Essays On Farm Productivity
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Essays On Farm Productivity
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Author : Jacques C. Julien
language : en
Publisher:
Release Date : 2020
Essays On Farm Productivity written by Jacques C. Julien and has been published by this book supported file pdf, txt, epub, kindle and other format this book has been release on 2020 with Agricultural productivity categories.
Agricultural productivity is critical for the development of many sub-Saharan African (SSA) countries where the farming sector plays a key role in the economy. An important issue concerns evidence of the inverse relationship between farm size and productivity in developing countries, which has been documented over many decades. Despite the accumulated evidence, this relationship, which has been attributed to a variety of factors, remains a puzzle for development economists. This dissertation provides new evidence concerning the inverse relationship (IR) hypothesis by addressing several shortcomings found in the literature and applying state-of-the-art stochastic frontier methods, such as the true random effects model (Greene, 2005a) and a random parameters stochastic frontier (RP-SPF) model (Tsionas, 2002; Greene, 2005b) to account for time-varying inefficiency and unobserved heterogeneity. This dissertation also offers novel analyses concerning agricultural productivity differences between male and female farmers in Malawi, Tanzania, and Uganda using a multiple-step methodology. The analysis focuses on productivity and efficiency gaps as well as on testing land and labor market imperfections for both groups of farmers.
Essays On Agricultural Productivity Environment And Household Efficiency
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Author : Qinan Lu
language : en
Publisher:
Release Date : 2023
Essays On Agricultural Productivity Environment And Household Efficiency written by Qinan Lu and has been published by this book supported file pdf, txt, epub, kindle and other format this book has been release on 2023 with categories.
Poverty and food security are long-standing concerns for policymakers all over the world, especially those in developing countries. To address this issue, farmers, researchers, and governments have devoted their time and efforts to increasing agricultural productivity and household production efficiency for thousands of years. While technological advancement has played a crucial role in the process, especially since the Green Revolution in the 1960s, environmental stress factors and how to adapt to environmental changes remain a challenge for agricultural production. Technology, crop genetics, and farm management practices may interact in complicated ways affecting crop productivity and farm household efficiency. For example, one potential mechanism to offset the adverse impacts of environmental stressors such as infestation could be through biotechnology, such as genetically engineered biotech crops. But it is less clear how such biotechnology may interfere with crops' ability to deal with weather and climate change stressors. Enhancing agricultural productivity can be done through the appropriate use of agricultural inputs and the adoption of agricultural technologies. Agricultural mechanization services (AMS), as another example, have emerged as a viable and effective solution for helping farmers gain access to machinery equipment in developing countries, overcoming their poor affordability for self-purchase. This dissertation aims to contribute to the understanding of these issues through three essays on agricultural productivity, environment, and household efficiency. It may shed light on the new challenges facing agriculture and rural households and provide insights that are useful to policymakers in designing effective policies to address such challenges. The first essay examines the effects of agricultural mechanization services (AMS) on agricultural productivity. AMS have emerged as a viable solution for helping farmers gain access to machinery equipment in developing countries. The chapter investigates the simultaneous decision-making regarding multiple mechanization services and the causal impacts of AMS on land productivity. The study finds that the ratio of off-farm wage to AMS price has a significant positive effect on AMS adoption, and the sequential adoption of AMS starts with power-intensive, followed by control-intensive production tasks. Furthermore, switching to AMS in plowing, transplanting, and harvesting increases rice yield, while AMS of pesticide spraying significantly decreases yield. The chapter highlights the potential moral hazards associated with AMS when monitoring is costly and suggests that increased AMS adoption can significantly enhance food security in China. The second essay investigates the impact of biotechnology and environmental stressors on agricultural productivity. Despite the widespread adoption of biotech crops in the United States, little is known about their interaction with environmental factors. The chapter utilizes observational data from U.S. county-level agricultural production, along with remotely sensed ozone estimates, to estimate a fixed-effects model with instrumental variables for local ozone concentration. The findings suggest that while biotech adoption reduces yield distribution risks, biotech crops may have a disadvantage in dealing with ozone pollution. The chapter highlights the importance of breeding efforts that consider environmental stress, especially climate change-sensitive factors such as ozone pollution. Improving the welfare of poor people, particularly those living in remote rural areas, is another classic challenge faced by policymakers in less developed countries/communities. Residential relocation is considered a solution for lifting these poor households in remote areas out of the poverty trap. The third essay examines the impact of residential relocation on rural household efficiency. The study uses micro-panel data to investigate the effects of residential relocation on households' allocation and technical efficiency. Results suggest that residential relocation leads to a significant increase in households' allocation efficiency, but it reduces households' technical efficiency. The study identifies disparities in the relocation effects on household efficiency between ethnic minority and Han Chinese households. The results underscore the need to address the negative impacts of residential relocation on agricultural production technology efficiency and the resulting food security issues.
