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EBookClubs

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Book Why Small Farms Persist  The Influence of Farmers  Characteristics on Farm Growth and Development  The Case of Smaller Dairy Farmers in NZ

Download or read book Why Small Farms Persist The Influence of Farmers Characteristics on Farm Growth and Development The Case of Smaller Dairy Farmers in NZ written by Victoria Westbrooke and published by . This book was released on 2017 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Human capital is an important resource in primary production impacting on farmers' decisions and actions. Given their current and expected economic environment, farmers must use their human capital in mapping out a trajectory for their farm. This study considers particular aspects of farmers' human capital and its influence on farm growth, or lack of it. Farmers' characteristics as expressed through their personality, intelligence and objectives are the main human capital aspects considered in a sample of smaller NZ dairy farms. They are somewhat typical of western farmers working on smaller farms. They can be broadly classed into Expanders, Maintainers and Retractors. It is hypothesised each group will have distinct and different personal characteristics and these influence the farmers' choice of trajectory. This is in addition to purely economic factors. It is also hypothesised the characteristics influence the farmers' choice of development strategy and how challenges to the strategy are viewed. The data collected from the small dairy farms support the hypotheses suggesting the design of policy and extension programs must allow for these human capital drivers. Using past data, it is also shown aspects of human capital are different in large farms emphasising the same conclusion.

Book Economics of Agricultural Development

Download or read book Economics of Agricultural Development written by George W. Norton and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2014-09-25 with total page 477 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Economics of Agricultural Development examines the causes, severity, and effects of poverty, population growth, and malnutrition in developing countries. It discusses potential solutions to these problems, progress made in many countries in recent years, and the implications of globalization for agriculture, poverty, and the environment. Topics covered in the book include: • Means for utilizing agricultural surpluses to further overall economic development • The sustainability of the natural resource environment • Gender issues in relation to agriculture and resource use • The contribution of agricultural technologies • The importance of agricultural and macroeconomic policies as related to development and trade, and the successes and failures of such policies • Actions to encourage more rapid agricultural and economic development The globalization of trade in goods, services, and capital has been fundamental to changes being experienced in the agricultural and rural sectors of developing countries. It has major implications for the fight against poverty and food insecurity and for environmental sustainability. Recently, agriculture has returned to a position of center stage in the development dialog as food price volatility has increased along with water scarcity, and concerns grow over the effects of climate change on food supply and food security. This new edition of the essential textbook in the field builds on the 2010 edition and reflects the following developments: • Growth in foreign demand for land and other natural resources • Significant progress in agricultural and economic development in some low-income countries while others are being left behind • Continued growth in demand for higher-valued farm products This book is essential reading for undergraduate students seeking to understand the economics of agricultural development and the world food system, including environmental and human consequences, international trade, and capital flows.

Book World Agricultural Economics and Rural Sociology Abstracts

Download or read book World Agricultural Economics and Rural Sociology Abstracts written by and published by . This book was released on 2000 with total page 682 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Book Government Support to Agricultural Insurance

Download or read book Government Support to Agricultural Insurance written by Olivier Mahul and published by World Bank Publications. This book was released on 2010-03-08 with total page 250 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Governments in developing countries have been increasingly involved in the support of agricultural (crop and livestock) insurance programs in recent years. In their attempts to design and implement agricultural insurance, they have sought technical and financial assistance from the international community and particularly from the World Bank. One of the recurrent requests from governments regards international experience with agricultural insurance, not only in developed countries, where in some cases agricultural insurance has been offered for more than a century, but also in middleand low-income countries. Governments are particularly interested in the technical, operational, financial, and institutional aspects of public support to agricultural insurance. 'Government Support to Agricultural Insurance' informs public and private decision makers involved in agricultural insurance about recent developments, with a particular focus on middle- and low-income countries. It presents an updated picture of the spectrum of institutional frameworks and experiences with agricultural insurance, ranging from countries in which the public sector provides no support to those in which governments heavily subsidize agricultural insurance. This analysis is based on a survey conducted by the World Bank s agricultural insurance team in 2008 in 65 developed and developing countries. Drawing on the survey results, the book identifies some key roles governments can play to support the development of sustainable, affordable, and cost-effective agricultural insurance programs.

Book Managing Risk in Farming

Download or read book Managing Risk in Farming written by David Kahan and published by Food & Agriculture Organization of the UN (FAO). This book was released on 2013 with total page 124 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This guide is intended to help extension workers better understand the concept of risk, the situation where risk occurs and management strategies that can be used to reduce, or at least soften, its effect. It is hoped that the guide will be useful in assisting extension workers to provide farmers with advice on the kind of risk management strategies that they can employ to deal with risk in their day-to-day operations. In this way extension workers can help farmers recognize and understand the risks that they are likely to face and assist them in making better farm management decisions that reduce the negative effect of the risks encountered in farming.

