The Amenity and Disamenity Impacts of Agriculture: Estimates from a Hedonic Pricing Model

The positive and negative externalities from farmland are increasingly a focus of public policy discussion about agriculture and land use. A GIS-based hedonic pricing model shows that agricultural open space increases nearby residential property values, but larger-scale animal operations and mushroom production have negative impacts. Animal production facilities with as few as 200 animal equivalent units reduce nearby property values, but larger facilities do not necessarily generate larger impacts. Because they tend to occur together, the negative impacts of animal agriculture and the positive impacts of open space must be simultaneously modeled to avoid omitted variable bias.     

Participatory trials and farmers' social realities: understanding the adoption of legume technologies in a Malawian farmer community

This article presents results from a study exploring the reasons for low adoption of legume technologies to improve soil fertility by farmers from a community in central Malawi who took part in participatory trials. This study explores the influence of gender roles in agriculture and land ownership and socio-economic differentiation in the community. Because most women do not own land and are traditionally responsible for legume crops, they have little interest in managing soil fertility for maize crops. Men are not interested in using legumes in maize-cropping systems. Some are too poor: this group needs to complement their subsistence maize production with paid labour on the farms of better-off farmers; restricting the labour availability for their own farming activities. Wealthier farmers have access to, and prefer to use chemical fertilizer and cattle manure. Take-up rates among the middle group of farmers were also low. This study discusses how these (and other) factors influence the (non-)adoption of maize-legume technologies in Malawi and the effectiveness of participatory research. It emphasizes how differentiated farmer-realities affect the uptake of technologies identified as promising in participatory field evaluations.     

Labour Migration and Gendered Agricultural Relations: The Feminization of Agriculture in the Ejidal Sector of Calakmul,Mexico

We examine the nature of the ‘feminization of agriculture’ in the semi‐subsistence, peasant production sector of southeastern Mexico, as associated with male labour out‐migration. Presenting findings from empirical work with smallholder producers, we discuss the impact of men's migration to the United States on women's participation in agriculture and gendered relations of agricultural production. In 2007, we conducted a survey of 155 semi‐subsistence, smallholder households in six ejidos. This survey was supplemented by ethnographic research in a single ejido. Our findings demonstrate the need to distinguish between farm labour and management in this sector, and the potentially significant (but focused) changes in the local relations of agricultural production wrought by gendered patterns of labour migration – specifically in tenure, land‐use decision‐making and the management of hired labour.     

Agricultural technology and land use futures: The UK case

This paper explores how agricultural technology has interacted with recent land use in the UK and how it might do so in the next 50 years. From 1960 to 1985, farmers successfully used technology to increase the output of crop and animal products per unit of land and particularly of labour. This reduced the number of people employed in agriculture, and promoted larger and more specialised farm enterprises. Between 1985 and 2006, food prices were relatively low, and although labour productivity continued to increase, land productivity remained relatively static. However during this period, farmers started to address the effects of agriculture on reduced water quality and habitat loss.For established agricultural products, technological innovation tends to have an incremental effect, working through genetic improvement, the removal of abiotic and biotic stress (e.g. crop nutrition and protection, irrigation and drainage, and animal nutrition, health and housing) and the substitution of labour. Whereas the first two processes tend to be scale-neutral, the substitution of labour is usually easiest to achieve on larger farms. Other key areas for technological innovation include addressing air, soil and water quality, biodiversity, waste reduction, and information management. Over the next 50 years, large step-changes in land use arising from agricultural technology are predicted to arise from the development of new markets for agricultural products. A strong bioenergy sector will strengthen the links between crop commodity and energy prices and will have a major effect on future land use. Climate change and the regulation of greenhouse gas emissions will alter the relative profitability of crop and animal production systems. Lastly, increased public awareness of the links between food, health and the environment could substantially shift the demand for specific agricultural products.Continual improvements in agricultural technology are pivotal to providing society with the flexibility to balance the challenges of improving human well-being with the management of the planet's ecosystem. Increased technological innovation increases the probability that agricultural land can be used for other purposes, but the exact relationship is dependent on trade and environmental policies. The large external effects of agriculture mean that decisions regarding the adoption of future technologies should be taken by farmers working with other stakeholders.     

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.     

Strategies to increase agricultural productivity and reduce land degradation: evidence from Uganda

This paper estimates a structural econometric model of household decisions regarding income strategies, participation in programs and organisations, crop choices, land management, and labour use, and their implications for agricultural production and soil erosion; based upon a survey of over 450 households and their farm plots in Uganda. Many factors have context-specific impacts and involve trade-offs between increasing production and reducing land degradation. Government agricultural extension and training programs contribute to higher value of crop production in the lowlands, but to soil erosion in the highlands. By contrast, non-governmental organization (NGO) programs focusing on agriculture and environment help to reduce erosion, but have less favourable impacts on production in the lowlands. Education increases household incomes, but also reduces crop production in the lowlands. Poverty has mixed impacts on agricultural production, depending on the nature of poverty: smaller farms obtain higher crop production per hectare, while households with fewer livestock have lower crop production. Population pressure contributes to agricultural intensification, but also to erosion in the densely populated highlands. Several household income strategies contribute to increased value of crop production, without significant impacts on soil erosion. We find little evidence of impact of access to markets, roads and credit, land tenure or title on agricultural intensification and crop production and land degradation. In general, the results imply that the strategies to increase agricultural production and reduce land degradation must be location-specific, and that there are few 'win-win' opportunities to simultaneously increase production and reduce land degradation.     

Planning for Agricultural Change and Economic Transformation in Tanzania?

Recently, Tanzania witnessed a revival of economic planning that explicitly aimed to combine rapid economic growth with accelerated structural transformation of the economy. To achieve these planning targets would require a relatively modest drop in the share of agriculture in GDP, but a dramatic fall in its share in employment by 2025. Tanzanian planners assume that labour is locked in agriculture because agricultural productivity is low, from which they conclude that, to release labour to fuel the expansion of manufacturing, it is imperative to raise agricultural productivity by appropriate land policies, leveraging private investment and developing public–private partnerships. We argue that, analytically, this planning argument leaves out the possibility that causality may run the other way – from high labour retention in agriculture to low agricultural productivity – and that, empirically, the observed patterns inherent in actual processes of economic transformation in Tanzania do not tally well with the assumptions of planners. More specifically, in so far as labour flows out of agriculture, it flows towards informal‐sector activities, both rural and urban, rather than towards formal manufacturing.     

Productivity of Agricultural Labour and Land: An International Comparison

This paper examines partial agricultural land and labour productivity in 1975 and 1980, for different world regions. The results suggest that land and labour productivity are higher in developed countries relative to developing countries. However, agricultural labour productivity differences are more marked than those for agricultural land productivity. The productivity values for 1975 and 1980 indicate a widening of productivity differences, more so in the case of agricultural labour than land. The paper also proposes an alternative approach to estimating agricultural land and labour productivity. This approach, which regresses agricultural labour productivity on a given level of agricultural land productivity, suggests a narrowing of agricultural land productivity differences, relative to the initial approach, across Africa, Asia and Europe during the 1975-1980 period. A brief discussion of the agricultural development policy implications of the results concludes the paper.     

