Mechanization in Ghana: Emerging demand,and the search for alternative supply models

Influential studies in the 1980s and early 1990s drew on the Boserup–Ruthenberg theories of farming systems evolution to argue that African countries were not yet ready for widespread agricultural mechanization. Through applying the theories of farming systems evolution and of induced innovation in technical change, this paper shows that demand for certain mechanized farming operations particularly plowing has emerged even among smallholders, suggesting that supply issues may now be the main constraint to successful mechanization. We therefore adopt a supply chain approach to analyze two types of mechanization practices in Ghana, i.e., a recent state-led mechanization program and the private sector-led service hiring market, against an international perspective by drawing on three Asian supply models. We identify two major flaws in existing policies. First, the agricultural mechanization service centers that the government promotes fail to use tractors services with sufficient intensity. Second, direct importation of agricultural machinery by the government inhibits imports of appropriate and affordable machinery. In contrast, the development of mechanized service hiring market in which medium and large scale farmers who are tractor owners provide hiring-out services to small-scale farmers represents a promising model for sustainable mechanization in Ghana. This private sector-led second model is consistent with international experiences.     

Too small to be beautiful? The farm size and productivity relationship in Bangladesh

This paper examines the agricultural productivity-farm size relationship in the context of Bangladesh. Features of Bangladesh’s agriculture help overcome several limitations in testing the inverse farm-size productivity relationship in other developing country settings. A Stochastic Production Frontier (SPF) model is applied using data from three rounds of a household panel survey to simultaneously estimate the production frontier and the technical inefficiency functions. The ‘correlated random effects’ approach is used to control for unobserved heterogeneous household effects. Methodologically, the results suggest that SPF models that ignore the inefficiency function are likely mis-specified, and may result in misleading conclusions on the farm size-productivity relationship. Empirically, the findings confirm that the farm size and productivity relationship is negative, but with the inverse relationship diminishing over time. Total factor productivity growth, driven by technical change, is found to have been robust across the sample. Across farm size groups, the relatively larger farmers experienced faster technical change, which helped them to catch up and narrow the productivity gap with the smaller farmers.     

Linking agricultural development to school feeding in sub-Saharan Africa: Theoretical perspectives

This paper takes as a starting point the proposition that social protection interventions involving food can be used to promote transformational change in family farming systems in sub-Saharan Africa. The purpose is to highlight the complexity of pathways to agricultural transformation associated with the seemingly simple idea of home-grown school feeding (HGSF), an idea that is increasingly held up as “win–win”. By reviewing the HGSF literature and the main theories underpinning it – structured demand, localism, family farmer development – we expose areas of inconsistency across the literature and programmes as well as possible tensions that may arise in attempting to pursue both market and social objectives in the same initiative. The arguments presented herein aim to provide a basis for moving towards clarity on (1) a theory of change for HGSF programmes; (2) the conditions under which HGSF programmes are more able to yield positive agricultural development outcomes and; (3) an agenda for moving forward on research and impact evaluation. This research agenda also speaks more broadly to important under-researched areas within the general social protection and agricultural development discourse.     

Incentive policy in Chinese collective agriculture

The author explains the provisions of China's agricultural incentive policy for rural collectives and details its mechanisms of taxes and fiscal incentives, price policies, subsidies, loans and technical assistance. The role of this policy in agricultural development and the issues of motivation and mobilization in collective agriculture are discussed, as well as certain technical and operational difficulties Chinese planners have encountered.     

Compounding food and income insecurity in Yemen: Challenges from climate change

This paper provides a model-based assessment of local and global climate change impacts for the case of Yemen, focusing on agricultural production, household incomes and food security. Global climate change is mainly transmitted through rising world food prices. Our simulation results suggest that climate change induced price increases for food will raise agricultural GDP while decreasing real household incomes and food security. Rural non-farm households are hit hardest as they tend to be net food consumers with high food budget shares, but farm households also experience real income losses given that many of them are net buyers of food. The impacts of local climate change are less clear given the ambiguous predictions of global climate models (GCMs) with respect to future rainfall patterns in Yemen. Local climate change impacts manifest itself in long term yield changes, which differ between two alternative climate scenarios considered. Under the MIR scenario, agricultural GDP is somewhat higher than with perfect mitigation and rural incomes rise due to higher yields and lower prices for sorghum and millet. Under the CSI scenario, positive and negative yield changes cancel each other out. As a result, agricultural GDP and household incomes hardly change compared to perfect mitigation.     

