Gender and agricultural productivity: implications of the Farm Input Subsidy Program in Malawi

Alleviating gender differences in agricultural productivity is vital for poverty reduction. While numerous studies suggest that gender differences in agricultural productivity are a result of female farmers having limited access to resources, few studies investigate the role of agricultural interventions in alleviating the constraints to input use and subsequently the gender gap in productivity. This study investigates whether there are gendered gains in agricultural productivity from participating in an input subsidy program and if these gains help reduce the gender gap. Using nationally representative data that is disaggregated at the plot level, this study analyzes the large‐scale voucher‐based Farm Input Subsidy Program in Malawi. Focusing on the total value of output per hectare, relationships are identified using weighted estimators, where the weights are constructed from propensity scores, and spatial fixed effects, to address the unobservable factors that may confound the relationship between program participation and productivity. The findings suggest that participation in the program improves agricultural productivity for both male and female farmers but it does not provide disproportionate help to female famers to overcome gender disparities in agricultural productivity. This suggests that female farmers face additional constraints to productivity apart from nonlabor input use.     

Industrial relations reform in Australia: implications for the agricultural and mining sectors

A major transformation in the processes that underpin industrial relations arrangements in Australia appears to have occurred during the last decade. The tribunal-based systems of conciliation and arbitration that have shaped labour-management relationships now play a far less pivotal role, and the system of awards is far less central to the determination of wages and conditions. Greater scope now exists for employees and employers to tailor their industrial relationship to the needs of the enterprise. This article provides an overview of the development of both collective and non-collective bargaining within the formal framework, and the likely impacts of such developments.     

Economy-wide reform and agricultural recovery: Observations of economic Darwinism among transition economies

The fitness of an economy and its prospects for continued prosperity will be measured and determined by its robustness and its ability to adapt to changing circumstances. Some countries in transition are adapting much more easily than others to rapid changes in the orientation of their economy, the common objective of which is to achieve economic growth through the adoption of a range of characteristics generally associated with a market economy. Economic growth does not have to be very fast, but it must be efficient and sustainable. Policy adjustments must address political economy concerns, while seeking to achieve macroeconomic equilibrium and price stabilization, competitiveness, efficiency and flexibility, and the protection of the living standards of the most vulnerable population The process of agricultural sector reform will be determined both by economy-wide policies and sector-specific policies. This paper first outlines a taxonomy of the objectives of agricultural sector reform, and then discusses the way in which indirect price interventions (specifically exchange rate and interest rate policies, expansive fiscal policies and industrial protection policies), influence agricultural growth. Lessons of experience drawn from the UNDP/World Bank Trade Expansion Program structural and sectoral adjustment operations in Poland, and the cases of New Zealand and Chile are employed to illustrate not only the constraints that countries face in this regard, but also in identifying targets for further action. The third section presents what is called the architecture of incentives for agriculture'. In defining a strategy of agricultural sector reform, experience has shown that a structure of incentives can be developed that creates an environment ripe for agricultural growth-incentives relating, for example, to taxation, prices, foreign investment, privatization and demonopolization, decentralization and institutional reform. Special considerations that will require additional attention by policy-makers outside of this structure include the maintenance of GATT-legal principles in trade policies, issues relating to tariffication (including concerns about price risk management, food supply, and the role of food aid), input and credit subsidies as a means to correct for market failures, and the role of regional trading blocks in world trade.     

Implications of the US Farm Bill of 2002 for agricultural trade and trade negotiations

The US Farm Bill of 2002 is the latest in a 7-decade history of farm subsidy laws that transfer funds to farmers and regulate and subsidize production of selected commodities. Fruit, tree nut, ornamental and vegetable crops, hay and meats remain outside scope of main subsidy programs. The new law continues many innovations of the 1996 Act, such as removal of authority for annual land idling and crop price floors accompanied by government stockholding. Government payments remain the primary focus of commodity programs. The total amount of these payments are likely to remain similar to the amount paid in the period 1999–2001, but with some changes in the form of the programs. For example, allowing owners to update acreage and yield payment bases creates additional incentives for farmers to link current planting decisions to anticipated farm subsidies. Similarly, the new program that ties "counter-cyclical" payments to the price of a specific crop also has production stimulus. A new program, estimated to add about 5–10 per cent to marginal milk revenue for smaller farms, makes 'deficiency' payments to dairy farms when milk prices are low. Despite the new programs with added links to stimulating production, new USA programs stimulate production only marginally more than the subsidies of the 1999–2001 period, which were replaced. Furthermore, the USA has flexibility to avoid explicitly violating its WTO commitments. Nonetheless, this US Farm Bill of 2002 has curtailed the previous trends toward lower farm subsidies and smaller production stimuli, and the negative publicity surrounding it has made negotiating reductions of farm trade distortions more difficult.     

Differentiated products and supply controls in the analysis of agricultural policy reform: the case of tobacco

With a multi-market model of the U.S. tobacco and cigarette industries, we analyze the impact of a reduction in the assistance to U.S. tobacco producers by relaxing production quotas with nonbinding price support and by lowering tariffs on tobacco imports. The results show the importance of incorporating differentiated product and supply control assumptions into agricultural policy analysis.     

Trade and agricultural development in the 1980s and the challenges for the 1990s: Latin America

Trends in agricultural trade for South and Central America are documented and the reform process is discussed. Performance of the agricultural sector of the region is evaluated. Challenges for policy makers are reviewed, ranging from macroeconomic policy to science and technology.     