Essays On Agricultural Productivity Youth Employment And Human Capital Investment In Sub Saharan Africa
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Author : Josephat Koima
language : en
Publisher:
Release Date : 2021
Essays On Agricultural Productivity Youth Employment And Human Capital Investment In Sub Saharan Africa written by Josephat Koima and has been published by this book supported file pdf, txt, epub, kindle and other format this book has been release on 2021 with Electronic dissertations categories.
This dissertation focuses on the intersection of agricultural productivity, youth employment, and investments in human capital development in Sub–Saharan Africa (SSA). Agriculture is a dominant employer and source of income in SSA, and plays an important role in youth employment and educational attainments.In Chapter 1, we study the role of structural transformation in the labor reallocation between the farm and the non–farm sector and the consequential impact on worker demographics. Specifically, we investigate whether agricultural productivity differentially reallocates labor by age and gender. We develop a theoretical model where increased land productivity leads to younger individuals sorting into the non–farm sector while older individuals sort into agriculture. We then use data from Zambia in our empirical analysis. Our main results show some evidence of productivity affecting labor reallocation within recent productivity lags (last 2 years) but not when longer productivity lags (4 or 6) are considered. Specifically, consistent with our model prediction, a 10% increase in a 2–year lagged moving average of productivity decreases the probability of farming by 0.3 percentage points among youth (15–24) and older youth (25–34). We also show that youth (15–24) also exit farming following increased productivity. Increased productivity tends to reduce the intensity of farming across all age groups but the reduction is relatively larger among the youth. In addition, young men are more likely to exit business activity as productivity increases relative to young women – across all productivity lags. In the short term (2–lags), while youth exit farming, there is no differential outcome between genders. However, among older youth, males are more likely to exit farming compared to women. Finally, males mainly drive the reduction in intensity of farming. Overall, while we find some evidence in favor of our hypotheses, the evidence is generally limited to the short term and the marginal effects are quantitatively small.Chapter 2 investigates the impact of agricultural productivity on human capital investments in Tanzania. Agriculture remains a major source of employment and income in Tanzania. Therefore, any agricultural productivity shocks are likely to affect educational investment decisions. Our results provide evidence that increased agricultural productivity boosts spending on uniform, contributions and total academic expenses. We find positive but statistically non–significant effects of productivity on study times. In addition, we find no evidence of heterogeneous effects by student gender. We show evidence that productivity effects are smaller in female–headed households. Finally, we find some evidence that post–primary students experience larger impacts compared to primary school students.In Chapter 3, I investigate the impact of primary school electrification on academic outcomes in Kenya. Between 2014 and 2016, the number of primary schools with electricity rose from 56% to 94%. Schools near the grid network were connected to grid electricity while those further received solar photovoltaics. Using this rapid electrification expansion as a source of identifying variation in a panel fixed effects model, the paper estimates the impact on school test scores, enrollment, and completion. The paper also attempts to quantify the effects of lighting on education performance by relying on the off–grid (solar) electricity coefficients. Using a universe of 8th grade students in public schools in Kenya, the paper finds no evidence that electricity affects test scores or enrollment in the short run. However, off–grid electrification increases completion by 1%. Using off–grid estimates, the paper concludes that lighting has a small positive impact on completion but not on test scores or enrollment.
Essays On Off Farm Labor Market Participation Farm Production Decisions And Household Economic Wellbeing
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Author : Mary W. Kiiru Mathenge
language : en
Publisher:
Release Date : 2008
Essays On Off Farm Labor Market Participation Farm Production Decisions And Household Economic Wellbeing written by Mary W. Kiiru Mathenge and has been published by this book supported file pdf, txt, epub, kindle and other format this book has been release on 2008 with Agricultural laborers categories.