农地流转与化肥减量——来自农地流转政策的准自然实验

目的 推动化肥减量是实现农业可持续发展、绿色发展的必然要求,而农地流转的发展为推动化肥减量提供了新的思路。方法 文章基于2005—2020年中国省级面板数据,运用连续型DID模型、中介模型等考察农地流转政策对化肥减量作用、作用机制以及异质性作用。结果 （1）基准模型估计结果表明,农地流转政策对化肥减量具有显著的促进作用,即农地流转能够促进化肥减量。（2）作用机制分析表明,农地流转政策可以通过调整种植结构和扩大经营规模的渠道对化肥减量起促进作用。（3）异质性分析表明,在自然地理区位维度,农地流转政策对东部和西部地区带来的化肥减量作用更为明显;在粮食生产功能区维度,农地流转政策对非粮食主产区带来的化肥减量作用更为明显;在化肥用量分布维度,对于化肥用量位于0.9分位点的省份,农地流转政策实施带来的化肥减量作用相对较弱。结论 应继续有序推进农地流转,提高农地流转比例;应遏制农地流转“非粮化”,促进农业适度规模经营;应结合各区域经济社会发展,因地制宜的探索农地流转模式。     

THE VALUE OF AGRICULTURAL LAND

Ricardo's discovery that the rents of agricultural lands arise essentially out of the differences between them can be restated by saying that the rent of land should depend on its marginal product. In come countries the Ricardian situation persists; where agricultural labour has “nowhere else to go” rents rise as a function of rural population density. The paper reviews the measures of marginal product which have been made using three methods of estimation: the production function (Cobb Douglas): estimates made by precise linear programming; and estimates of the “residual” income to land. The production function technique has been applied in countries at all stages of development ranging from African hand hoe agriculture to Australia and Belgium, and for a range of farm sizes. There are fewer examples of measures made by the other two methods; they are more suitable for use in advanced economics.     

LABOUR INPUT DECISIONS OF SUBSISTENCE FARM HOUSEHOLDS IN SOUTHERN MALAWI

The objective of the paper is the presentation of a farm-household model which allows an analysis of labour input decisions of rural households in an environment with risky agricultural technologies and off-farm employment opportunities. Labour input decisions are condensed into a stochastic linear programming framework, and applied to a typical rural household in Southern Malawi. Weak adoption of yield-increasing technologies is explained by different opportunity costs of time of family members and by the risky nature of income generated using traditional or yield-increasing agricultural technologies. The view that land-saving innovations will increase agricultural production is revised. Special extension programmes for family members with low off-farm employment opportunities are proposed to increase the adoption of those technologies. These programmes have the purpose of reducing anticipated subjective income deviations for yield-increasing innovations.     

Who is affected: Influence of agricultural land on occupational choices of peasants in China

The effect of agricultural land on labour allocation between agricultural and non-agricultural sectors has profound policy implications for industrialization and urbanization. Using micro data from a nationally representative survey in China, this study attempts to examine how agricultural land affects rural people’s propensity to leave the farming sector and who is affected. We find that generally, land decreases the probability of taking a non-farming job and has a lock-in effect on rural labour. More interestingly, this effect exists among the middle-aged people (36–55 years old) and not among young people. A mechanism analysis shows that income from agricultural production explains part but not all of the land lock-in effect. Heterogeneity analyses from the perspectives of individual risk preference and village-level planting structure show that the land lock-in effect broadly exists. Finally, we use the IV method to address the potential endogeneity problem, and the main results are verified. We believe that the heterogeneity of the land lock-in effect between different age cohorts has important policy implications.     

Preserving and destroying soils, transforming landscapes: Soils and land-use changes in the Vallès County (Catalunya, Spain) 1853–2004

