The Mama Lus Frut scheme was established to increase the productivity of smallholder palm-oil plantations in Papua New Guinea. ACIAR project ASEM/1999/084, ‘Improving Productivity of the Smallholder Oil Palm Sector in Papua New Guinea: a Study of Biophysical and Socioeconomic Interactions’,...

Project PHT/1990/035, ‘Integrating Grain Protectants into Storage Pest Management’ was supported by ACIAR for nearly four years from 1992 to 1995. The project was based in China and Australia. Project activity within Australia included the further enhancement of an expert system that had...

Larvae of the butterfly Erionota thrax, the banana skipper, destroy the leaves of bananas by eating them and forming massive protective rolls of leaf tissue. They were first observed in north-western Papua New Guinea in 1983 and over the next 6 years spread throughout the mainland at the rate of...

This report sets out some broad ideas about how poverty evaluation could be conducted for ACIAR research projects. As with good benefit–cost analysis, there are good practices that need to be observed when undertaking poverty analysis. While poverty is a broad concept, and can be addressed...

We estimate a distance function of grains production using generalized method of moments that enables us to accommodate multiple outputs of farmers as well as address the endogeneity issues that are related with the use of distance functions for multi-output production. Using a panel data set of...

This article aims at presenting different approaches to the phenomenon of social capital. The concept of social capital is ambiguous and that is why we will highlight a number of definitions of this notion. The central attention of the paper focuses on the relationship between social capital and...

Today, more than ever, development of agriculture leans on science research results and their practical application. Research in the field of agriculture is conducted by large network of public institutions, institutes and universities are mostly directed toward improvement of production....

Billions of dollars flow into low-income countries each year to help alleviate poverty. Assessing the effectiveness of these dollars is necessary to measure program success and to allocate such funds among competing projects. This study measures the impact of the first phase of the Cocoa...

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An economic evaluation of three ACIAR projects whose primary objective was to improve postharvest grain drying in Thailand and Australia is provided in this report. During 1983–1996, ACIAR invested A$1.2 million in research designed to improve grain drying in these countries. Based on current...