基于三阶段DEA-Malmquist方法的中国共享制造高质量发展效率测度研究

共享制造是优化制造资源配置的新业态新模式,是制造业高质量转型升级的有效途径。本文基于新发展理念,构建共享共赢的中国共享制造企业高质量发展效率指标体系,利用2018~2020年我国39家共享制造企业的面板数据并通过三阶段DEA-Malmquist指数模型对我国共享制造高质量发展效率进行动态测度。研究结果表明,2018~2020年我国共享制造企业高质量发展综合技术效率均值分别为0.897、0.919、0.883,纯技术效率均值分别为0.979、0.975、0.983,规模效率均值分别为:0.916、0.942、0.898;2018~2020年我国共享制造企业高质量发展全要素生产率变化指数上升0.4%,技术效率变化指数下降1.3%,技术进步变化指数上升1.8%,纯技术效率变化指数上升0.2%,规模效率变化指数下降1.5%。2018~2019年我国共享制造高质量发展效率呈上升趋势,2020年有所下降,规模效率对我国共享制造高质量发展效率制约明显。基于此,从技术创新和规模调整两方面,提出促进中国共享制造高质量发展的若干对策。     

新疆兵团团场农业经营体制改革的探究

我国现阶段正处于由传统农业向现代农业转变的重要时期,而转变的首要条件是农业经营模式的变革,即分散的家庭经营的传统方式转变为注重效率的集约化、专业化、市场化与规模化的现代农业的经营方式。以团场企业承包制下的个体农户的经营模式难以适应现代兵团农业发展的需求,呈现的问题如下:团场农产品竞争力已适应不了国际市场所带来的冲击,阻碍了农业向规模化、商品化、专业化转化的进程,更加满足不了带领团场职工致富的需求。鉴于诸多的问题,兵团农业经营制度的改革已迫在眉睫。     

Human factors in agricultural management in East Africa

Many attempts to introduce change into farming systems have resulted in dependence, alienation, resource immobility and the suppression of indigenous adaptation techniques. Dr Mbithi evaluates the social and management environment of farm decision making and shows how this has lead to other serious social and psychological problems. His suggestions for a possible reorientation in rural development strategies include a re-examination of farm management and production models formerly dominated by agricultural economists, a revision of the concept of technology and a total rejection of the ‘trickle-down effect theory’.     

A robust methodology for setting tariffs

Pricing new or existing services is a challenge in the current state of the communications industry, with new industrial structures, fast technical change and varying degrees of competition and regulation. Basically the industry is newly immature, with few good models for, and little data on, the behaviour of consumers or competitors. In this paper we describe the development of a robust methodology for the determination of prices, able to cater for some of the sources of uncertainty in the real world, such as market behaviour. By robust, we mean the ability to re-use the basic model with relatively little change if, for example, the underlying sub-model of consumer behaviour is changed from cost minimising to risk averse, or the basis of pricing is changed from value to cost.     

农业经营组织演化的经济学解释

对农业经营组织演化的经济学机理进行了系统梳理和分析。研究表明：农业生产特性使得公司化和集体化模式面临高监督和组织协调成本,中国农村土地安排的社会保障功能,使得农业家庭经营具有一定的合理性。然而,农业家庭经营本身难以克服农业资本和技术服务约束、市场准入困难和市场风险威胁,农业经营正在经历一个组织化的过程。“公司＋农户”在克服市场进入障碍和降低市场风险的同时,面临着由于合同不完全性、不公平性和机会主义导致的合约不稳定窘境;农户合作社通过农户之间的合作,能够克服农户资本和技术服务农业生产约束,通过组织化农户与企业签定合约,提升了契约稳定性,但传统的农户合作存在“搭便车”等内在缺陷,限制了服务的规模,必须进行内部制度创新,向新一代合作社演化。农业经营的外部环境和内在技术变化,必然会引起农业组织本身的变化,农业经营组织演化的经济因素和演化方向,是值得进一步关注的问题。     

Technical change in Latin American agriculture: A conceptual framework for its interpretation

The authors present a critical analysis of the ideas dominating current discussions on technological development in Latin America, and introduce a methodological framework of their own. Their perspective views technology as a social phenomenon, and incorporates social conflicts and the role of the state as variables in an analysis of technical change in agriculture.     

