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We estimate a time series model of weather shocks on English wheat yields for the early nineteenth century and use it to predict weather effects on yield levels from 1697 to 1871. This reveals that yields in the 1690s were depressed by unusually poor weather; and those in the late 1850s were inflated by unusually good weather. This has led researchers to overestimate the underlying growth of yields over the period by perhaps 50%. Correcting for this effect would largely reconcile the conflicting primal and dual estimates of productivity growth over the period.

The objective of this study is to make a further contribution to the debate on the causes of economic growth in the European Continent. It explains why agricultural labour productivity differences did not converge between 1950 and 2005 in Europe. We propose an econometric model, one combining both proximate and fundamental causes of economic growth. The results show that the continuous exit of labour power from the sector, coupled with the increased use of productive factors originating in other sectors of the economy, caused the efficiency of agricultural workers to rise. However, we offer a complete explanation of the role played by institutions and geographical factors. Thus, we detect a direct and inverse relation between membership of the EU and the Communist bloc and the productivity of agricultural labour. In addition, strong support for agriculture affected productivity negatively.

This article applies a constructivist perspective to the persistent transatlantic divergence over the regulation of genetically modified foods and crops. Political economy and institutionalism have so far dominated the literature. Notwithstanding their important insights, to achieve a better understanding of the nature and depth of transatlantic regulatory divergence, one must also study prevalent cultural values and identity-related public concerns regarding food and agriculture. These factors can be identified in public opinion trends and have fuelled resistance in Europe, while contributing to relative regulatory stability in the US. By conceptualizing cultural contexts as catalytic structures, the article also differs from more explicitly discursive accounts of political mobilization. Ultimately, however, an analysis of the cultural politics of agricultural biotechnology relies not only on the influence of pre-existing values and identities, but also takes account of the strategies (and material or other power resources) of political agents. © 2012 by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

The accession to the European Union has opened new challenges for Romanian agriculture, which must implement the principles of the Common Agricultural Policy. These principles aim at achieving high performance agriculture, capable to ensure food security for the population and to adequately develop the rural area. The paper intends to analyse the performance of Romanian agriculture in relation to the agriculture in the European Union and to highlight the recorded regional disparities in order to fully exploit the potential of agriculture. Data Envelopment Analysis is the used method, which provides information for the relative assessment of performance in relation to the decision-making units, considered a gauge. The results of the analysis show the poor performance of agriculture in Romania, and the efficiency recorded at the level of the development regions varies.

The world is banking on a major increase in food production, if the dietary needs and food preferences of an increasing, and increasingly rich, population are to be met. This requires the further expansion of modern agriculture, but modern agriculture rests on a small number of highly productive crops and its expansion has led to a significant loss of global biodiversity. Ecologists have shown that biodiversity loss results in lower plant productivity, while agricultural economists have linked biodiversity loss on farms with increasing variability of crop yields, and sometimes lower mean yields. In this paper we consider the macro-economic consequences of the continued expansion of particular forms of intensive, modern agriculture, with a focus on how the loss of biodiversity affects food production. We employ a quantitative, structurally estimated model of the global economy, which jointly determines economic growth, population and food demand, agricultural innovations and land conversion. We show that even small effects of agricultural expansion on productivity via biodiversity loss might be sufficient to warrant a moratorium on further land conversion.

Is a lack of domestic energy resources necessarily a limiting factor to growth, as suggested for example by the work of Robert C. Allen? We examine the case of Denmark -- a country which historically had next to no domestic energy resources -- for which we present new historical energy accounts for the years 1800-2011. Focusing on the period of the first Industrial Revolution, we demonstrate that Denmark’s take off at the end of the nineteenth century was in fact relatively energy dependent. We relate this to her well-known agricultural transformation and development through the dairy industry. The Danish cooperative creameries, which spread throughout the country over the last two decades of the nineteenth century, were dependent on coal – a point which has not been stressed before in the literature. Denmark had next to no domestic coal deposits, but we demonstrate that her geography allowed cheap availability throughout the country through imports. Thus, Denmark might be seen as the exception that proves the rule: although modern energy forms are important for growth, domestic energy resources are not necessary, as long as it is possible to import them cheaply from elsewhere.

In this paper we introduce a new source of data to economic history: palynological data or, in other words, information about pollen grains which are preserved in the bottom sediments of various water basins. We discuss how this data is collected and how it should be interpreted; develop new methods for aggregating this information into regional trends in agricultural output; construct an extensive dataset with a large number of pollen sites from Central Europe; and use our methods to study the economic history of Greater Poland, Lesser Poland, Bohemia, Brandenburg, and Lower Saxony since the first century AD.

We investigate the costs of transportation regulation using the example of agricultural markets in the United States. Using a large database of prices by state of agricultural commodities, we find that the coefficient of variation (as a measure of market integration between states) falls for many commodities until the First World War. We demonstrate that this reflected changes in transportation costs which in turn in the long run depended on productivity growth in railroads. 1920 marked a change in this relationship, however, and between the First and Second World Wars we find considerable disintegration of agricultural markets, ultimately as a consequence of the 1920 Transportation Act. We argue that this benefited railroad companies in the 1920s and workers in the 1930s, and we put forward an estimate of the welfare losses for the consumers of railroad services (i.e. agricultural producers and final consumers).