U.S. Farm Policy and the Volatility of Commodity Prices and Farm Revenues

A dynamic three-commodity rational-expectations storage model is used to compare the impact of the Federal Agricultural Improvement and Reform (FAIR) Act of 1996 with a free-market policy, and with pre-FAIR policies. Results suggest that FAIR did not lead to significant increases in long-run price volatility or revenue volatility. The main impact of pre-FAIR, relative to the free-market regime, was to substitute government storage for private storage in a way that did little to support prices or to stabilize farm incomes. Results also indicate that U.S. grain market volatility in 1995–2000 was due to fundamental market forces and not to FAIR.     

Urban inequality,youth and social policy in Latin America: introduction to special section

This special section discusses some of the challenges of inequality in the Latin American urban context and its consequences for the lives of young people. The four papers provide an in-depth analysis, from different methodological and disciplinary perspectives, of the interaction between social policy and multiple dimensions of inequality in Mexico, Argentina and Nicaragua. Each seeks to shed some light on the ways social policy operates at the micro- and meso-level to reduce (or fail to reduce) socio-economic inequality and promote human development for young people. This introduction provides a short overview of macro trends on social policy and inequality in Latin America. It raises some questions and discusses challenges regarding their ‘trickling down’ in the lives of the young who live at the urban margins.     

江苏省国有农口企业改革与发展

为加快国有农口企业发展,江苏省财政厅、农林厅及省委农工部、省政府办公厅、政策研究室、计经委、人事厅、劳动厅、社科院及农口主管厅局等13个部门对江苏省国有农口企业及场圃改革与发展进行了专题调查。现将调查报告摘要发表。他们的调查充分,材料翔实,一些做法与思考对发展农村经济不无借鉴。     

四川省农业水价综合改革的分析与思考

四川省推进农业水价综合改革以来,取得了一定成效。结合试点县实际情况,介绍在产权制度建设、工程设施配套、初始水权确定、水价形成机制、精准补贴和节水奖励机制建立等方面的改革现状,总结相关经验,分析存在的主要问题,提出相关建议,为推动西南地区农业水价综合改革提供一定的借鉴。     

农业供水改革的问题分析与途径研究

简述我国农业水资源利用的低效率,分析了我国农业用水管理中存在的问题,提出设计节水激励机制、改善水利工程管理、完善有利于农业产业化的相应对策。     

农业水价改革的理论分析与路径选择

基于当前我国农业水价综合改革面临两难困境,从理论上分析农业灌溉供水的商品属性和公共物品特性,在此基础上,提出推进农业水价综合改革的"3+1"模式,即建立科学的水价形成机制、合理的水价管控机制、动态的水价调整机制和创新有利于推进农业水价改革的边界条件。     

Research returns redux: a meta-analysis of the returns to agricultural R&D

A total of 289 studies of returns to agricultural R&D were compiled and these provide 1821 estimates of rates of return. After removing statistical outliers and incomplete observations, across the remaining 1128 observations the estimated annual rates of return averaged 65 per cent overall — 80 per cent for research only, 80 per cent for extension only, and 47 per cent for research and extension combined. These averages reveal little meaningful information from a large body of literature, which provides rate-of-return estimates that are often not directly comparable. This study was aimed at trying to account for the differences. Several features of the methods used by research evaluators matter, in particular assumptions about lag lengths and the nature of the research-induced supply shift.     

"What we need is a crop ecologist": ecology and agricultural science in Progressive-era America

Though they are often seen as foils for each other, ecology and agricultural science co-evolved. With shared roots in late nineteenth-century botany, ecologists and agronomists fostered important connections during the Progressive era that have been largely overlooked despite a number of finely nuanced studies of ecology's origins. But if 'applied ecology' once effectively meant agriculture, over the course of the first decades of the twentieth century the relationship between ecology and scientific agriculture grew strained. Agriculturists narrowed their focus to increasing yields, and ecologists sought to establish their discipline as a distant theoretical science and so distanced themselves from its agricultural applications. By the end of World War I, the process of disciplinary specialization was well underway. In time, the two disciplines diverged so completely that the once vital connections between them were obscured and forgotten.     

Financing agricultural R&D in rich countries: what's happening and why

Governments everywhere are trimming their support for agricultural R&D, giving greater scrutiny to the support that they do provide, and reforming the public agencies that fund, oversee, and carry out the research. This represents a break from previous patterns, which had consisted of expansion in the public funds for agricultural R&D. Private-sector spending on agricultural research has slowed along with the growth of public spending in recent years, but the balance continues to shift towards the private sector. This article presents a quantitative review of these funding trends and the considerable institutional changes that have accompanied them. We discuss new data for 22 OECD countries, providing institutional details for five of these countries, and conclude with an assessment of policy developments.     

从可持续发展系统观视角看我国农业补贴政策改革

农业可持续发展是一个由经济、社会与生态3个可持续发展子系统相互耦合而成的复合系统,政府适当的调控手段,有利于这一系统的动态平衡,但不适当的政府调控会破坏原有的平衡,从而使农业发展变得不可持续。因此,应建立农业补贴政策的法律体系、预算体制和管理机制,增加绿箱补贴总量,改革绿箱补贴结构,充分利用黄箱政策空间,调整黄箱政策支出方向,实现农业可持续发展的目标。