Book Managing Risk in Farming

Download or read book Managing Risk in Farming written by and published by . This book was released on 1999 with total page 136 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Book A Comprehensive Assessment of the Role of Risk in U S  Agriculture

Download or read book A Comprehensive Assessment of the Role of Risk in U S Agriculture written by Richard E. Just and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2002 with total page 608 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: After all the research on agricultural risk to date, the treatment of risk in agricultural research is far from harmonious. Many competing risk models have been proposed. Some new methodologies are largely untested. Some of the leading empirical methodologies in agricultural economic research are poorly suited for problems with aggregate data where risk averse behavior is less likely to be important. This book is intended to (i) define the current state of the literature on agricultural risk research, (ii) provide a critical evaluation of economic risk research on agriculture to date and (iii) set a research agenda that will meet future needs and prospects. This type of research promises to become of increasing importance because agricultural policy in the United States and elsewhere has decidedly shifted from explicit income support objectives to risk-related motivations of helping farmers deal with risk. Beginning with the 1996 Farm Bill, the primary set of policy instruments from U.S. agriculture has shifted from target prices and set aside acreage to agricultural crop insurance. Because this book is intended to have specific implications for U.S. agricultural policy, it has a decidedly domestic scope, but clearly many of the issues have application abroad. For each of the papers and topics included in this volume, individuals have been selected to give the strongest and broadest possible treatment of each facet of the problem. The result is this comprehensive reference book on the economics of agricultural risk.

Book Farming Systems and Poverty

Download or read book Farming Systems and Poverty written by John A. Dixon and published by Food & Agriculture Org.. This book was released on 2001 with total page 424 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A joint FAO and World Bank study which shows how the farming systems approach can be used to identify priorities for the reduction of hunger and poverty in the main farming systems of the six major developing regions of the world.

Book The Economic Impact of Climate Change on Kenyan Crop Agriculture  A Ricardian Approach

Download or read book The Economic Impact of Climate Change on Kenyan Crop Agriculture A Ricardian Approach written by Jane Kabubo-Mariara and published by World Bank Publications. This book was released on 2012 with total page 40 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This paper measures the economic impact of climate on crops in Kenya. The analysis is based on cross-sectional climate, hydrological, soil, and household level data for a sample of 816 households, and uses a seasonal Ricardian model. Estimated marginal impacts of climate variables suggest that global warming is harmful for agricultural productivity and that changes in temperature are much more important than changes in precipitation. This result is confirmed by the predicted impact of various climate change scenarios on agriculture. The results further confirm that the temperature component of global warming is much more important than precipitation. The authors analyze farmers' perceptions of climate variations and their adaptation to these, and also constraints on adaptation mechanisms. The results suggest that farmers in Kenya are aware of short-term climate change, that most of them have noticed an increase in temperatures, and that some have taken adaptive measures.

Book Risk Analysis in Theory and Practice

Download or read book Risk Analysis in Theory and Practice written by Jean-Paul Chavas and published by Elsevier. This book was released on 2004-07-01 with total page 257 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The objective of Risk Analysis in Theory and Practice is to present this analytical framework and to illustrate how it can be used in the investigation of economic decisions under risk. In a sense, the economics of risk is a difficult subject: it involves understanding human decisions in the absence of perfect information. How do we make decisions when we do not know some of events affecting us? The complexities of our uncertain world and of how humans obtain and process information make this difficult. In spite of these difficulties, much progress has been made. First, probability theory is the corner stone of risk assessment. This allows us to measure risk in a fashion that can be communicated among decision makers or researchers. Second, risk preferences are now better understood. This provides useful insights into the economic rationality of decision making under uncertainty. Third, over the last decades, good insights have been developed about the value of information. This helps better understand the role of information in human decision making and this book provides a systematic treatment of these issues in the context of both private and public decisions under uncertainty. Balanced treatment of conceptual models and applied analysis Considers both private and public decisions under uncertainty Website presents application exercises in Excel

Book The Development Dimension Coherence of Agricultural and Rural Development Policies

Download or read book The Development Dimension Coherence of Agricultural and Rural Development Policies written by OECD and published by OECD Publishing. This book was released on 2006-06-08 with total page 419 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: At a time when agriculture is no longer the dominant sector in rural economies in OECD countries, this study examines the advantages of developing coherence between agricultural and rural development policies.