This research examines the climatic origins of the diffusion of Neolithic agriculture across countries and archaeological sites. The theory suggests that a foraging society's history of climatic shocks shaped the timing of its adoption of farming. Specifically, as long as climatic disturbances did not lead to a collapse of the underlying resource base, the rate at which hunter-gatherers were climatically propelled to experiment with their habitats determined the accumulation of tacit knowledge complementary to farming. Consistent with the proposed hypothesis, the empirical investigation demonstrates that, conditional on biogeographic endowments, climatic volatility has a hump-shaped effect on the timing of the adoption of agriculture.

Recent distressing trends in climate change, population explosion and deforestation inspired this paper, which completes existing literature by providing empirical justification to hypothetical initiatives on the impact of population growth on forest sustainability in Africa. Using three instruments of forest exploitation, the study shows how rural, agricultural and national population growths affect forest-area and agricultural-land. In this particular study the findings indicate that instruments of forest exploitation do not explain changes in forest-area and agricultural-land beyond population growth mechanisms. Hence, population growth channels are a driving force by which forest-area and agricultural-land are depleted and expanded respectively. As a policy implication in the process of deforestation, a balanced approach is needed to take account of the interests of both; a green economy promoting sustainable development and the growing population needs.

This paper examines the effects of deforestation on the welfare of rural communities in the Congo Basin. Using moment conditions of agricultural and forest exploitations, findings indicate deforestation significantly improves welfare both at overall-rural and agricultural household per capita income levels. As a policy implication, in the process of forest exploitation a balanced approach is needed to take account of the interests of both rural communities, timber companies and international forest-sustainability standards. This should require among other things, the development and implementation of sustainable forest management plans by timber companies, exclusion from harvesting species that are important to local communities, compensation of timber companies for compliance with management plans as well as involvement of rural communities in monitoring the activities of timber companies.

This paper examines the effects of deforestation on the welfare of rural communities in the Congo Basin. Using moment conditions of agricultural and forest exploitations, findings indicate deforestation significantly improves welfare both at overall-rural and agricultural household per capita income levels. As a policy implication, in the process of forest exploitation a balanced approach is needed to take account of the interests of both rural communities, timber companies and international forest-sustainability standards. This should require among other things, the development and implementation of sustainable forest management plans by timber companies, exclusion from harvesting species that are important to local communities, compensation of timber companies for compliance with management plans as well as involvement of rural communities in monitoring the activities of timber companies.

We consider a world in which the mode of food production, foraging or agriculture, is endogenous, and in which technology grows exogenously. Within a model of coalition formation, we allow individuals to form co-operative communities (bands) of foragers or farmers rationally. At the lowest levels of technology, equilibrium entails the grand coalition of foragers, a co-operative structure which avoids over-exploitation of the environment. But at a critical state of technology, the co-operative structure breaks down through an individually rational splintering of the band. At this stage, there can be an increase in work and through the over-exploitation of the environment, a food crisis. In the end, technological growth may lead to a one-way transition from foraging to agriculture.

Until about 13,000 years ago all humans obtained their food through hunting and gathering, but thereafter people in some parts of the world began a transition to agriculture. Recent data strongly implicate climate change as the driving force behind the transition in southwest Asia. We propose a model of this process in which population and technology respond endogenously to climate. After a period of favorable environmental conditions during which regional population grew, an abrupt climate reversal forced people to take refuge at a few favored sites. The resulting spike in local population density reduced the marginal product of labor in foraging and made agriculture attractive. Once agriculture was initiated, rapid technological progress through artificial selection led to domesticated plants. Farming became a permanent part of the regional economy when this productivity growth was combined with climate recovery. The available data on cases of transition and non-transition are consistent with this model but are often inconsistent with rival explanations.

This paper reviews the main theories and evidence regarding the prehistoric shift from hunting and gathering to agriculture, an event which took place for the first time some 10,000 years ago. The transition, which is also known as the Neolithic Revolution, led to the rise of civilisation as we know it, and seems to have borne the seeds for the later process of industrialisation and for economic growth in general. The paper provides a brief historical survey of the leading hypotheses concerning the rise of agriculture proposed in the archaeological and anthropological literature. It then turns to a more detailed review of the theories proposed in the economic literature.

The article models the transition from a hunter–gatherer economy to agricultural production, a crucial event in history which made possible the endogenous technological progress that ultimately led to the Industrial Revolution. We further present evidence showing that geographic and initial biogeographic conditions exerted decisive influence on the location and timing of transitions to sedentary agriculture, to complex social organization and, eventually, to modern industrial production. Evidence from a large cross-section of countries indicates that the effects of geography and biogeography on contemporary levels of economic development are remarkably strong, a result that contrasts with several recent studies where the effect runs solely through institutions.

This paper analyses the performance of the Romanian agriculture as against the EU agriculture from a historic perspective in order to reveal the gaps and to demythologize the assertion saying that "Romania has been Europe's most productive cereal-producing agriculture". The findings resulted from the survey based on data provided by Eurostat - the Statistics of the European Commission, by national statistics and various national and international publications show that the Romanian agriculture has been, in its historical evolution, in a European marginal zone from the point of view of economic performance and has not been able to ensure food security and increased export of value added agricultural products, while the global demand is much higher than the supply and some EU countries have reached their maximal productivity.