In this paper we analyse the relations between land characteristics and land use, and their evolution in the Vallès county (Catalunya) since 1850. We reconstructed in digital format the 1850s cadastral maps of three villages (Caldes, Castellar, and Polinyà) and those made in 1950 of five villages (the previous three plus Sentmenat and Palau-Solità). For 1999 we used the available cadastral and land-use maps and conducted field surveys. We evaluated the suitability of land for the various agricultural uses (winter cereal, alfalfa, vineyard, olive, and almond orchards) considering the different land-use systems of 1850 and 1999. Forty to sixty percent of the land was more or less suitable for each of the land uses. Whilst in 1850 land used for agriculture was 46% of the total area and 29% was used for forest, these figures turned to 28% and 53%, respectively, by 1999. Urban and industrial areas now occupy 13% of the total land area and 47% of the best agricultural land. In 1850, 34% of the vineyards and 23% of the area with cereal crops were located on non-suitable or poorly suitable land for these uses. This shows a much more strict criterion for the location of cereal fields. But it also shows how the land-owning class tried to prevent further social conflicts by leasing their least suitable land for agriculture to the landless classes. In 1850 in the village of Caldes, 85% of the cereal fields were on slopes less than 20%, but 30% of the vineyards were on slopes of more than 30%, and sometimes up to 60–70%. Slopes protected with stone terraces occupied 700 ha, 43% of the land in agriculture in 1850, and 80% of that area was used for vineyards. Building of these terraces, which were generally small, required some 120,000 work days, and was undertaken on relatively soft geological materials while they disappear on the transition to competent geological materials. These results show that land characteristics influence land-use decision making and historical landscape changes. However, the extension of agriculture to non-suitable land in 1850 reflects deeper social conflicts, and required a vast labour investment in soil conservation by the poorest rural classes. The importance of terraces within this landscape and the land-use alternatives are also discussed.     

Tidal river management for sustainable agriculture in the Ganges-Brahmaputra delta: Implication for land use policy

The tidal river management (TRM) approach is an indigenous management practice in the Southwest part of the Ganges-Brahmaputra delta in Bangladesh. This approach has a high potential for extending area under agriculture with a positive impact on sustainable production and consequently on sustainable land use planning. Until recently, no studies provide a quantitative assessment on agricultural benefits of TRM operation. In this study, we aim to assess the benefits of TRM operation by using innovative approaches such as comparing land use change, agricultural production and economic cost-benefit analysis for two scenarios (with and without TRM) in the Hari-Teka-Bhadra catchment. We found that the financial benefit of TRM operation was 85.5 million US dollar per year from the agriculture sector. The results are useful for promoting land use policy through TRM approach in achieving greater sustainability in the area.     

Free in the mountains or home in the vineyard: Institutional changes in agriculture and negotiating between contract farm labour and valuable fungi collection in Tibet

This paper evaluates how Tibetan farming communities choose between two methods of livelihood production: working as labourers on vineyard land they have leased to a French winery or collecting valuable fungi. I argue new transnational land and labour management, as part of institutional rearrangements in land tenure, are leading to significant changes with mixed benefits for rural farming communities. These communities respond by seasonally seeking freedom from capitalist labour and returning to communal forms of income production based around community land tenure and common‐pool resources. Although villagers have become contracted labour, they choose to escape this new agricultural work in the mountains, collecting fungi together as a community. The common‐pool land on which fungi are collected is also managed for access in a specific way by and for the community. Contrary to agricultural labour for the winery, fungi collection creates a chance for people to interact once again more as a cohesive community as they once did in their fields by collecting a commodity from land controlled by the community. The disembedding of one section of the economy has thus in a way reinforced the embeddedness of social relations in another as a coping mechanism for the former.     

How crop insurance influences agrochemical input use: Evidence from cotton farmers in China

Crop insurance is critical in risk management in global agricultural production (e.g. by helping stabilise farmers' incomes in the long term and reducing risk-bearing costs). In this paper, using field survey data on cotton farmers in Xinjiang, China, we examine the influence of crop insurance on farmers' behaviours regarding agrochemical inputs and aim to investigate the synergy between crop insurance and reductions in fertiliser and pesticide usage. We find evidence that crop insurance significantly negatively affects farmers' use of fertilisers and pesticides, as well as significantly positively affects their adoption of green agricultural technologies (GAT) that can replace or complement traditional fertilisers and pesticides. Moreover, our results reveal that compared with small-scale farmers, crop insurance has a stronger effect on large-scale farmers' use of agrochemicals. Finally, when the insured amount is higher or the relative deductible is lower, farmers are more likely to reduce fertiliser and pesticide usage and adopt GAT. Overall, this paper scientifically identifies crop insurance can improve farmers' agrochemical input behaviour, by reducing farmers' use of traditional agrochemical inputs and increasing their adoption of GAT, which is of great significance for ensuring the safety of the agricultural ecological environment.     

