Nicholas Tyack, Aminou Arouna, Rachidi Aboudou, Marie Noelle Ndjiondjop
{"title":"An experimental approach to farmer valuation of African rice genetic resources","authors":"Nicholas Tyack, Aminou Arouna, Rachidi Aboudou, Marie Noelle Ndjiondjop","doi":"10.1111/agec.12859","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/agec.12859","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Genebanks serve as both providers of valuable traits for breeding programs and repositories of diverse crop genetic material representing society's agricultural heritage. In this study, we use a Becker-DeGroot-Marschak mechanism to elicit the willingness-to-pay of rice farmers in Côte d'Ivoire for small amounts of African rice (<i>Oryza glaberrima</i>) landraces held by the genebank of the Rice Biodiversity Center for Africa, and for seed of newly developed ARICA rice varieties bred using genebank materials. Using a field experiment, we additionally investigate how randomized exposure to and experimentation with small amounts of African rice landrace seed or seed of advanced rice varieties developed by AfricaRice affect how smallholder rice farmers value these novel genetic resources. Surprisingly, we find that farmers generally value having access to African rice landraces at approximately the same level as for advanced rice varieties (and far above market rates for improved seed), and that those farmers who grew landrace seed in the offseason were willing to pay more than those who did not. Our results demonstrate the additional value provided by the conservation of African rice landrace varieties (apart from their use in breeding) and highlight the importance of experimentation in the adoption process.</p>","PeriodicalId":50837,"journal":{"name":"Agricultural Economics","volume":"55 6","pages":"1000-1025"},"PeriodicalIF":4.5,"publicationDate":"2024-10-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/agec.12859","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142665005","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Designated market makers and agricultural futures market quality: Evidence from China's Dalian commodity exchange","authors":"Miao Li, Tao Xiong, Ziran Li, Wendong Zhang","doi":"10.1111/agec.12854","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/agec.12854","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Many financial markets use designated market makers (DMMs), but the impacts of DMMs on agricultural futures markets – and in particular, how to arrange DMMs among contracts expiring in different months – are largely neglected. In 2017, Chinese exchanges started recruiting DMMs for inactive contracts when they become nearby contracts to address the discontinuous trading activity of nearest-to-maturity contracts, which enables us to study the benefit and cost of recruiting DMMs for inactive contracts using a quasi-experimental framework. Leveraging tick-by-tick data on corn and soybean meal futures, we find that DMMs improve the market quality of inactive contracts without disrupting the market quality of dominant contracts. Heterogeneity analysis in policy settings suggests that more DMMs are conducive to improving market quality for corn and soybean meal futures. We demonstrate that DMM policy is a feasible measure to facilitate continuous activeness in Chinese agricultural futures markets. Our results are important for exchanges and regulators seeking to better design and implement designated market-making programs in agricultural futures markets.</p>","PeriodicalId":50837,"journal":{"name":"Agricultural Economics","volume":"55 6","pages":"899-924"},"PeriodicalIF":4.5,"publicationDate":"2024-10-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142665029","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Herbicide-resistant weed management with robots: A weed ecological–economic model","authors":"Chengzheng Yu, Madhu Khanna, Shady S. Atallah, Saurajyoti Kar, Muthukumar Bagavathiannan, Girish Chowdhary","doi":"10.1111/agec.12856","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/agec.12856","url":null,"abstract":"<p>The heavy reliance on herbicides for weed control has led to an increase in resistant weeds in the United States. Robotic weed control is emerging as an alternative technology for removing weeds mechanically using artificial intelligence. We develop an integrated weed ecological and economic dynamic (I-WEED) model to examine the biophysical and economic drivers of adopting robotic weed management and simulate the optimal timing and intensity of robotic adoption within and across growing seasons. We specify a cohort-based weed growth model that relates yield damages to effective weed density and treats the susceptibility of weeds to herbicides as a renewable resource that can be regenerated by using mechanical weeding robots, due to a fitness cost that makes resistant weeds less prolific. Compared to myopic weed management which ignores