Cerrado meets savannah,family farmers meet peasants: The political economy of Brazil’s agricultural cooperation with Mozambique

Brazil’s development cooperation policy with sub-Saharan Africa has intensified since the end of the 2000s, with Mozambique being the country’s largest partner. This South–South Cooperation enterprise has shown intentions to share elements drawn from previous experiences of programmes implemented in Brazil, particularly in the rural sector. However, Brazilian agricultural policy is notorious for its dualistic structure, and dominant political strategy has been marked by the accommodation of two different – occasionally contradictory – agricultural policy agendas, reflecting how current political forces are organized. This article demonstrates how such a dualistic structure shapes Brazil’s technical cooperation with Mozambique, pointing out that it is still unclear how far rural development perspectives rooted in the particularities of Brazilian agrarian dynamics would be useful for projects implemented in different rural contexts. We argue that, since Mozambican agricultural plans primarily emphasize a perspective that focuses on market-oriented agricultural modernization, a potential reform of the current cooperation policy toward more inclusive agenda, focused on family farming, faces political economy constraints. We conclude that the appropriation of a foreign project relies on the political economy dynamics of related contexts and power relations of involved stakeholders, an area that could deserve further attention from researchers investigating Brazil–Mozambique relations.     

Recommendations arising from an analysis of changes to the Australian agricultural research,development and extension system

The business of agricultural research, development and extension (RD&E) has undergone considerable change in Australia since the late 1980s, moving from a domain largely dominated by government departments to a situation of multiple actors, and where rural industries now directly contribute funds towards RD&E efforts. However, the transition has not been without impacts on the overall agricultural RD&E agri-food capacity of the nation, and there are now indications of reduced capacity and slowing productivity gains in certain sectors. If not addressed, there is the risk that the future resilience of industries could be threatened, affecting parts of the Australian economy and compromising Australian contributions to global food supply on export markets and a slowing of agricultural innovation. There are also comparable divestment trends and the loss of capacity and risks to future resilience of agricultural systems in other developed nations. Importantly, research and extension are discussed as interdependent partner disciplines, and that the separation of the two has deleterious effects on capacity and resilience building. The authors investigate, through six case study institutions, organisational innovations that may provide direction towards the future restructuring of agricultural RD&E effort in Australia. These insights have application to both the Australian and the international reader, warning about the consequences of reduced investment in agricultural RD&E, and learning about how research and extension can transition from traditional public sector models to systems that have greater flexibility and, importantly, ownership by the industries themselves.     

Introduction to understanding agricultural development and change: Learning from Vietnam

Agriculture is the backbone of most developing economies and structural transformation an important vehicle for economic development in low-income agrarian contexts. This special issue brings together a set of high quality academic studies to answer key research questions of importance to understanding agricultural development and change in developing country settings. Using the case of Vietnam, this collection provides comprehensive analytical contributions, that rely on detailed microdata, to understand crucial topics within the fields of agricultural and development economics. Together, these studies provide important insights into the mechanisms underlying structural transformation and its consequences that can contribute to the design of policies to manage the structural transformation process effectively, particularly for the most vulnerable groups in society.     

Land rights,gender equality and household food security: Exploring the conceptual links in the case of India

This paper seeks to critically examine the conceptual linkages between the issue of land rights for women, with household food security on the one hand and gender equality on the other. After a brief analysis of shifts in both international and national policy discourse and practice in terms of control over land as vital for food security, it seeks to analyse the implications of this for gender relations. The paper argues that in a context of diversified rural livelihoods, the contribution of agricultural production to household subsistence has been declining. This trend has been reinforced by a decline in public investment, stagnant growth and fluctuating prices for agricultural products. Men have been able to access the better paid, non-farm jobs, while leaving women behind to manage agricultural production. The renewed link between production and food security in agricultural policy has however meant allowing men not to have responsibility for household food security. While a right to land for women is a positive development, it appears also to be leading to an enhancement of work burdens, without much change in terms of status or decision-making authority.     

Agricultural technologies for climate change in developing countries: Policy options for innovation and technology diffusion

Climate has obvious direct effects on agricultural production. The reverse is more apparent than ever as greenhouse gas emissions from agriculture are tallied. The development and effective diffusion of new agricultural practices and technologies will largely shape how and how well farmers mitigate and adapt to climate change. This adaptation and mitigation potential is nowhere more pronounced than in developing countries where agricultural productivity remains low; poverty, vulnerability and food insecurity remain high; and the direct effects of climate change are expected to be especially harsh. Creating the necessary agricultural technologies and harnessing them to enable developing countries to adapt their agricultural systems to changing climate will require innovations in policy and institutions as well. Potential constraints to innovation involve both the private and public sectors in both developing and developed countries. The process of transferring agricultural innovations across agroecological and climatic zones is often subject to agronomic constraints. Often, the most binding constraints occur at the adoption stage, with several factors that potentially impede poor farmers’ access to and use of new technologies. Based on discussions of these constraints, we derive six policy principles and use these principles to suggest several specific investments and policy priorities.     

