In the course of economic development there is a general downward trend of agricultural employment, although structural change in agriculture is often delayed. In the EU-15, agricultural employment decreased by -2.3% p.a. (measured in regular persons) and -3.0% p.a. (measured in annual working...

Agricultural data systems remain based upon now obsolete concepts. In particular, the "full-time, family farm" is still organizing concepts for much of the farm data system, and for agricultural policies. Yet farming has clearly bifurcated into: a relatively small number of large farms that...

The majority of farm households in OECD countries earn more off-farm income than farm income, even including government payments. While this is a well recognized fact its implications for risk management have not been well recognized. Current efforts to reform farm support have focused on the...

Foot and Mouth Disease (FMD) is one of the most contagious animal diseases. Because of the easy transfer between animals, FMD is of importance to the domestic market, but also to international agricultural trade. Infected countries are often confronted with rigorous measures implemented by their...

Why did US farmers fare poorly even as most other segments of the US economy prospered during the 1990s? I develop three arguments to explain why US agriculture was prospered in the 1970s but has underperformed relative to the rest of the US economy in most of the 1980s and 1990s. Measures of...

This paper presents a new model which incorporates features of developing country agriculture that may be critical in shaping the welfare outcomes of alternative agricultural policies. The model features heterogeneous households linked through markets in a rural economy-wide structure, with...

Remarks on the future structure of agriculture presented at a departmental seminar, 1974

Remarks on Public Policy decision making presented at a departmental seminar, September, 1974

Cotton is one of the most important smallholder cash crops in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). How to ensure input supply, credit recovery and competition is a subject of intense policy debate. This paper examines the performance of cotton sector development policies in Mozambique and Zambia. Both...

Aggregate farm income is the standard measure of farm household economic well-being. In Canada farm groups have used a multi-year decline in one measure of farm income - realized net income, to press for increased financial transfers. In the first part of the paper income data is reviewed to...