The purpose of this study is to assess the potential of clustering in the development of agriculture and rural communities in China. We shall examine in detail the food industry, which is the link in the food chain that propels the industrialization of agriculture, and identify instances of...

The braconid larval parasitoid Cotesia flavipes Cameron was introduced from Asia into East and Southern African region starting in 1993 to control the invasive exotic maize stemborer Chilo partellus (Swinhoe) (Lepidoptera: Crambidae). A quasi-experiment was constructed using farmers that applied...

This study develops and uses a programming model for farm-level resource use and output supply response to estimate the effects of agricultural land tax in South Africa: A case study of Free State, a region of extremely large commercial farms that gained their size and economic heft during the...

Previous studies commonly assume that the effects of introducing and ending cereal price subsidies on the poor’s nutrient intakes are symmetric. We question the assumption of symmetry and show that the poor’s nutrient intakes respond asymmetrically to declines and increases in the price of...

This paper deals with the estimation of a random coefficient model. The virtue of this approach is that it considers firm heterogeneity, which conventional SFA models do not. When the model is applied to Polish farms, the results indicate that the conventional random and fixed effect models...

Seasonal wage labour was rarely distinguished from the permanent one in farm-household models although it has sharply increased in developed countries. Therefore, we propose to endogenize the demand for this peculiar labour type and highlight the trade-offs for the various labour combinations on...

This paper examines changes in agriculture and livelihood system in four Chinese villages, on the basis of two waves village-wide household surveys conducted over a decade interval. To identify the factors that are important in accounting for variation in household income change, an income...

The North China Plain (NCP) covers an area of around 328,000 km2 and is one of the most important regions of cereal crop production in China. Wheat and maize rotations and one season cotton are the most common cropping systems. The region contributes at an amount of about 50% to the countries...

In face of climate change and other environmental challenges, inclusion of perennial forage shrubs in Australian agricultural systems has the potential to deliver multiple benefits: increased whole-farm profitability and improved natural resource management. The profitability of shrubs was...

The objective of this study is to assess the technical efficient frontier of rice farms using input-oriented data envelopment analysis. The frontier represents the minimum applicable level of efficiency of inputs given the current level of yields, technologies, and managerial ability among the...