Essays On Agricultural Productivity And The Impact Of Food Price Change On Welfare In Africa
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Author : Manzamasso Hodjo
language : en
Publisher:
Release Date : 2020
Essays On Agricultural Productivity And The Impact Of Food Price Change On Welfare In Africa written by Manzamasso Hodjo and has been published by this book supported file pdf, txt, epub, kindle and other format this book has been release on 2020 with categories.
Africa is the most food-insecure continent in the world, according to the World Bank and the United Nations Food and Agricultural Organization. While low purchasing power is the main cause of food insecurity, inefficient domestic food production is also a major constraint. Our study specifically focused on four food production issues in Africa, namely, agricultural productivity, cropland use, food demand and welfare analysis, and demand-led crop breeding. First, we assessed the impact of public spending on agricultural productivity in Africa. We estimated the effect of two government-spending measures: Agriculture Budget Share (BS) and Research Share of Agricultural GDP (RS) on agriculture total factor productivity growth (TFPG). We used a panel fixed-effect estimator to control for the country-specific characteristics of twenty-eight African economies from 1991-2012. Although North African economies appeared to have the highest TFPG, this did not translate into the highest agricultural and research budget share. Meanwhile, Central African economies exhibited the lowest BS and RS, along with the lowest TFPG of the continent. The panel fixed-effect estimator revealed a marginal impact of 6.77% for RS on TFPG after seven years. However, the cumulative marginal impact of BS on TFPG is estimated at 7.21% over the eight years that follow the budget increment. Our findings suggest that a BS of 14% and a RS of 15% are required for a country to double its TFPG in the eight following years. Therefore, additional, and continuous investment in research and development is required for a significant productivity enhancement, especially in Sub-Saharan Africa. Second, we assessed the factors that shape cereal cropland allocation decisions in Nigeria and Niger. We theoretically derived the key cropland allocation arguments using the household model. Next, we used the World Bank LSMS-ISA data to map acreage mean centers and fit a fractional regression model using the panel fixed-effect estimator. We assessed the traditional Mendelsohn land use model and uncovered its limitation in efficiently approximating cereal cropland allocation. We improved the appropriateness of fit of the traditional Mendelsohn model by controlling for additional factors, such as food prices, socio-demographics, and food trade factors. Overall, we found cereal acreage shares in Nigeria and Niger to be spatially heterogeneous and determined by climatic, price, and trade factors. Additionally, farmers tend to base their cropland allocation decisions upon the price of the most important staples: maize in Nigeria; millet and sorghum in Niger. Furthermore, due to their tolerance to heat and drought, sorghum and millet compete for northeast farmland in both countries, especially for rainfed croplands. Thus, our study illustrates that millet and sorghum are key choices in ensuring food security in the context of global warming and rainfall instability. Our findings fill a literature void and provide policy makers with evidence to foster geo-referenced farmer cooperatives aimed at enhancing food production. Furthermore, our findings could be incorporated into a land use framework for planning, environmental monitoring, scenario analysis, and impact assessment. The third essay analyzed the staple foods consumption patterns of households in Niger by estimating a complete demand system. Demand elasticities are estimated using the Niger 2011 and 2014 LSMS-ISA household survey data to fit the modified Linear AIDS model. The results indicated that food consumption patterns in the country are affected by income and prices, as well as by socio-economic and geographic factors. All food items have positive expenditure elasticities and negative own-price elasticities, with rice exhibiting the most elastic demand. We found millet to be a necessity while rice and sorghum are luxuries. Additionally, our analysis revealed that urban households had a more diversified staple demand pattern. Furthermore, the welfare analysis revealed that an increase of millet price reduces rural welfare more than an increase in sorghum price. On the other hand, a sorghum price increase adversely affects the welfare of urban households the most. For example, a 20% increase of the millet or sorghum price reduces the average household welfare by 5.88% and 4.38%, respectively. This study highlights the importance of estimating staple food demand elasticities for both research and policymaking during a food price shocks. Our findings revealed that millet price is the canal that might foster support programs targeting the poorest households in Niger. Our fourth and last essay is a theoretical argument for demand-led breeding in a small-scaled farming system. Our investigation stems from the fact that agricultural productivity lags in small-scaled farming in Sub-Saharan Africa. While inadequate production capital, water control and poor infrastructure remain important challenges, the low adoption of improved and high-yielding varieties is a key limiting factor for productivity enhancement. Often, studies elucidating improved technology implementation are focused upon the adoption (demand) rather than the creation (supply). In this analytical essay, we reviewed theoretical causes and solutions to low varietal uptake for sorghum. Consistent with much of the structural research framework, we presented asymmetric information, bounded rationality, and weak intellectual property as key causes of seed market coordination failure. Leaning on the technology adoption under uncertainty model, we showed how market-induced uncertainty, compounded with other factors, reduces farmers' willingness to trade traditional seeds for improved ones. Furthermore, we used the matching theory, supported with a general equilibrium model, to show how consumer preference drives farm-level adoption. We argued that breeding programs can benefit from effective preference matching across the food value chain while leveraging on the growing demand-led breeding literature. Finally, we presented hypotheses that can be empirically used to assess stakeholders' weigh and ranking of varietal attributes across the food value chain.
