Download or read book Publicly Funded Agricultural Research and the Changing Structure of U S Agriculture written by National Research Council and published by National Academies Press. This book was released on 2002-03-18 with total page 314 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) requested that the Board on Agriculture and Natural Resources of the National Research Council (NRC) convene a panel of experts to examine whether publicly funded agricultural research has influenced the structure of U.S. agriculture and, if so, how. The Committee to Review the Role of Publicly Funded Agricultural Research on the Structure of U.S. Agriculture was asked to assess the role of public-sector agricultural research on changes in the size and numbers of farms, with particular emphasis on the evolution of very-large-scale operations.
Download or read book Row planting teff in Ethiopia written by Vandercasteelen, Joachim and published by Intl Food Policy Res Inst. This book was released on 2016-07-01 with total page 26 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Improved technologies are increasingly promoted to farmers in sub-Saharan-African countries to address low agricultural productivity in their staple crops. There is, however, a lack of evidence on how adoption affects farmers’ labor use and profitability at the farm level, as well as the importance gender roles play, all essential drivers for the successful up-scaling of the use of the improved technologies. This paper analyses the labor and profitability impact of the recently introduced row planting technology in teff production in Ethiopia. Based on agronomic evidence in experimental settings, the Government of Ethiopia has focused extension efforts on promoting the widespread uptake of row planting to address low teff yields, replacing the traditional broadcasting method of plant teff. Using an innovative Randomized Controlled Trial set-up, we show that the implementation of row planting at the farm level significantly increases total labor use, but not teff yields, relative to broadcast planting, resulting in a substantial drop in labor productivity when adopting row planting. Moreover, the implementation of row planting has important consequences for inter- and intra-household labor allocation, with relatively more use of non-family labor. The adoption of row planting was further found not to be profitable for farmers in the first year of the promotion campaign, seemingly explaining the limited success in up-scaling the adoption of the technology by farmers in the second year of the program.
Download or read book FAO framework on ending child labour in agriculture written by FAO and published by Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. This book was released on 2020-06-01 with total page 148 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The purpose of the FAO’s framework is to guide the Organization and its personnel in the integration of measures addressing child labour within FAO’s typical work, programmes and initiatives at global, regional and country levels. It aims to enhance compliance with organization’s operational standards, and strengthen coherence and synergies across the Organization and with partners. The FAO framework is primarily targeted at FAO as an organization, including all personnel in all geographic locations. But the framework is also relevant for FAO’s governing bodies and Member States, and provides guidance and a basis for collaboration with development partners. The framework is also to be used as a key guidance to assess and monitor compliance with FAO’s environmental and social standards addressing prevention and reduction of child labour in FAO’s programming.
Download or read book The Farm Labor Problem written by J. Edward Taylor and published by Academic Press. This book was released on 2018-11-29 with total page 244 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Farm Labor Problem: A Global Perspective explores the unique character of agricultural labor markets and the implications for food production, farm worker welfare and advocacy, and immigration policy. Agricultural labor markets differ from other labor markets in fundamental ways related to seasonality and uncertainty, and they evolve differently than other labor markets as economies develop. We weave economic analysis with the history of agricultural labor markets using data and real-world events. The farm labor history of California and the United States is particularly rich, so it plays a central role in the book, but the book has a global perspective ensuring its relevance to Europe and high-income Asian countries. The chapters in this book provide readers with the basics for understanding how farm labor markets work (labor in agricultural household models, farm labor supply and demand, spatial market equilibria); farm labor and immigration policy; farm labor organizing; farm employment and rural poverty; unionization and the United Farm Workers movement; the Fair Food Program as a new approach to collective bargaining; the declining immigrant farm labor supply; and what economic development in relatively low-income countries portends for the future of agriculture in the United States and other high-income countries. The book concludes with a chapter called "Robots in the Fields," which extrapolates current trends to a perhaps not-so-distant future. The Farm Labor Problem serves as both a guide to policy makers, farmworker advocates and international development organizations and as a textbook for students of agricultural economics and economics. - Describes the unique character of agricultural labor markets providing consequential insights - Contextualizes the economics of agricultural labor with a global perspective - Examines the history of farm labor, immigration, policy and collective bargaining with a view to the future
Download or read book Agricultural Extension for Women Farmers in Africa written by Katrine Anderson Saito and published by World Bank Publications. This book was released on 1990-01-01 with total page 69 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Operational guidelines on how to provide cost- effective agricultural extension services to women farmers in Sub-Saharan Africa.