Entry into Nascent Industries: Disentangling a Firm's Capability Portfolio at the Time of Investment Versus Market Entry

Research summary : This article examines the capability antecedents of firm entry into nascent industries. Because a firm's technological investments in nascent industries typically occur before market entry, this study makes a distinction between firm capabilities at the time of market entry and at the time of initial investment. At the time of market entry, core technical capabilities and complementary assets influence the likelihood of entry. However, at the time of investment, a firm's integrative capabilities as well as the initial stocks of related technical capabilities and complementary assets become critical, as they enable endogenous development of core technical capabilities and complementary assets by the time of entry. The empirical sample consists of firms involved in field experiments in agricultural biotechnology during the period 1980–2010. Managerial summary : New product commercialization in a nascent industry typically requires access to not only core technologies of the focal industry, but also supporting commercialization assets. However, firms may not possess these critical capabilities when they first invest in the industry. Instead, empirical evidence from the context of agricultural biotechnology shows that at the time of first investment, a firm's integrative capabilities partly explain their likelihood of entry. Integrative capabilities encompass a set of practices that enable effective coordination and communication, and in turn put firms in an advantageous position to develop the needed capabilities by the time of entry. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The effect of decoupling on the decision to produce: An Irish case study

This paper assesses the impact of decoupling on farming in Ireland. The decision to engage in production post decoupling is simulated using profit maximising multi-period linear programming models. The number of farmers that would financially benefit from disengaging from production is projected. The results of the economic models suggest that significant restructuring is likely to occur at the farm level as a result of decoupling. Projections of farmers’ production decisions post decoupling are compared and contrasted to the results of a survey of farmers’ production intentions. The comparison shows that despite the significant changes in profitability that decoupling could engender, the majority of farmers intend to continue as before and are unlikely to change their production patterns. The survey of farmers’ intentions indicates that a large number of farmers still seem to consider the decoupled payment linked to production. The implications of these results for land use, agricultural production and farm numbers are discussed.     

Are China’s regional agricultural productivities converging: How and why?

This article tests the hypotheses of convergence to a single level of total factor productivity (TFP), and a steady state of TFP growth rate in China’s agricultural sector. Based on multilateral TFP estimates we found that China’s agricultural sector has rebounded in recent years from a slower TFP growth in the 2005–2007 period. While convergence test results confirm a “catch-up” effect that provinces with lower TFP levels tend to grow faster than others, estimated rates of β convergence are conditional on how we capture the heterogeneity effect across regions. The rates of β convergence range from 0.016 to 0.039 under different model specifications. Estimates show that higher growth rates of educational attainment, R&D, and intermediate goods density (per unit of labor) can enhance TFP growth. Unfortunately, there is no evidence of an overall σ convergence, indicating that TFP levels are not converging except in the South region. It implies that to catch up with leading provinces, it would require extra efforts for those lagging behind by increasing their region-specific research investment, promoting rural educational attainment, and enhancing embodied technical change.     

Child dietary quality in rural Nepal: Effectiveness of a community-level development intervention

Nutrition-sensitive agricultural interventions have the potential to improve child dietary quality in rural households, as evidenced by a growing body of work which concurrently measures agricultural and nutrition indicators. Our objective was to investigate whether children in rural farming communities of Nepal participating in a community-level, nutrition-sensitive development intervention had improved dietary quality compared with children living in non-participating matched rural communities. Six rural communities of Nepal where livelihoods were predominantly agricultural were selected to participate in the phased implementation of a community-level development intervention by Heifer International. Households and children in each community were surveyed at baseline, and follow-up surveys were implemented every six months for twenty-four months. Detailed data on food consumption for children older than 6 months of age were collected using a 24 h recall for 17 foods and food groups; parents responded for children. A difference-in-differences model with household fixed-effects and an analysis of covariance model were used to analyze the resulting panel data. Results indicated that the impacts of the intervention varied by agro-ecological region and by season. In the Hills region, which is poorer on average and more conducive to livestock production, children who had received the intervention for two years were 2.2 times as likely to have consumed food from an additional food group, 1.27 times as likely to have achieved minimum dietary diversity and 1.38 times as likely to have consumed animal source foods as children who received the intervention for only one year. In the Terai region, which is more conducive to crop production, there was no significant change in dietary quality attributable to the intervention. These results provide evidence that particularly vulnerable families can take advantage of community-level development activities. Given that the effects of community-level development activities were disparate across communities within the same country, we conclude that tailoring development activities for particular locations is necessary for success.