The complex dynamics of smallholder technology adoption: the case of SRI in Madagascar

This article explores the dynamics of smallholder technology adoption, with particular reference to a high‐yielding, low external input rice production method in Madagascar. We present a simple model of technology adoption by farm households in an environment of incomplete financial and land markets. We then use a probit model and symmetrically censored least squares estimation of a dynamic tobit model to analyze the decisions to adopt, expand, and disadopt the method. We find that seasonal liquidity constraints discourage adoption by poorer farmers. Learning effects—both from extension agents and from other farmers—exert significant influence over adoption decisions.     

Estimating the economic cost of weeds in Australian annual winter crops

An analysis of the annual costs of weeds in seven winter crops across Australia demonstrated that the most important 15 weed species cause substantial annual costs in both financial and economic terms. Using survey data captured over the 1998–1999 growing season, the financial cost of these weeds in seven crops was estimated to be AU$1,182 million. The main components of this cost were herbicides (AU$571 million), the competitive effects of residual weeds (AU$380 million), and tillage (AU$206 million) while weed contamination of grain was a minor cost (AU$25 million). Across all regions, the most economically important weeds were annual ryegrass, wild oats, and wild radish, although there were regional differences in importance. An economic surplus analysis determined the annual economic cost of weeds in annual winter crops to be AU$1,279 million. This surplus loss represented 17% of the gross value of Australian grain and oilseed production in 1998–1999. Australian grain producers incurred a major loss, with a reduction in producer surplus of AU$1,047 million. Australian grain consumers had a large consumer surplus loss (AU$229 million), while international consumers suffered a small loss and international grain producers gained a small producer surplus from the higher grain prices.     

Shadow wages, allocative inefficiency, and labor supply in smallholder agriculture

This article introduces a method for estimating structural labor supply models in the presence of unobservable wages and deviations of households' marginal revenue product of self‐employed labor from their shadow wage. This method is therefore robust to a wide range of assumptions about labor allocation decisions in the presence of uncertainty, market frictions, locational preferences, etc. We illustrate the method using data from rice producers in Côte d'Ivoire. These data, like previous studies, reveal significant systematic differences between shadow wages and the marginal revenue product of family farm labor. We demonstrate how one can exploit systematic deviations, in the present case related to household characteristics such as the land/labor endowment ratio, to control for both unobservable wages and prospective allocative inefficiency in labor allocation in structural household labor supply estimation.     

Factors explaining the diffusion of hybrid maize in Latin America and the Caribbean region

If future demand for maize in Latin America and the Caribbean region (LAC) is to be met from local sources, domestic production must continue to increase. Because further expansion in the area planted to maize is precluded by the limited availability of arable land, future increases in production will have to rely heavily on the spread of productivity‐enhancing hybrid technology. Until now, the diffusion of hybrid maize in LAC has been quite variable. Using data from 18 countries, we investigate factors affecting the hybrid maize diffusion rate. Our findings validate conventional profitability‐based explanations of producer adoption behavior, but they also confirm the importance of supply‐side factors, thereby providing empirical support for the life cycle theory of seed industry development. We conclude that if policy makers in LAC are to accelerate the diffusion of hybrid maize, they will have to ensure an environment in which it is not only profitable for producers to adopt improved germplasm, but also profitable for the seed industry to produce and sell high‐quality seed.     

Land titling policy and soil conservation in the northern uplands of Vietnam

In Vietnam, a quasi-private property regime has been established in 1993 with the issuance of exchangeable and mortgageable long-term land use right certificates. Using primary qualitative and quantitative data collected in a mountainous district of Northern Vietnam, this paper investigates the role of the land policy in the adoption of soil conservation technologies by farmers. This issue is of crucial importance in the region where population growth and growing market demands have induced farmers to intensify agricultural production. While poverty has been reduced, environmental problems such as soil erosion, landslides, and declining soil fertility have become more severe over the past years. Our findings suggest that despite farmers’ awareness of erosion, soil conservation technologies are perceived as being economically unattractive; therefore, most upland farmers continue to practice the prevailing erosion-prone cultivation system. Focusing on agroforestry as one major soil conservation option, we estimate household and plot-level econometric models to empirically assess the determinants of adoption. We find that the possession of a formal land title positively influences adoption, but that the threat of land reallocations in villages discourages adoption by creating uncertainty and tenure insecurity. The analyses reveal that these two effects interact with each other but are of small magnitude. We conclude that the issuance of land titles is a necessary but not sufficient prerequisite to encouraging the adoption of soil conservation practices. However, current practices remain economically unattractive to farmers. This deficiency needs to be addressed by interdisciplinary research and complemented by strong efforts by local authorities to promote sustainable land use.     