Download or read book Determining Factors and Impacts of Modern Agricultural Technology Adoption in West Wollega written by Merga Challa and published by GRIN Verlag. This book was released on 2014-09-16 with total page 96 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Master's Thesis from the year 2013 in the subject Agrarian Studies, Wollega University (School of graduate studies), language: English, abstract: This study analyzed factors affecting modern agricultural technology adoption by farmers and the impact of technology adoption decision on the welfare of households in the study area. The data used for the study were obtained from 145 randomly selected sample households in the study area. Binary logit model was employed to analyze the determinants of farmers’ decisions to adopt modern technologies. Moreover, the average effect of adoption on household incomes and expenditure were estimated by using propensity score matching method. The result of the logistic regression showed that household heads’ education level, farm size, credit accessibility, perception of farmers about cost of the inputs and off-farm income positively and significantly affected the farm households’ adoption decision; while family size affected their decision negatively and significantly. The result of the propensity score matching estimation showed that the average income and consumption expenditure of adopters are greater than that of non-adopters. Based on these findings it is recommended that the zonal and the woreda leaders extension agents farm and education experts, policy makers and other development oriented organizations have to plan in such a way that the farm households in the study area will obtain sufficient education, credit accessibilities and also have to train farmers to make them understand the benefits obtained from adopting the new technologies. These bodies have also to arrange policy issues that improve farm labour participation of household members and also to arrange the ways in which farmers obtain means of income outside farming activities.
Download or read book Farm Profits and Adoption of Precision Agriculture written by U.s. Department of Agriculture and published by Createspace Independent Publishing Platform. This book was released on 2017-02-15 with total page 46 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Precision agriculture (PA) and its suite of information technologies-such as soil and yield mapping using a global positioning system (GPS), GPS tractor guidance systems, and variable-rate input application-allow farm operators to fine-tune their production practices. Access to detailed, within-field information can decrease input costs and increase yields. USDA's Agricultural Resource Management Survey shows that these PA technologies were used on roughly 30 to 50 percent of U.S. corn and soybean acres in 2010-12. Previous studies suggest that use of PA is associated with higher profits under certain conditions, but aggregate estimates of these gains have not been available. In this report, a treatment-effects model is developed to estimate factors associated with PA technology adoption rates and the impacts of adoption on profits. Labor and machinery used in production and certain farm characteristics, like farm size, are associated with adoption as well as with two profit measures, net returns and operating profits. The impact of these PA technologies on profits for U.S. corn producers is positive, but small. Keywords: Crop production information technologies, precision agriculture, variablerate technology, soil tests, global positioning system maps, guidance systems.
Download or read book Save and Grow written by Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations and published by Food & Agriculture Org.. This book was released on 2018-06-22 with total page 116 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The book offers a rich toolkit of relevant, adoptable ecosystem-based practices that can help the world's 500 million smallholder farm families achieve higher productivity, profitability and resource-use efficiency while enhancing natural capital.
Download or read book Development Economics written by Julie Schaffner and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2013-10-07 with total page 695 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Development Economics: Theory, Empirical Research, and Policy Analysis by Julie Schaffner teaches students to think about development in a way that is disciplined by economic theory, informed by cutting-edge empirical research, and connected in a practical way to contemporary development efforts. It lays out a framework for the study of developing economies that is built on microeconomic foundations and that highlights the importance in development studies of transaction and transportation costs, risk, information problems, institutional rules and norms, and insights from behavioral economics. It then presents a systematic approach to policy analysis and applies the approach to policies from around the world, in the areas of targeted transfers, workfare, agricultural markets, infrastructure, education, agricultural technology, microfinance, and health.
Download or read book Gender and agricultural mechanization A mixed methods exploration of the impacts of multi crop reaper harvester service provision in Bangladesh written by Theis, Sophie and published by Intl Food Policy Res Inst. This book was released on 2019-05-14 with total page 48 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Farmer hiring of agricultural machinery services is common in South Asia. Informal fee-for-service arrangements have positioned farmers so they can access use of machinery to conduct critical, timesensitive agricultural tasks like land preparation, seeding, irrigation, harvesting and post- harvesting operations. However, both the provision and rental of machinery services are currently dominated by men, and by most measures, it appears that women have comparatively limited roles in this market and may receive fewer benefits. Despite the prevailing perception in rural Bangladesh that women do not participate in agricultural entrepreneurship, women do not necessarily lack a desire to be involved. Using a mixed methods approach involving literature review, secondary data collection, focus groups and key informant interviews, and a telephone survey, we studied the gendered differences in women’s and men’s involvement in emerging markets for rice and wheat reaper-harvester machinery services in Bangladesh. We find that women benefit from managing and sometimes owning machinery services, as well as from the direct and indirect consequences of hiring such services to harvest their crops. However, a number of technical, economic, and cultural barriers appear to constrain female participation in both reaper service business ownership and in hiring services as a client. In addition, women provided suggestions for how to overcome barriers constraining their entry into rural machinery services as an entrepreneur. Men also reflected on the conditions they would consider supporting women to become business owners. Our findings have implications for addressing social norms in support of women’s rural entrepreneurship and technology adoption in South Asia’s smallholder dominated rural economies.