resistance development, forward-looking management leads to earlier adoption of robots and treating robots as complements instead of substitutes to herbicides. This weed management results in adopting fewer robots, deploying robots on a smaller portion of the land, higher profitability, and lower yield loss in the long run, relative to myopic management. Counterintuitively, myopic management leads to a lower resistance level through its higher robot adoption intensity. We also find that a lower level of initial weed seed resistance and/or a higher fitness cost result in a higher level of resistance because they create incentives for farmers to delay the adoption of robotic weed control. Our analysis shows the importance of jointly considering the interactions between weed ecology and economics in analyzing the incentives and effects of robotic weed management on weed resistance.</p>","PeriodicalId":50837,"journal":{"name":"Agricultural Economics","volume":"55 6","pages":"943-962"},"PeriodicalIF":4.5,"publicationDate":"2024-10-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/agec.12856","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142664579","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Marcelo Caffera, Felipe Vásquez Lavín, Manuel Barrientos, Daniel Rodríguez Anza, Leonidas Carrasco-Letelier
{"title":"The implicit market price of soil erosion: An estimation using a hedonic model with spatial spillovers","authors":"Marcelo Caffera, Felipe Vásquez Lavín, Manuel Barrientos, Daniel Rodríguez Anza, Leonidas Carrasco-Letelier","doi":"10.1111/agec.12857","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/agec.12857","url":null,"abstract":"<p>We estimate the implicit market price of soil erosion using quarterly data of 2824 agricultural farms traded in Uruguay between 2000 and 2014. A unique feature of our estimation is that we allow for possible spatial spillovers. We find evidence of a negative and statistically significant association between erosion and land values. On average, an additional loss of 1% of the original topsoil due to erosion is associated with a direct (own) decrease of .24% in the per-hectare price of agricultural land (<i>P</i>-value: .012, 95% CI: −.0042, −.0005). In 2023 dollars, this is equivalent to a decrease of USD 8.7 in the average price per hectare, or USD 1130 in the price of the average farm. In terms of tons of soil, the average value is $.24 a ton. Finally, considering the 50 km radius of our spatial model, the value of losing 1% of topsoil is $15.8 million. The value of our estimates is sensitive to our measure of erosion and our specification of the spatial-temporal weighting matrix, but the statistical association is robust.</p>","PeriodicalId":50837,"journal":{"name":"Agricultural Economics","volume":"55 6","pages":"963-984"},"PeriodicalIF":4.5,"publicationDate":"2024-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142664503","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Martin C. Parlasca, Christina A. Martini, Maximilian Köster, Marcela Ibañez
{"title":"Aspirations and weather shocks: Evidence from rural Zambia","authors":"Martin C. Parlasca, Christina A. Martini, Maximilian Köster, Marcela Ibañez","doi":"10.1111/agec.12858","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/agec.12858","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Aspirations defined as future-oriented desires or ambitions, can determine agricultural investments and rural development. Aspirations are shaped by people's social, cultural, and physical environment and can be affected by external factors such as natural disasters. This article addresses the question of how weather shocks can influence individual and community aspirations. Using primary panel data from two survey rounds before and during a major drought in Zambia, we show that such extreme weather events can be associated with adverse impacts on individual aspirations. Further exploratory analyses suggest that aspirations towards assets that are particularly vulnerable to droughts are affected most. We do not find any significant effects of drought on community aspirations.</p>","PeriodicalId":50837,"journal":{"name":"Agricultural Economics","volume":"55 6","pages":"985-999"},"PeriodicalIF":4.5,"publicationDate":"2024-09-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/agec.12858","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142665203","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Hiroyuki Takeshima, Zin Wai Aung, Ian Masias, Bart Minten
{"title":"Endogenous technologies and productivity in rice production: Roles of social instability in Myanmar since 2021","authors":"Hiroyuki Takeshima, Zin Wai Aung, Ian Masias, Bart Minten","doi":"10.1111/agec.12855","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/agec.12855","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Despite technologies' critical roles in agricultural productivity, evidence is scarce on how conflict affects technology adoption and consequent agricultural productivity, often due to a lack of data in fragile states. Our study contributes to filling this knowledge gap by using unique large-scale data on rice producers before and after a military coup in Myanmar in 2021 that led to a significant increase in conflicts in the country. We find that the increase in violent events including those in adjacent townships significantly changed the rice production function in both factor-neutral and non-neutral ways. Specifically, increased violent events have been generally associated with downward factor-neutral shift in production function, and more importantly, increased output elasticity to agricultural capital (equipment) owned (in other words, reduced output resilience against capital ownership shocks). Our evidence also suggests that this has been led partly through reduced access to agricultural extension services, which would otherwise help farmers maintain productivity even with limited capital ownership by substituting it with human capital and skills. Our results consistently hold for both panel and cross-sectional production functions across various specifications and particularly in Lower Myanmar. Results also indicate that lower mechanization service fees partly mitigate these effects.</p>","PeriodicalId":50837,"journal":{"name":"Agricultural Economics","volume":"55 6","pages":"925-942"},"PeriodicalIF":4.5,"publicationDate":"2024-09-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/agec.12855","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142665201","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Jonas Schmitt, Frank Offermann, Andreia F. S. Ribeiro, Robert Finger
{"title":"Drought risk management in agriculture: A copula perspective on crop diversification","authors":"Jonas Schmitt, Frank Offermann, Andreia F. S. Ribeiro, Robert Finger","doi":"10.1111/agec.12851","DOIUrl":"10.1111/agec.12851","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Drought events are a major cause of large crop yield losses with implications for food security and farmers’ incomes. Growing multiple crops simultaneously during a cropping season is a well-known on-farm risk management strategy to cope with these drought risks. However, the effectiveness of this crop diversification under different severity levels of drought and how this effectiveness is influenced by the crop composition is unclear. This article provides new methodological and empirical insights to assess the effectiveness of such diversification, in particular to cope with extreme drought. We apply and evaluate nested Archimedean copulas and elliptical copulas to assess simultaneous farm-level yield losses of different cash crops in German agriculture (winter wheat, winter barley, winter rapeseed, sugar beet, and grain maize) under different drought severity levels (<i>N</i> = 249,756; regionally pooled farm-level crop-yield pairs, 1995–2019). We show that on-farm crop diversification contributes to cope with drought risks, but its effectiveness varies considerably across regions, crop pairs, and drought severity. Our results underline that cropping system diversification alone is often not sufficient to cope with drought risks, but that the right crop combinations are needed. For example, during a severe drought (one in 20 years event), 26.4% of farmers in eastern Germany suffered simultaneous yield losses of at least 20% in winter wheat and winter barley, while 19.1% of farmers in eastern Germany suffered simultaneous yield losses of at least 20% in winter wheat and sugar beet. Farmers should therefore be encouraged to grow crops with more diverse phenological requirements throughout the year.</p>","PeriodicalId":50837,"journal":{"name":"Agricultural Economics","volume":"55 5","pages":"823-847"},"PeriodicalIF":4.5,"publicationDate":"2024-08-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/agec.12851","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142196500","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Scott W. Fausti, Hernan A. Tejeda, Matthew A. Diersen
{"title":"Macroeconomic shock effects on beef carcass premiums","authors":"Scott W. Fausti, Hernan A. Tejeda, Matthew A. Diersen","doi":"10.1111/agec.12849","DOIUrl":"10.1111/agec.12849","url":null,"abstract":"<p>An overview of how macroeconomic shocks affect beef quality-grade premiums and discounts in the U.S. fed cattle market is discussed. We review the shock transmission linkages along the beef industry supply chain and determine the economic implications for the finished cattle market. The analysis provides insight into how the fed cattle market responds to macroeconomic shocks. The economic implications of financial risk associated with the behavior of beef carcass quality-grade premiums and discounts associated with the Great Recession and the COVID pandemic are contrasted and assessed.</p><p>Data analysis indicates that macroeconomic shocks affect the quality-grade premium pricing mechanism for finished cattle. The origins of the shock (aggregate demand versus aggregate supply) and government fiscal policy intervention determines how premium levels and premium volatility responds to a macroeconomic shock. Thus, beef carcass quality-grade premiums are not only subject to industry idiosyncratic risk, such as swings in the seasonal demand for beef, but are also subject to systematic risk associated with business cycle fluctuations.</p>","PeriodicalId":50837,"journal":{"name":"Agricultural Economics","volume":"55 5","pages":"784-794"},"PeriodicalIF":4.5,"publicationDate":"2024-08-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/agec.12849","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142196507","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Tilahun Habtamu Adere, Iris Vanermen, Miet Maertens, Liesbet Vranken
{"title":"Farmers’ preferences for soil conservation measures in Southern Ethiopia: Plot-level discrete choice experiment","authors":"Tilahun Habtamu Adere, Iris Vanermen, Miet Maertens, Liesbet Vranken","doi":"10.1111/agec.12852","DOIUrl":"10.1111/agec.12852","url":null,"abstract":"<p>This study assesses farmers' preferences for the adoption of grass strips as cropland conservation measures and explores the effects of information on their preferences. We further analyze these preferences for plots with varying levels of tenure security and erosion vulnerability. Using survey data from Southern Ethiopia, a plot-level discrete choice experiment in two rounds that includes a video-based information treatment in a within-subject design is conducted. The findings show that farmers prefer to adopt grass strips with a high conservation potential, that can be used as feedstock and that help to stabilize physical structures or delineate plot boundaries. In addition, information transfer increases preferences for adopting grass strips with not only a high conservation potential but also a medium conservation potential. The effects of the information transfer on preferences are found to be heterogeneous and vary with plot characteristics. Under well-defined property rights, farmers prefer to adopt the grass strips for stabilizing physical structures, conserving their cropland against environmental risk or boundary delineation. However, under weak tenure security, they prefer to plant grass strips only for boundary delineation to reduce the institutional risk of losing cropland, but this preference was only observed after information provision. These findings highlight the importance of designing and implementing context-specific agricultural information dissemination systems and that well-defined land rights increase the adoption of land conservation technology in the global south.</p>","PeriodicalId":50837,"journal":{"name":"Agricultural Economics","volume":"55 5","pages":"848-870"},"PeriodicalIF":4.5,"publicationDate":"2024-08-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142196498","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Do place-based policies impact residents’ nutrient intake? Evidence from China","authors":"Yang Yang, Teng Huang, Tianjun Liu","doi":"10.1111/agec.12853","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/agec.12853","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Place-based policies (PBPs) associated with China's “reform and opening-up” have played a significant role in the country's rapid economic development. However, the relationship between PBPs and residents’ nutrient intake remains unexplored. To fill this research gap, this study uses longitudinal data from the China Health and Nutrition Survey (1991–2011), applies a difference-in-differences approach to analyze the association between PBPs and residents’ nutrient intake, and sheds light on the potential mechanisms. The findings reveal that PBPs are positively associated with increased intake of total energy, fat, and protein. This relationship is facilitated through mechanisms such as promoting local employment opportunities, increasing household income, optimizing the food environment, and increasing residents’ dietary knowledge. The findings also show that the increase in nutrient intake associated with PBPs is more pronounced among men, high-income groups, individuals with higher education, urban residents, and following China's accession to the World Trade Organization. Additionally, PBPs are linked to improved self-assessed health and a decreased likelihood of insufficient fat intake. Meanwhile, insufficient evidence supports the hypothesis that these policies are associated with overnutrition or non-communicable diseases.</p>","PeriodicalId":50837,"journal":{"name":"Agricultural Economics","volume":"55 5","pages":"871-894"},"PeriodicalIF":4.5,"publicationDate":"2024-08-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142430175","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}