Adoption of agricultural land management technologies by smallholder farmers in the Jos Plateau,Nigeria

Against a background of growing concern about the adverse effects of agricultural land degradation due to accelerated soil erosion, nutrient depletion and high population pressure, farmers in the Jos Plateau, Nigeria have adopted biological and structural land management practices, though the degree of adoption of such practices varies from one farm household to another. This study, based on a survey of 150 farm households, employed a stepwise multiple linear regression model to analyse the factors significantly influencing the adoption of land management technologies. The results of the analysis revealed four variables, namely, extension service, agricultural labour force, accelerated soil erosion and out-migration, explaining nearly 90% of the variation in the range of land management technologies adopted. The first three of these variables have positive influences on adoption. Extension service appeared to be the strongest, impacting on skills in the agricultural labour force. Policy recommendations are made in line with the findings of the analysis.     

Contribution to a renewed framework for analysing the interactions between family and capitalist agriculture

We examine whether current assumptions concerning the declining resilience of family farming and the growing influence of capitalist forms of agricultural production are being confirmed in the cocoa sector of Cameroon and the coffee sector of Kenya. This study is based on surveys of 181 family and capitalist farmers. Our results indicate that the capitalist approach is being consolidated on former colonial coffee estates in Kenya and on the cocoa pioneer front in Cameroon. This study also shows that in areas with a long history of family farming, family forms are showing good resilience due to a diversification of activities and sources of income, especially nonagricultural ones, and the patrimonialization of the land. Finally, this study proposes a framework for analysing the interactions between family and capitalist agriculture and their respective multisectorial strategies. For family farming, these strategies are based on work force mobility, whereas for capitalist agriculture, they are based on financial capital mobility.     

不同地貌类型农户农业投入质量特征——基于安徽省农户的实证调查

农户作为农业生产投入的微观主体,其农业投入行为对农业和农村经济发展影响重大。以安徽省平原地区和丘陵山区23个县(市、区)的353个农户抽样调查数据,构建农户投入质量模型,分析不同地貌类型的农户农业投入质量。结果表明:①平原地区农户土地投入质量、资本投入质量优于丘陵山区,而劳动力投入质量劣于丘陵山区;②土地投入质量低可能是丘陵山区农户资本投资收益低的原因之一,增加农业基础设施投人是使农业摆脱困境的根本途径;③劳动力投入表现出兼业化、劣质化,应鼓励耕地有序流转,扩大农户耕地经营规模,使耕地集中到种粮专业户手中;④农户农业投入主要是流动资本,固定资本投入较少,农药、化肥投入一直处于上升趋势,其施用已经进入"进退维谷"中。     

基于AHP的山东省农业适度规模效益测度

[目的]通过总结山东省农业适度规模经营模式及其实施区域分布概况,并研究其产生的经济、社会和生态效益,以期为山东省农业适度规模经营的可持续发展提供借鉴。[方法]文章采用层次分析法(AHP),构建山东省农业适度规模经营效益指标评价体系,并确定指标权重。然后根据农业规模经营从业者和当地农民根据实际情况对各指标的评分值与权重值加权计算各区域的经营效益指数并分析。[结果]鲁南和半岛地区的农业适度规模经营效益明显好于其他4个区域;农业适度规模经营所带来的经济效益要远大于社会效益和生态效益,尤其是农业土地利用率和农业产出值的增加较为明显,农民人均纯收入也得到较大提高。[结论]山东省农业适度规模经营模式多样化发展,规模经营效益区域差异明显,鲁南和半岛地区的效益最好。农业适度规模经营经济效益较为突出,显著提高了农业土地利用率和产出值。农业适度规模经营是一种在新形势下可以有效改变传统农业发展模式并能带来巨大经济效益的农业发展新模式,值得在更大的区域推广和实施。