日本政府新世纪的农业策略与启示

新世纪伊始，日本政府出台了一系列承前启后的农业策略，主要体现在农业保护、农业立法、粮食安全、比较优势、有机农业和饮食结构等方面，鉴于中日两囤三农领域较多的相似之处，这些策略对当前我国政府发展农业、改造农村、扶助农民等极富有启示意义，     

信息不对称在农业保险中的表现极其防范

信息不对称严重阻碍了农业保险的健康发展，建议通过建立克服农业保险中信息不对称的有效体系，以促进我国农业保险的健康发展。     

Optimal pest control in agriculture

Based on economic methodology we model an ecosystem with two species in predator–prey relationship: mice feed on grain and grain feeds on a resource. With optimizing behavior of individual organisms a short-run ecosystem equilibrium is defined and characterized that depends on the farmer's use of fertilizer and pesticide and on the mice population which, in turn, is affected by pesticides. In that way, a microfounded agricultural production function is derived. Linking a sequence of short-run ecosystem equilibria yields the growth function of the mice population which is thus derived rather than assumed. In each period the farmer harvests all grain in excess of some given amount of seed. If she maximizes her present-value profits, optimal farming is characterized by either using no pesticide or a moderate amount of pesticide or by applying a chattering control. Pest eradication is never optimal. On the other hand, if the farmer takes into account steady-state mice populations only, it may be optimal to eradicate mice or to use no or a moderate amount of pesticide depending on prices as well as on the shape of the grain production function which is determined by microparameters of grain reproduction.     

失衡与重构:新农村建设中的组织问题

农村的困境在于受土地生产力产出递减规律的支配,小农生产方式潜力的逐渐枯竭,而缺乏组织的参与又难于顺利使之转向到以价值为特征的社会化、集团化的大生产。新农村建设的提出,无疑为农村发展提供了一种全新的战略设想,要使这一设想能够有效解决农村发展和转型所面临的一系列的难题,需要我们对农村的组织问题进行必要的梳理。只有把农民组织起来,才能建设社会主义新农村,只有使农民摆脱无组织的个体状态,才能使农村走上自主性的发展之路。     

休闲观光农业经营管理方案研究

休闲观光农业是一种利用田园景观、自然环境、生态资源，结合农林渔牧业生产、农村文化及农家生活，在不耽误农业生产的基础上又为城市居民提供休闲体验活动的农业经营模式。休闲观光农业能够利用当地丰富的农业资源、旅游资源和劳动力资源实现当地农业可持续发展。但它的发，晨过程也可能带来很多负面影响。这就要求我们在设计休闲观光农业的经营方案时要根据农业与旅游这两个行业的特点。通过各自的经营管理要素对其分别进行比较分析，找到了两个行业的异同，并采用经营管理构建方法。逐步导出休闲观光农业的经营方案。     

农产品绿色技术壁垒形成的政治经济学原因探究

近年来，绿色技术壁垒问题正越来越引起人们的关注。一些发达国家以保护生态环境、保护人类、动植物生命和健康为由制定复杂苛刻的环境保护措施，对国际贸易造成了不必要的障碍。因为大部分农产品和食品的出口限制主要以保护环境和人类健康为由，如检测出进口农产品有毒成分残留超标，含有已禁用的农药和化学药品等，所以农产品贸易受绿色技术壁垒的影响更为严重。本文尝试从政治经济学的角度深刻分析农产品遭遇绿色技术壁垒的原因。     

African Agricultural Development: Lessons and Challenges

This paper reviews what has been learned from experiences of African agriculture and hence what policy lessons may be. Views of African agriculture over the last 130 years have changed from optimism to pessimism and at least halfway back again as the performance of the sector has fluctuated. Fortunately it seems the deep pessimism about agricultural prospects expressed in the 1980s and 1990s has receded. The performance of African agriculture since 1990 suggests that neither those who doubt that any significant advances are taking place, nor those who see advances in some remarkable but perhaps isolated cases of rapid transformation of farming and agricultural supply chains, have sufficient evidence – either from national data or small‐scale studies – to support their positions. Hence policy has to rely largely on general principles and historic lessons, rather than more clearly proven propositions. Policy debates over African agricultural development may sharply divide on some topics, but there is little debate over the importance of basic conditions for agricultural development of an enabling investment climate and the provision of rural public goods. Beyond these basics, the challenge is to remedy the failings of markets that deny most smallholders access to inputs, financial services and insurance. Here opinion divides between whether to return to public provision, as with fertiliser subsidies, or whether private and collective institutional innovations will be sufficient. Recent initiatives to test and scale up the latter look promising, but most have yet to be evaluated. If agricultural development is first and foremost about establishing the basic conditions for growth, then most countries in Africa may be better placed than they have been in the past. Given the many examples that show African smallholders investing and innovating when they have the chance, then there are reasons to hope that the modest growth of production and productivity seen in the last two decades may accelerate in the future – thereby allowing African countries to make the transition from agrarian to urban economies.     

Cropland expansion and grassland loss in the eastern Dakotas: New insights from a farm-level survey

The western Corn Belt region of the United States has become a hotspot for agricultural extensification and consequent land use and land cover changes. The goals of this research were to characterize geographic patterns of grassland loss resulting from cropland expansion in the eastern Dakotas, and to understand how these changes were associated with characteristics of individual farms and farm operators. We collected data on grassland conversion and other land use decisions through a mail survey of farm operators in North and South Dakota. Overall, 40% of respondents converted at least some grassland to cropland between 2004 and 2014, and the total acreage of converted grassland was equivalent to 5.1% of the surveyed farm acreage. Although most converted grassland acres (3.2% of farm acreage) were from land enrolled in the conservation reserve program (CRP), there were also substantial amounts of native grassland conversion (1.0%) and tame grassland conversion (0.9%). The total acreage of grassland conversion was more than four times larger than the acreage enrolled in CRP and other conservation programs. Different types of grassland conversion (e.g., native grassland versus CRP) were concentrated in different parts of the study region, and were spatially disjunct from the areas of highest conservation program enrollment. Larger farms were more likely than smaller farms to expand their cropland acreage and accounted for a disproportionate share of grassland conversion. Younger farm operators, higher levels of farm income, higher proportions of rented croplands, and marginal yields were also associated with cropland expansion and grassland conversion. Although CRP and other land retirement programs will remain important policy mechanisms for conservation in this region, they are not sufficient to maintain current levels of grassland cover and do not provide protection for native grasslands. Alternative conservation strategies and new agricultural policies are thus critically needed to maintain the ecosystem services provided by grasslands.     

“Money can’t buy me land”: Foreign land ownership regime and public opinion in a transition society

In recent years, as part of the broader policies of economic liberalization, the sale of agricultural land to foreign citizens has attracted considerable political, social and media attention in transition societies. The regime of land ownership in Georgia has evolved from the complete restriction of foreign acquisition in the beginning of the 1990s, to the unrestricted sale of land to foreign citizens from 2010 onwards. An analysis of newly-available data from International Social Survey Programme’s (ISSP) National Identity module suggests that respondents in Georgia, along with Russia, hold the most negative attitudes toward selling land to foreigners compared to other countries. I hypothesize that this is the result of a confluence of factors such as the communist legacy, historical memory, rural nationalism, agricultural underdevelopment and inequality. The quantitative part of this article tests socio-demographic, geographic, ideological, and identity-based explanations of within-country variation in attitudes toward the purchase of land by foreigners. The results suggest that socio-demographic and geographic variables such as respondents’ age and regional belonging explain some variance in the dependent variable, but that the major effects stem from individuals’ perceptions of economic protectionism, xenophobia, and ethnic national identity.