Essays On Productivity Growth In Agriculture
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Author : Uris Lantz Caldo Baldos
language : en
Publisher:
Release Date : 2014
Essays On Productivity Growth In Agriculture written by Uris Lantz Caldo Baldos and has been published by this book supported file pdf, txt, epub, kindle and other format this book has been release on 2014 with categories.
Essays On Agricultural And Resource Economics
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Author :
language : en
Publisher:
Release Date : 2015
Essays On Agricultural And Resource Economics written by and has been published by this book supported file pdf, txt, epub, kindle and other format this book has been release on 2015 with categories.
My dissertation provides theoretical and empirical contributions to investigate the roles and sources of the technological innovation and the productivity growth via three essays. Employing the patent count and citation data over 1977-2011, the first chapter explores the determining factors of innovations of the U.S. biofuel. I confirm that the knowledge stocks existing in the industry and the crude oil price significantly affect the technological innovations of biofuel in U.S. The second chapter investigates the productivity growth in major dairy production regions in U.S.I show that the emerging dairy regions have relatively higher productivity than the traditional regions. Dynamic decomposition results indicate that surviving farms contribute more than entering and exiting farms. Farm and regional driving forces of farm productivity are also examined. The third chapter investigates landowners' decisions on the Conservation Reserve Program (CRP) under a model of land uses. I develop a structural model to examine the manner in which agricultural productivity, market conditions, and CRP payment affect landowner's land use decisions. A novel identification strategy is employed to control for endogeneity of CRP payment and landowners' self-selection into the program. The parameter estimates are used to simulate the impact of increased agricultural prices and CRP payment on the program enrollment and costs.
Three Essays On Productivity In Post Soviet Primary Agriculture
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Author : Lyubov A. Kurkalova
language : en
Publisher:
Release Date : 1999
Three Essays On Productivity In Post Soviet Primary Agriculture written by Lyubov A. Kurkalova and has been published by this book supported file pdf, txt, epub, kindle and other format this book has been release on 1999 with categories.
In the third essay, we estimate a frontier production function, examine the changes in technical efficiency at the earliest stages of economic reforms, and evaluate the relationship between technical efficiency and farm workforce composition using Ukrainian farm-level survey data. The results help in understanding of economic consequences of the current standstill stage of economic reforms and highlight the importance of labor response considerations when designing policies to support transition agriculture.
Essays On Agriculture
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Author : Shirley Dare Babbitt
language : en
Publisher:
Release Date : 1921
Essays On Agriculture written by Shirley Dare Babbitt and has been published by this book supported file pdf, txt, epub, kindle and other format this book has been release on 1921 with Agriculture categories.
Essays On Agriculture
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Author : Thomas Gisborne
language : en
Publisher:
Release Date : 2008-06-01
Essays On Agriculture written by Thomas Gisborne and has been published by this book supported file pdf, txt, epub, kindle and other format this book has been release on 2008-06-01 with categories.
This scarce antiquarian book is a facsimile reprint of the original. Due to its age, it may contain imperfections such as marks, notations, marginalia and flawed pages. Because we believe this work is culturally important, we have made it available as part of our commitment for protecting, preserving, and promoting the world's literature in affordable, high quality, modern editions that are true to the original work.