Tag: agriculture

In the agricultural economics literature, there is a lack of consistent results concerning the relationship between operational subsidies and labour productivity. This premise lay behind the research outlined in this paper, which aims to determine the direction and strength of the relationship between several factors influencing labour productivity, including the subsidy rate index and labour productivity in Polish farms. Special attention has been paid to quantitative evaluation of the effects of subsidies on operational activity. The study was carried out at the farm level, divided into quartile groups defined in terms of labour productivity. The panel data regression method was used to analyse data from Farm Accountancy Data Network for the years 2010-2018. It was found that the factors positively influencing labour productivity in agriculture were capital per employee and utilised agricultural area per employee, while labour productivity was negatively affected by the subsidy rate. In smaller farms where low labour productivity is observed, subsidies for operational activity are an important source of income  generation and consumption financing. The financial surplus in such farms is not high enough to finance farm development. In such cases, subsidies become a factor slowing down processes of farm structural change because farmers are not ...

This paper has used multilateral foreign divestment (FD) data covering 1991 to 2017 for 50 countries, fitted to an optimised model based on microeconomic theory, to estimate the drivers of FD out of agriculture. Identifying the factors that determine FD would offer an opportunity for policymakers to know what kind of policies can discourage FD. Furthermore, knowledge of the directional effect would offer a way to use the policy variables to appropriately influence FD. Market size, exchange rate, political regime characteristics and transitions as well as the level of development drive FD out of agriculture globally. Trade openness and access to land resources have not been found to determine FD. Consequently, agricultural economy managers should work towards increasing the size of the agricultural economy; they should also liaise with their respective country’s Central Banks with a view to ensure exchange rate stability, and with their governments in order to promote better political regime characteristics and smoother political transitions.

The Covid-19 pandemic has changed the dynamics of the overall economy, impacting many fields, including the agricultural sector. In this paper, we examine two important commodities of the agricultural sector, namely oats and wheat, during the Covid-19 spread and the lockdown measures. Using relevant time series specifications, we establish a hypothesis regarding the effect of the Covid-19 pandemic on these two commodities. Based on our findings, the commodities were affected by the Covid-19 spread and moreover, the Covid-19 confirmed cases provide useful information for the prediction and forecasting of these values. Our findings are robust, since the out-of-sample forecasting accuracy of the alternative model employed, that explicitly incorporates the pandemic induced by the Covid-19 disease, is superior to the baseline model.

Azerbaijan is a highly oil-dependent country that needs to find new avenues for increasing its international competitiveness. Therefore, this paper analyses the competitiveness of various fruit and vegetable products by calculating domestic resource cost ratios, using the data for 2015–16 as representing base years. Out of the 10 products analysed, almost all were found to have high competitive potential, especially on the Russian and European markets. In order to maintain competitiveness in the arable sector, however, Azerbaijan will need to achieve dynamic improvements in productivity and run a wise agricultural policy.

The global food system, from fertiliser production to food packaging, is responsible for approximately one-third of all humancaused greenhouse gas emissions. The ecological footprint captures the ecological assets that a population needs to produce, the natural resources it consumes, and to absorb its waste. The carbon footprint as the main component represents more than 50% of the total ecological footprint. Carbon footprint is said to be a widely accepted indicator of GHG intensity, originating from different economic activities. Due to its important role in raising awareness of global warming, scientists and policymakers also use it as a management tool for estimating environmental pollution. In contrast, the application of carbon footprint on the agricultural sector is still limited in the literature. The paper aims to explore what agriculture-specific factors influence the carbon footprint at a global level based on 1961-2013 data. The study employs feasible generalized least squares estimator along with panel unit root tests. Results show that carbon footprint is stimulated by economic development and agricultural production (arable land, agricultural machinery, fertilizer use), and in addition, agricultural exporting has a positive impact on the carbon footprint. By contrast, the growth of carbon footprint is negatively related to the higher share ...

It is generally believed that agricultural interventionism represents the payment of political rents to farmers. We attempt to show that the concept of political rent known as the rent-seeking theory is not valid for agricultural policy. It is not justified to identify the entire subsidies paid to agriculture as a ‘political rent’, since political rents cannot be taken to include payments for the supply of public goods or those transfers which compensate for market imperfections. Our work aims firstly to review the concepts of rents and rent-seeking, and to develop a methodology for quantifying political rents in agricultural policy. We perform comparative analyses with the aim of calculating the ‘pure political rent’, based on the input-output approach for representative farms according to the EU FADN typology and on a decomposition of the Hicks–Moorsteen TFP index for the period 2004-2012 and 27 European Union Member States. The calculations of political rents show that historical payments are neither a rational nor a just solution. No attempts have yet been made in the literature to quantify political rents, even though this might lead to an improvement in the effectiveness of public expenditure. The original methodology is proposed for valuing these items.

The environmental impacts of agricultural policies must be quantified to perform full cost-benefit analyses and make informed policy decisions. In this paper I use a unique panel data set to estimate the effect of changes in cropland on lake water quality. Fifteen years of water quality measurements across over 100 lakes are combined with satellite imagery and weather data. Using a dynamic panel data model, I find that the elasticity of water quality to cropland is 0.0535. To understand the policy implications, I estimate a second model to find the elasticity of cropland to crop prices. I combine these estimates to analyze the effect of the Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS). I find that the RFS decreased lake water quality; however, the magnitude of this effect is negligible.

This study examines the impact of internal and external knowledge on firm productivity in the Swedish agricultural sector. It combines theories from regional economics about the geographical aspects of knowledge with traditional theories on the role of knowledge in productivity in agriculture. The study is a firm-level analysis using an unbalanced panel between the years 2002 and 2011 in Sweden. The results show that these firms are positively affected by employees with formal education related to the sector. Higher knowledge levels have a greater impact than lower levels. External knowledge, such as localised spillovers, is also important, but the results on this factor are more ambiguous.

This paper discusses changes in population and labour in family farming in Poland. We analyse the size and socio-demographic characteristics of the farming population, the degree of utilisation of own labour resources on the farm and the assessment of labour inputs in family farming. Our research uses data from IERiGŻ-PIB field studies as well as general statistics. In comparison to the European Union as a whole, the socio-demographic (education and age) structure of the farming population in Poland is relatively favourable. There has been a significant reduction in the share of persons working exclusively on the family farm while the share of those with off -farm employment has increased. Around 500,000 persons who are not registered as unemployed and may be considered as redundant from the point of view of farming activities and represent hidden unemployment. We conclude that employment on family farms has a decreasing role in reducing the imbalance in the rural labour market in Poland.

This paper explores the slow pace of structural change which has characterised the post-transition period in Romania and sheds light on the dynamics of labour adjustments. A multinomial logit is employed to investigate the determinants of inter-sectoral labour movements in the period 2003-06. The high share of farm employment in Romania, mostly characterised by family workers and self-employed, suggests that agriculture serves as a buffer against unemployment. Whereas the main channel of farm labour outflows is closely related to retirement, movements to other sectoral employment are significantly hindered by the low levels of education. The findings are important from a policy point of view, suggesting the need for investments in human capital, specifically in education of the rural population with the purpose of enhancing the mobility of labour and facilitating a smooth transition across activities. At the same time, priority should be placed on rural development to encourage the diversification of the rural economy and the creation of alternative sources of income from non-agricultural activities.