Yield quality and irrigation with saline water under environmental limitations: the case of processing tomatoes in California

Irrigation with saline water has a positive impact on some quality indices of processing tomatoes, but with concomitant reductions in output quantity. This article studies the impact of the trade‐off between these two factors on optimal water management under waterlogging and costly drainage‐disposal conditions. The focus is on the content of total soluble solids as a quality measure affecting prices paid by California processors to tomato growers. A function relating quality to water and salinity applications and a quality hedonic‐price function are estimated and introduced into a static, field‐level mathematical programming model. The model calculates optimal water management under environmental regulations associated with drainage disposal in California. Findings indicate that only when the quality effect is taken into account does blending fresh surface‐water with saline drain‐water become an optimal strategy. Management and policy implications on the regional scale are discussed.     

Investment in soil conservation in northern Ethiopia: the role of land tenure security and public programs

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.     

The long-term impacts of orphanhood on education attainment and land inheritance among adults in rural Kenya

Although the long-term economic impacts of the AIDS epidemic on orphans have been major concerns, few studies have investigated the impacts of orphan status into adulthood. Therefore, this article examines the education attainment and land inheritance of former orphans, who have lost at least one parent before reaching the age of 15 years, by using household surveys in Kenya. We find about a one-year lower educational attainment among former maternal orphans compared with former nonorphans among adults who started schooling before the Free Primary Education program introduced in 1974 but not among adults who started schooling after 1974. On inherited land, we find no significant difference between households headed by former orphans and nonorphans, after controlling for land owned by parents, numbers of brothers and sisters, and birth order among brothers.     

Structural adjustment and soil degradation in Tanzania A CGE model approach with endogenous soil productivity

In this paper, a model of the nitrogen cycle in the soil is incorporated in a Computable General Equilibrium (CGE) model of the Tanzanian economy, thus establishing a two‐way link between the environment and the economy. For a given level of natural soil productivity, profit‐maximising farmers choose input levels – and hence production volumes – which in turn influence soil productivity in the following years through the recycling of nitrogen from the residues of roots and stover and the degree of erosion. The model is used to simulate the effects of typical structural adjustment policies like a reduction in agro‐chemicals’ subsidies, reduced implicit export tax rate etc. After 10 years, the result of a joint implementation is a 9% higher Gross Domestic Product (GDP) level compared to the baseline scenario. The effect of soil degradation is found to represent a reduction in the GDP level of more than 5% for the same time period.     

The conditions of collective action for local commons management: the case of irrigation in the Philippines

We examine factors affecting the success and failure of collective action toward the management of local commons. Using cross‐section survey data on the activities of irrigators' associations in the Philippines, regression analysis is conducted to identify factors underlying the success and failure in farmers' organizing collective action for the maintenance and operation of irrigation systems. We find that collective action is difficult to organize where (a) water supply is uniformly abundant; (b) water supply is greatly different between upper and lower streams in lateral; (c) the size of the association is large; (d) population density is low; (e) the share of nonfarm households is high; and (f) the history of irrigated farming is short. Our findings suggest that these difficulties can be overcome with adequate supports of state agencies to promote community‐level cooperation.     

Modeling differentiated quality standards in the agri-food sector: the case of meat trade in the enlarged EU

Quality standards play an increasingly important role in international agri-food trade, and their functioning as nontariff barriers to trade is widely discussed. We argue that food quality standards imposed by importing countries are more than just border measures and can have profound effects on the market structure of the exporting industry, thereby significantly influencing the supply response. We develop a stylized oligopoly model that accounts for compliance costs (fixed and variable) and investigate alternative policy options to explore different mechanisms an importing county may use to enhance the quality of its imports. The model explicitly recognizes the coexistence of complying and noncomplying firms, which is a situation often found in low-income countries where a small modern export-oriented segment invests in meeting foreign quality standards. We use the adjustment of the Polish meat sector to the tight EU food quality standards as an empirical example. The simulations show that a subsidy scheme can promote compliance with standards and can contribute to an upgrade of the industry in the exporting country, but its marginal effectiveness is diminishing.     

Rural nonfarm employment and farming: household-level linkages

This article introduces the articles in Agricultural Economics , vol. 40 no. 2 (March 2009). First, we introduce their objectives in a brief review of existing literature on developing country trends in rural income diversification, in particular rural nonfarm employment (RNFE) and its impact on farm technology choice in crops and livestock, and thus on agricultural modernization and diversification. Then we preview the key points of the articles, which use distinctive primary datasets from Albania, Bulgaria, China, India, Mexico, Nigeria, the Philippines, Senegal, and Vietnam to document the impacts of RNFE and their implications for farm technology and farm activity.     

