Economic impacts of smallholder farmers’ adoption of drought-tolerant maize varieties

Drought and high temperatures are major threats to sustainable food production and consequently the livelihoods of the majority of Africans who depend on fragile agricultural systems. As a response to these threats, climate-smart agricultural technologies, such as drought-tolerant maize (DTM) varieties, have been developed and promoted on the continent. It is well-known that the adoption of improved technologies generally impacts positively on the wellbeing of adopters. Nevertheless, the magnitude of the impact of any technology or intervention is always an empirical question. Therefore, this study sought to determine the factors that influence the adoption of DTM and subsequently estimate how yield, commercialization intensity, and farm income are affected by adoption. To establish causation, we relied on observations from 200 farm households in the Northern Region of Ghana and estimated an instrumental variable regression. Consistent with findings reported in the literature, we found that DTM adoption is primarily driven by access to seed, extension service, labor availability, and location of farm households. In addition, we found that DTM adoption positively impacts on yield and commercialization intensity. The magnitude of impact is not trivial. For example, the yield of farm households increased by more than 150% (936 kg/ha) following DTM adoption. These results imply that policy-makers and development practitioners must support research and promotion of climate-smart agriculture to improve adoption and welfare indicators, such as yield and commercialization.     

Household responsibility system and China's agricultural Growth revisited: Addressing endogenous institutional change

The rise of the Household Responsibility System has been widely viewed as a significant contribution to China's agricultural growth. However, this empirical conclusion is rested upon a convenient but doubtful presumption that the process of institutional change, also known as decollectivization, is exogenous. We contribute to this literature by explicitly recognizing the endogeneity of institutional changes, and exploit exogenous variations in lagged weather shocks and initial fixed assets for consistent estimation. With improved data on irrigation, mechanization, weather and institutional changes in a provincial panel data during 1970–1987, the results of panel instrumental estimations reveal that the Household Responsibility System had a significantly positive effect on China's agricultural growth, which was larger than indicated by OLS estimates that suffer from adverse selection and attenuation biases.     

苏北地区农业完全成本水价农户承受力调查——基于水源地生态补偿的视角

南水北调东线一期工程江苏段的主要目标是向苏北供水,缓解该地区的农业用水短缺问题。但现行农业水价未考虑水源区的机会成本损失,不利于调动水源区环境保护积极性。论文设计单边界CVM引导技术,估算了苏北农户以提高农业水价的方式对水源区生态补偿的支付意愿。研究发现,苏北农户生态补偿支付意愿为7.63元/亩,但在不同作物种植结构和不同城市存在较大异质性。未来3年内,苏北农业用水每年所提供的生态补偿资金总额在1.526~1.679亿元之间。在发达地区探索构建绿色导向的农业水价体系有利于为其他地区提供先行示范效应。     

中国农业竞争力提升视域下的小农户发展

目前我国农业发展面临一个急需破解的重大悖论：如何在发展小农户的基础上提升中国农业竞争力。论文提出中国特色农业竞争力具有三重内涵：以生产竞争力为基本要求，以安全竞争力为战略底线，以市场竞争力为主攻方向。小农户发展对于提升中国农业竞争力有重要作用，这体现于小农户发展有助于提升农业生产竞争力、安全竞争力和市场竞争力并推动提升机制之间联动。因此，提升中国农业竞争力必须促进小农户发展，并且小农户发展有提升农业竞争力的可能性，但当前小农户发展受到内外条件的约束。据此，本文提出以下政策建议：完善政府支持、发挥小农户主体作用、发展和推广农业科技和物质装备以及将小农户融入产业链。     

Impacts of Australia’s free trade agreements on trade in agricultural products: an aggregative and disaggregative analysis

The importance of free trade agreements (FTAs) has been increasing as such agreements help reduce barriers to trade. This paper estimates the agricultural trade creation and export diversion effects of Australia’s free trade agreements (FTAs) at the aggregate and disaggregate levels, using the Poisson pseudo‐maximum‐likelihood (PPML) estimator. It includes 24 of Australia’s major trading partner countries comprising FTA and non‐FTA members and covers 22 years from 1996 to 2017. The heteroscedasticity robust regression error specification test (RESET) confirms the relevance of PPML over the Ordinary Least Square (OLS) estimator. Results showed that China–Australia, Korea–Australia, Australia–USA and Japan–Australia have larger trade creation effects in the agricultural sector. At the commodity level, variation in trade creation effects is estimated from the different trade agreements. Among the selected commodities, the larger effects were generated in trade in sugar and wine by the implementation of the majority of the trade agreements. Overall, the trade creation was greater than the export diversion of the FTAs. The findings of the study have implications for Australia’s future trade agreements.     