Download or read book Alternative Futures for U S Agriculture written by United States. Department of Agriculture. Office of Planning and Evaluation and published by . This book was released on 1975 with total page 106 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The rapid expansion of herbicide use in smallholder agriculture in Ethiopia written by Tamru, Seneshaw and published by Intl Food Policy Res Inst. This book was released on 2016-09-27 with total page 20 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: We use qualitative and quantitative information from a number of datasets to study the adoption patterns and labor productivity impacts of herbicide use in Ethiopia. We find a four-fold increase in the value of herbicides imported into Ethiopia over the last decade, primarily by the private-sector. Adoption of herbicides by smallholders has grown rapidly over this period, with the application of herbicides on cereals doubling to more than a quarter of the area under cereals between 2004 and 2014. Relying on unique data from a large-scale survey of producers of teff, the most widely grown cereal in Ethiopia, we find significant positive labor productivity effects of herbicide use of between 9 and 18 percent. We show that the adoption of herbicides is strongly related to proximity to urban centers, levels of local rural wages, and access to markets. All these factors have changed significantly over the last decade in Ethiopia, explaining the rapid take-off in herbicide adoption. The significant increase in herbicide use in Ethiopia has important implications for rural labor markets, potential environmental and health considerations, and capacity development for the design and effective implementation of regulatory policies on herbicides .
Download or read book Overview of the evolution of agricultural mechanization in Nepal A focus on tractors and combine harvesters written by Takeshima, Hiroyuki and published by Intl Food Policy Res Inst. This book was released on 2017-07-21 with total page 54 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This study was conducted to understand the evolution of agricultural mechanization in Nepal, specifically its determinants on both the demand and supply sides, as well as impacts on agricultural production and associations with broader economic transformation processes, in order to draw lessons that can be conveyed to other less mechanized countries. Mechanization levels in Nepal, a largely agricultural country, were relatively low until a few decades ago. However, significant mechanization growth, including the adoption of tractors, has occurred since the 1990s, against a backdrop of rising rural wages, particularly for plowing, combined with growing emigration and growth in key staple crop yields and overall broad agricultural production growth, as well as improved market access and participation. This growth in mechanization has taken place despite the general absence of direct government support or promotion. The growth of tractor use in the plains of the Terai zone has transformed agricultural production rather than inducing labor movement out of agriculture, raising overall returns to scale in intensification and enabling the cultivation of greater areas by medium smallholders than by resource-poor smallholders. Tractors have also facilitated the intensification of crop production per unit of land among very small farmers, enabling mechanization growth despite the continued decline in farm size, although these farmers may not have benefited as much as medium smallholders. Potential future research areas with policy relevance include mitigating accessibility constraints to tractor custom hiring services, identifying appropriate regulatory policies for mechanization, and providing complementary support to some smallholders who may not fully benefit from tractor adoption alone.
Download or read book Handbook of Agricultural Economics written by Robert E. Evenson and published by Elsevier. This book was released on 2007-06-28 with total page 847 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Volume 3 of this series of the Handbooks in Economics follows on from the previous two volumes by focusing on the fundamental concepts of agricultural economics. The first part of the volume examines the developments in human resources and technology mastery. The second part follows on by considering the processes and impact of invention and innovation in this field. The effects of market forces are examined in the third part, and the volume concludes by analysing the economics of our changing natural resources, including the past effects of climate change.Overall this volume forms a comprehensive and accessible survey of the field of agricultural economics and is recommended reading for anyone with an interest, either academic or professional, in this area.*Part of the renown Handbooks in Economics series*Contributors are leaders of their areas*International in scope and comprehensive in coverage
Download or read book Lightening the Load written by Marilyn Carr and published by . This book was released on 2010 with total page 84 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Women are central to overcoming rural poverty. They play a critical role in poverty reduction and food security because they are responsible for both production and reproduction. Rural women in developing countries have longer working days than men because of their triple roles as farmers, caretakers of their families and cash earners through income-generating activities and microfinance. In addition, increasing drought and deforestation in many parts of the world make women's workload even more burdensome as they have to walk ever-longer distances to find firewood and clean water. The multiple roles of women can act as an obstacle to development interventions, which often put additional pressure on women's time. Women's heavy workload reduces the time available for participation in project-related activities or affects their ability to care for their families. Ensuring women's access to labour-saving technologies for water, energy and farm-related activities is fundamental, and the need for such technologies is greater than it has ever been before. This timely publication looks back at three decades of experiences in introducing labour-saving technologies and practices to rural women and in combating persistent gender discrimination in access and control. It also takes into account major developments in science, technology and innovation over the last several years and shows they can benefit women.
Download or read book Agriculture And Community Change In The U s written by Louis E. Swanson and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2019-04-11 with total page 266 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book contains the Office of Technology Assessment commissioned papers analyzing the Northeast, South, Midwest, the Great Plains and the West of the U.S. The papers indicate that the relationship between the structure of agriculture and characteristics of rural communities vary in the U.S. .
Download or read book Handbook of Agricultural Economics written by Bruce L. Gardner and published by Elsevier. This book was released on 2001 with total page 847 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Volume 3 of this series of the Handbooks in Economics follows on from the previous two volumes by focusing on the fundamental concepts of agricultural economics. The first part of the volume examines the developments in human resources and technology mastery. The second part follows on by considering the processes and impact of invention and innovation in this field. The effects of market forces are examined in the third part, and the volume concludes by analysing the economics of our changing natural resources, including the past effects of climate change. Overall this volume forms a comprehensive and accessible survey of the field of agricultural economics and is recommended reading for anyone with an interest, either academic or professional, in this area. *Part of the renown Handbooks in Economics series *Contributors are leaders of their areas *International in scope and comprehensive in coverage
