels of achievement for the other goals. 相似文献
13.
Persistent food shortage and poverty in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) are major development issues. New Rice for Africa (NERICA) was developed to boost crop yield and income of rural households in SSA. Although its high-yielding traits have become fairly well known, there is no empirical analysis of its impact on income and poverty. By taking the case of Uganda where a NERICA promoting program was initiated as one of the major poverty eradication measures, this study attempts to compare actual income with the hypothetical income without NERICA. We found that introduction of NERICA decreases poverty to a significant extent without deteriorating income distribution. 相似文献
14.
Land degradation poses a serious problem for the livelihoods of rural producers. Furthermore, there is rarely enough private investment taking place to commensurate the scale of the problem. This article examines the role of tenure insecurity, resource poverty, risk and time preferences, and community‐led land conservation on differentiated patterns of household investment in land conservation in northern Ethiopia. We control for biophysical, household characteristics, market access conditions, and village level factors. Investments in soil bunds and stone terraces are specifically studied so as to capture the link between these various factors and the durability of conservation investments. We introduce the distinction between the determinants of the decision to invest and how much to invest in conservation. Regression results show that publicly led conservation programs seem to significantly stimulate private investment. A host of plot‐level variables and household perceptions of returns on conservation investments, expressed in terms of perceived improvements in land quality and increased crop yields, were found to be critical to the decision to invest and intensify soil conservation. The evidence on the significance of households' attitudes toward risk aversion suggests the important role of risk and the household's risk‐bearing capacity in the decision to intensify conservation measures. At the same time, tenure security indicators and households' resource endowments (resource poverty) had weaker effects in increasing willingness to invest and the level of investment made. The policy implications of these results point to the importance of agricultural research and extension efforts that target technologies which reduce household risk and poverty while enabling sustainable investments in conservation measures by individual households. 相似文献
15.
One hundred and eighty farmers in the semiarid Makueni district, Kenya, were surveyed using a structured questionnaire. The objective was to assess factors that influence farmers' preference for alternative veterinary service providers following the liberalization of veterinary services. A proportional hazard model was fitted to the data because of its ability to accommodate simultaneously the attributes of both the chooser and the choice. Of the three service providers considered in the study, community‐based animal health workers were the most preferred followed by veterinary surgeons and animal health assistants. Farmers' age and education level were inversely but significantly related to the probability of choosing any of the three service providers. Distance to the preferred service provider was the main choice‐specific attribute with a significant impact on the choice probability. A high preference for community‐based animal health workers was noted suggesting the possibility of poorly trained animal health workers dominating the veterinary services market in remote areas of Kenya. Efforts geared toward the legalization of community‐based animal health workers in Kenya and elsewhere in the developing countries should first address the constraints that hinder the penetration of professional veterinary service providers in remote areas. 相似文献
16.
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. 相似文献
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. 相似文献
17.
This article attempts to integrate the production‐ and the efficiency‐based approaches for evaluating the impact of extension on farms' performance. For this purpose the nonneutral production frontier model is used, and the empirical analysis refers to a sample of farms from Crete, Greece. The empirical results support the proposed formulation instead of either the production‐ or the efficiency‐based formulations as extension was found to have a statistically significant effect on closing both the technology and management gaps. Public and private extension services were found to be competitive in the production function and complementary in the technical inefficiency effect function. In addition, farms using both public and private extension services achieved a higher degree of technical efficiency than those using either public or private extension services, and farms with no extension services were found to be the least efficient. 相似文献
18.
Martin Petrick 《Agricultural Economics》2005,33(2):191-203
Empirical analysis of rural credit market failure has been of key scientific and political interest in recent years. The aim of this article is to give an overview of the various methods for measuring credit rationing that are employed in the literature. Furthermore, the methods are subjected to a comparative evaluation of their specific strengths or shortcomings. Six approaches are distinguished: measurement of loan transaction costs, analysis of qualitative information collected in interviews, analysis of quantitative information collected in interviews using the credit limit concept, analysis of spill‐over effects with regard to secondary credit sources, econometric household modeling, and the econometric analysis of dynamic investment decisions. An explicit comparison with a first‐best solution is impossible in the first three approaches, since they essentially rely on a subjective assessment of borrowers' access to credit, based on qualitative or quantitative indicators. The fifth and sixth approaches allow a rigorous interpretation in the framework of neoclassical equilibrium theory. The fourth approach takes an intermediate position, since spill‐over on segmented loan markets reveals a willingness to pay with regard to the supposedly less expensive but rationed primary source. The approaches are fairly data demanding in general, usually requiring specific data on loan transactions. Even so, most approaches are applicable to cross‐sectional household data. With the exception of the first, all methods surveyed might plausibly be used to empirically detect credit rationing. 相似文献
19.
Many mechanized crop producers and agribusinesses are fascinated with precision agriculture technology, but adoption has lagged behind the expectations. Among the reasons for slow adoption of precision agriculture technology is that initial users focused excessively on in‐field benefits from variable‐rate fertilizer application using regional average fertilizer recommendations. This article illustrates how greater use of site‐specific crop response information can improve variable rate input application recommendations. Precision agriculture is spatial information technology applied to agriculture. The technologies include global position systems (GPS), geographic information systems (GIS), yield monitoring sensors, and computer controlled within‐field variable rate application (VRA) equipment. Experimentation with these technologies is occurring everywhere there is large scale mechanized agriculture. Commercial use has been greatest in the US, where 43% of farm retailers offered VRA services in 2001. Except for certain high‐value crops like sugar beet, farmer adoption of VRA has been modest. The farm level profitability of VRA continues to be questionable for bulk commodity crops. The theoretical model and illustration presented here suggest that VRA fertilization has not yet reached its profitability potential. Most VKA field trials to date have relied upon existing state‐wide or regional input rate recommendations. Unobserved soil characteristics can potentially interact with an input to make its effect on yield vary site‐specifically within fields. Failure to use site‐specific response functions for VRA applications may lead to a misallocation of inputs just as great as that which results from using uniform applications instead of VRA. Agricultural economists have a long history of estimating output response to input applications. Several have started to develop tools to estimate site‐specific responses from yield monitor and other precision agriculture data. Likewise, agricultural economists have developed an important body of research results on information value based on managing variability—typically in temporal settings. With these tools, a major potential exists to develop further benefits from precision agriculture technologies that permit truly spatially tailored input applications. 相似文献
20.
A double hurdle statistical analysis of 250 farms in the Tigray region of Ethiopia reveals different causal factors for soil conservation adoption versus intensity of use. Farmers' reasons for adopting soil conservation measures vary sharply between stone terraces and soil bunds. Long‐term investments in stone terraces were associated with secure land tenure, labour availability, proximity to the farmstead and learning opportunities via the existence of local food‐for‐work (FFW) projects. By contrast, short‐term investments in soil bunds were strongly linked to insecure land tenure and the absence of local food‐for‐work projects. Public conservation campaigns on private plots reduced adoption of both stone terraces and soil bunds. Whereas capacity factors largely influenced the adoption decision, expected returns carried more influence for the intensity of stone terrace adoption (measured as metres of terrace per hectare). More stone terracing was built where fertile but erodible silty soils in higher rainfall areas offered valuable yield benefits. Intensity of terracing was also greater in remote villages where limited off‐farm employment opportunities reduced construction costs. These results highlight the importance of the right kind of public interventions. Direct public involvement in constructing soil conservation structures on private lands appears to undermine incentives for private conservation investments. When done on public lands, however, public conservation activities may encourage private soil conservation by example. Secure land tenure rights clearly reinforce private incentives to make long‐term investments in soil conservation. 相似文献