Bringing automated,remote‐sensed,machine learning methods to monitoring crop landscapes at scale

This article provides an overview of how recent advances in machine learning and the availability of data from earth observing satellites can dramatically improve our ability to automatically map croplands over long periods and over large regions. It discusses three applications in the domain of crop monitoring where machine learning (ML) approaches are beginning to show great promise. For each application, it highlights machine learning challenges, proposed approaches, and recent results. The article concludes with discussion of major challenges that need to be addressed before ML approaches will reach their full potential for this problem of great societal relevance.     

Estimating returns to soil conservation adoption in the northern Ethiopian highlands

Land degradation in the form of soil erosion and nutrient depletion presents a threat to food security and sustainability of agricultural production in many developing countries. Governments and development agencies have invested substantial resources to promote soil conservation practices as part of an effort to improve environmental conditions and reduce poverty. However, limited rigorous empirical work has been done on the economics of soil conservation technology adoption. This article investigates the impact of stone bunds on value of crop production per hectare in low and high rainfall areas of the Ethiopian highlands using cross-sectional data from more than 900 households, with multiple plots per household. We have used modified random effects models, stochastic dominance analysis (SDA), and matching methods to ensure robustness. The parametric regression and SDA estimates are based on matched observations obtained from the nearest neighbor matching using propensity score estimates. This is important, because conventional regression and SDA estimates are obtained without ensuring that there actually exist comparable conserved and nonconserved plots on the distribution of covariates. We use matching methods, random effects, and Mundlak's approach to control selection and endogeneity bias that may arise due to correlation of unobserved heterogeneity and observed explanatory variables.
We find that the three methods tell a consistent story. Plots with stone bunds are more productive than those without such technologies in semi-arid areas but not in higher rainfall areas, apparently because the moisture conserving benefits of this technology are more beneficial in drier areas. This implies that the performance of stone bunds varies by agro-ecology type, suggesting the need for designing and implementing appropriate site-specific technologies.     

The impact of soil conservation and output diversification on farm income in Central American hillside farming

This article analyzes the determinants of farm income among hillside farmers participating in natural resource management projects in El Salvador and Honduras. The farm income function was evaluated using a system of equations in which income is determined simultaneously by the farmer's decision to adopt soil conservation technologies and by the level of diversification (number of agricultural activities) on the farm. The database used comes from surveys administered to 678 beneficiaries of these projects during 2002. The econometric results suggest that all the variables related directly to land use (i.e., output diversification, soil conservation practices and structures, and the adoption of forestry systems) have a positive and statistically significant association with farm income. Also, farmers who own land enjoy higher farm incomes than those who do not. The results indicate that when investing in natural resource management projects, governments and multilateral development agencies should pay close attention to output diversification, land tenure, and human capital formation as effective instruments in increasing farm income.     

Agricultural growth and poverty in an archetypical middle income country: Chile 1987–2003

Is a reduced share of agriculture in the economy an obstacle for the agricultural sector to play an important role in poverty alleviation? What is the key channel, if any, by which agriculture is benefiting the poor in Chile that would be worthwhile to promote in other countries? By answering these questions we expand the literature on poverty and composition of growth by proposing a methodology that allows to disentangle the mechanisms by which agricultural growth can be poverty reducing. We find that in Chile agriculture plays a large role in reducing poverty, and most of this effect is channeled through the labor market.     

灌溉管道造价函数研究

确定某个地区的灌溉管道的造价函数,需要收集当地单位长度灌溉管道的工程造价资料,但目前造价资料收集较为困难,且有些管道灌溉工程建设年代较早,其造价已不能反映目前的价格水平。针对以上问题,引入市场材料造价信息、工程预算定额等内容计算各种管径管道的工程单价,再经过统计分析得出灌溉管道造价函数。     

Economic implications of alternative mill mud management options in the Australian sugar industry

Sugar mills produce a range of byproducts during the process of extracting sugar from cane. Mill mud is one of the byproducts produced in significant volume. The practice of spreading mill mud onto cane fields close by the mill has been the primary means of disposing of mill mud for many years. The continued application of mill mud at high rates, without appropriate recognition of its nutrient content, the soil condition, crop nutrient requirements, slope of the land, or proximity of application sites to environmentally sensitive areas has raised a number of concerns in recent years, including overfertilization, heavy‐metal contamination, leaching, and offsite impacts from drainage to waterways. This study develops a regional mathematical programming model to determine optimal rates of mill mud application for various soil types and distances from the mill in the Mackay region in central Queensland, Australia. The optimal application rate of mill mud varies according to soil type and by distance from the mill. Lower rates of mill mud application are economically desirable at greater distances from the mill. However, when the cost of mill mud application is shared between growers and the mill operator, the optimal application rates are reduced at some locations while increasing at others.