RETURNS TO DEBT AND EQUITY IN FARM PRODUCER ORGANIZATIONS

While the capital structure irrelevance proposition is the point of departure in corporate finance, it is unknown if debt‐or‐equity decisions matter to farm producer organizations. To inform decisions of capital acquisition, a panel study is conducted to estimate the relationships of different types of debt (current, long‐term) and equity (allocated, unallocated) to the financial performance of 707 farm producer organizations in the United States during the 2005–2011 period. Using 3,120 observations, the panel analysis indicates net sales in period t is increased by $1.97, $9.59, and $4.01 with an addition of $1 in current debt, allocated equity, or unallocated equity in period t_‐1. Furthermore, the magnitude of the positive relationship of an additional dollar of allocated (unallocated) equity to net income is estimated at $0.32 ($0.14). We thus reject the notion managers and directors of farm producer organizations should decide to use debt or equity with a coin toss.     

Does the Decoupling Reform Affect Agricultural Employment in Sweden? Evidence from an Exogenous Change

This study uses aggregated municipality data, for the years 2001–2009, to explore whether direct payments to farmers affect agricultural employment in Swedish municipalities. The decoupling reform in 2005 included a new grassland support payment accompanied by management obligations that had unexpectedly high redistributive consequences as it greatly increased common agricultural policy payments to municipalities with large areas of grassland. In some municipalities, total payments more than doubled. Thus, since the reform seems exogenous to the behaviour of farmers and the regional economy, the reform can be used to identify a subsidy effect. We find that a permanent increase in agricultural employment can be attributed to the new grassland support. Our results indicate that the grassland support generates an additional job at a cost of SEK 250,000, relative to the average agricultural wage of SEK 333,000. However, the subsidy effect is largely keeping jobs in agriculture, i.e. the grassland support may be slowing down the process of structural change in grassland regions.     

农业剩余转化与动态发展牵扯:以工补农新机制解析

"以工补农"不能单纯地从同情"三农"态度出发研究"单向的以工补农",而应从深入剖析工业化过程中的工业和农业互动关系出发,积极探索"双向的以工补农"机制。从工业化过程中工农互动机制中寻找到一个"以工补农"机制的新视角,通过构建基于工业化的"农业剩余转化"模型,重点分析工业化过程中的农业剩余转化和农业深化发展动态关系的"以工补农"机制。在工业化过程中,要根据工农关系不同阶段的特征,采取不同的工农互动关系调节方法,即不同的"以工补农"策略,促进工业和农业互动协调发展。     

我国农业发展中的金融支持

农业作为国民经济的基础,必须要有持续发展的能力,而这种持续发展必须有强有力的金融支持。我国农业发展只有对风险规避、资金及金融服务提供各种可能的金融支持方式,才能促使我国农业通过走产业化发展道路实现由传统农业向现代农业的转变。     

河北省实施农产品品牌营销的对策分析

进入二十一世纪,我国农业发展进入一个新阶段,面临新的形势。河北省虽然地理环境优越,农产品资源丰富,但目前普遍存在着品牌观念不强、总体质量不高、安全水平较差、农业生产规模小、科学技术水平低和成本高等问题。尤其是我国加入WTO后,农产品国内市场国际化程度加强,市场竞争日趋残酷,发达国家设置了由严格的质量标准,检验检疫标准和认证制度等构成的绿色壁垒。这些问题直接成为影响河北省农产品国内国际竞争力进一步提高的关键性制约因素,必然对河北省农产品的生产和经营提出了更高、更严的要求。打造农业品牌,发挥品牌效应,重点培育具有国际竞争力的农业产区和优势农产品,是我们积极应对入世挑战、增强国内、国际市场竞争力和提高自身效益的重要途径,也是河北省农业发展到新阶段,在新形势下实现更高层次快速发展的必然选择。