Book Rural Wealth Creation

Download or read book Rural Wealth Creation written by John L. Pender and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2014-06-05 with total page 328 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book investigates the role of wealth in achieving sustainable rural economic development. The authors define wealth as all assets net of liabilities that can contribute to well-being, and they provide examples of many forms of capital – physical, financial, human, natural, social, and others. They propose a conceptual framework for rural wealth creation that considers how multiple forms of wealth provide opportunities for rural development, and how development strategies affect the dynamics of wealth. They also provide a new accounting framework for measuring wealth stocks and flows. These conceptual frameworks are employed in case study chapters on measuring rural wealth and on rural wealth creation strategies. Rural Wealth Creation makes numerous contributions to research on sustainable rural development. Important distinctions are drawn to help guide wealth measurement, such as the difference between the wealth located within a region and the wealth owned by residents of a region, and privately owned versus publicly owned wealth. Case study chapters illustrate these distinctions and demonstrate how different forms of wealth can be measured. Several key hypotheses are proposed about the process of rural wealth creation, and these are investigated by case study chapters assessing common rural development strategies, such as promoting rural energy industries and amenity-based development. Based on these case studies, a typology of rural wealth creation strategies is proposed and an approach to mapping the potential of such strategies in different contexts is demonstrated. This book will be relevant to students, researchers, and policy makers looking at rural community development, sustainable economic development, and wealth measurement.

Book A Ricardian Analysis of the Impact of Climate Change on African Cropland

Download or read book A Ricardian Analysis of the Impact of Climate Change on African Cropland written by Pradeep Kurukulasuriya and published by World Bank Publications. This book was released on 2012 with total page 62 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This study examines the impact of climate change on cropland in Africa. It is based on a survey of more than 9,000 farmers in 11 countries: Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Egypt, Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya, Niger, Senegal, South Africa, Zambia, and Zimbabwe. The study uses a Ricardian cross-sectional approach in which net revenue is regressed on climate, water flow, soil, and economic variables. The results show that net revenues fall as precipitation falls or as temperatures warm across all the surveyed farms. In addition to examining all farms together, the study examined dryland and irrigated farms separately. Dryland farms are especially climate sensitive. Irrigated farms have a positive immediate response to warming because they are located in relatively cool parts of Africa. The study also examined some simple climate scenarios to see how Africa would respond to climate change. These uniform scenarios assume that only one aspect of climate changes and the change is uniform across all of Africa. In addition, the study examined three climate change scenarios from Atmospheric Oceanic General Circulation Models. These scenarios predicted changes in climate in each country over time. Not all countries are equally vulnerable to climate change. First, the climate scenarios predict different temperature and precipitation changes in each country. Second, it is also important whether a country is already hot and dry. Third, the extent to which farms are irrigated is also important.

Book The Perfect Storm

Download or read book The Perfect Storm written by Johan F. M. Swinnen and published by CEPS. This book was released on 2008 with total page 39 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For decades, the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) of the European Union survived many attempts to abolish it, and it acquired a reputation for being virtually impossible to reform in any meaningful way. Finally, during the tenure of Franz Fischler as European Commissioner for Agriculture from 1995 to 2004, the most radical reform in the policy's history was implemented. Defying the skepticism of friends and foes, Fischler managed to fundamentally transform the nature of the CAP. This book is the first to review the reforms that were implemented, to analyze how they came about, and to explain which forces made them possible. It brings together perspectives from inside and outside the policy community, including from those closely involved in the policy debates, and an interdisciplinary perspective from economists and political scientists. The authors are senior policymakers and well-respected academics. Contributors include Christophe Crombez (University of Leuven and Stanford University), Wyn Grant (University ofWarwick), Christian H.C.A. Henning (University of Kiel), Tim Josling (Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies and Stanford University), Rolf Moehler (formerly of the Directorate-General for Agriculture and Rural Development of the European Commission), Alessandro Olper (University of Milan), Corrado Pirzio-Biroli (RISE Foundation), Jan Pokrivcak (Slovak Agricultural University), and Barbara Syrrakos (New School for Social Research).

Book The Economics of Risk

Download or read book The Economics of Risk written by Donald J. Meyer and published by W.E. Upjohn Institute. This book was released on 2003 with total page 192 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Annotation This book contains a collection of papers that address various aspects of risk, including riskmanagement and how it is applied to decisionmaking and the impact of risk on markets

Book The Exchange

Download or read book The Exchange written by and published by . This book was released on 1999 with total page 744 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: