Agricultural Economics

In this paper we examine the levels and trends in agricultural output and productivity in 93 developed and developing countries that account for a major portion of the world population and agricultural output. We make use of data drawn from the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations and our study covers the period 1980–2000. Due to the nonavailability of reliable input price data, the study uses data envelopment analysis (DEA) to derive Malmquist productivity indices. The study examines trends in agricultural productivity over the period. Issues of catch‐up and convergence, or in some cases possible divergence, in productivity in agriculture are examined within a global framework. The paper also derives the shadow prices and value shares that are implicit in the DEA‐based Malmquist productivity indices, and examines the plausibility of their levels and trends over the study period.

This paper presents a spatial multi‐agent programming model, which has been developed for assessing policy options in the diffusion of innovations and resource use changes. Unlike conventional simulation tools used in agricultural economics, the model class described here applies a multi‐agent/cellular automata (CA) approach by using heterogeneous farm‐household models and capturing their social and spatial interactions explicitly. The individual choice of the farm‐household among available production, consumption, investment and marketing alternatives is represented in recursive linear programming models. Adoption constraints are introduced in form of network‐threshold values that reflect the cumulative effects of experience and observation of peers’ experiences. The model's economic and hydrologic components are tightly connected into a spatial framework. The integration of economic and hydrologic processes facilitates the consideration of feedback effects in the use of water for irrigation. The simulation runs of the model are carried out with an empirical data set, which has been derived from various data sources on an agricultural region in Chile. Simulation results show that agent‐based spatial modelling constitutes a powerful approach to better understanding processes of innovation and resource use change.

Does access to off‐farm income complement or compete with agricultural production? This article explores the effect of off‐farm income on agricultural production activities, using data from the 2003 Mexico National Rural Household Survey. We first discuss the theoretical conditions under which access to off‐farm income may influence production in an agricultural household model. Instrumental‐variable (IV) estimation methods are then used to test whether agricultural production activities, technologies, and input use differ between households with and without access to off‐farm income. We find that off‐farm income has a negative effect on agricultural output and the use of family labor on the farm, but a positive impact on the demand for purchased inputs. There is also a slight efficiency gain in households with access to off‐farm income. Findings offer insights into how household production evolves as rural households increasingly engage in off‐farm income activities.

This paper intends to estimate the potential impact of climate change on Taiwan's agricultural sector. Yield response regression models are used to investigate the climate change's impact on 60 crops. A price‐endogenous mathematical programming model is then used to simulate the welfare impacts of yield changes under various climate change scenarios. Results suggest that both warming and climate variations have a significant but non‐monotonic impact on crop yields. Society as a whole would not suffer from warming, but a precipitation increase may be devastating to farmers.

We examine factors affecting the success and failure of collective action toward the management of local commons. Using cross‐section survey data on the activities of irrigators' associations in the Philippines, regression analysis is conducted to identify factors underlying the success and failure in farmers' organizing collective action for the maintenance and operation of irrigation systems. We find that collective action is difficult to organize where (a) water supply is uniformly abundant; (b) water supply is greatly different between upper and lower streams in lateral; (c) the size of the association is large; (d) population density is low; (e) the share of nonfarm households is high; and (f) the history of irrigated farming is short. Our findings suggest that these difficulties can be overcome with adequate supports of state agencies to promote community‐level cooperation.

In this article, we draw out a set of axioms for food security measurement that follow directly from the internationally agreed 1996 FAO definition. Building on recent work on the theory and measurement of development resilience, we then propose an empirical strategy to measure food security that addresses these measurement axioms better than do prevailing measures. We empirically illustrate this approach using a panel data set from northern Kenya.

The purpose of this paper is to empirically track the progress and consequences of the emergence of cultivated land markets in China since 2000. We draw on a set of nationwide, household‐level panel data (for 2000 and 2008) and find that the markets for cultivated land rental have emerged robustly. According to our data, 19 of China's cultivated land was rented in farm operators in 2008. We also find that the nature of China's cultivated land rental contracts has become more formal and lengthened the period of time that the tenant is able to cultivate the rented‐in plots. While there may be benefits for lessors and tenants, our data show that there are falling rates of investment in organic manure. The farmers in our sample have reduced organic manure use from 13 tons/ha in 2000 to 5 tons/ha in 2008. Part of this fall is due to the rise of cultivated land rental markets. The analysis, however, does not find that improved property rights in cultivated land rental affect investment largely because property rights have largely been established by 2000, the first year of our sample. Our results, however, also show that there are forces that appear to be mitigating the negative consequences of rising cultivated land rental. After holding constant initial rental rates and other factors, we find that the gap between investment in organic manure in own land and rented‐in land is narrowing. One interpretation of our findings is that if policymakers can find ways to even further strengthen the rights of lessors and tenants as well as lengthen contract periods, farmers—even those that rent—will invest more in their land, because they will be able to capture the returns to their investments.

In recent years, there has been increasing emphasis in the rural development literature on the multiple income‐generating activities undertaken by rural households and the importance of assets in determining the capacity to undertake these activities. Controlling for the endogeneity of activity choice and applying Lee's generalisation of Amemiya's two‐step estimator to a simultaneous equation model, household returns to assets from multiple activities are explored for the Mexico ejido sector. To incorporate the multiple variables representing social and public capital into the analysis, factor analysis is used. The results indicate that the asset position of the household has a significant effect on household participation in income‐generating activities and returns to those activities. Furthermore, the inclusion of measures of social and public capital into the analysis show that these assets play an important role in income‐generating activities and that the influence is dependent on the type of social and public capital as well as the particular activity.

A large and growing share of the world's poor lives under conditions in which high risk of natural hazards coincides with high vulnerability. As a result natural disasters hit the poor disproportionately. In the last decade, natural disasters claimed 79,000 lives each year and affected more than 200 million people, with damages amounting to almost US$70 billion annually. Experts predict that disasters will become even more frequent and their impact more severe, expecting a 5‐fold global cost increase over the next 50 years, mainly due to climate change and a further concentration of the world's population in vulnerable habitats. The article argues that in order to mitigate disaster impact on poor population groups, development policy and disaster management need to become mutually supportive. Focusing on challenges disasters pose to food security, it proposes that in disaster‐prone locations measures to improve disaster resilience should be an integral part of food security policies and strategies. It expands the twin‐track approach to hunger reduction to a “triple‐track approach,” giving due attention to cross‐cutting disaster risk‐management measures. Practical areas requiring more attention include risk information and analysis; land use planning; upgrading physical infrastructures; diversification and risk transfer mechanisms. Investments in reducing disaster risk will be most needed where both hazard risk and vulnerability are high. As agriculture is particularly vulnerable to disaster risk, measures to reduce this vulnerability, i.e., protecting agricultural lands and water and other assets, should get greater weight in development strategies and food security policies. Investing in disaster resilience involves trade‐offs. Identifying the costs, benefits, and trade‐offs involved will be a prominent task of agricultural economists.