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Existing agri-environment subsidy schemes have suffered from poor uptake. The prospect of the UK’s exit from the EU means that agricultural financial subsidies will likely need to be redesigned. This paper leverages insights from prospect theory to test three different aspects of policy framing, which we hypothesised will affect the decisions made by farmers in a policy context. Using a randomised quasi-experimental survey on UK farmers, we find evidence that mental accounting and loss aversion affects policy-related decision-making. Our findings have implications for the design of future policy, and specifically highlight the importance of (i) whether payments are integrated or segregated, and the need for a reduction in application burden; (ii) the labelling applied to agricultural funding schemes; (iii) and the importance of reference points in devising new scheme alternatives.

In the agriculture negotiations, developing members remain concerned about the inherent inequities in the Agreement on Agriculture (AoA) which allows developed members to provide huge product-speci...

Micro-enterprising is crucial for improving rural households’ food and nutrition status in subsistence agrarian economy like Malawi. There are no studies that have concurrently analyzed the roles of farm and non-farm micro-enterprise diversity on household dietary diversity (proxy measure of household food access) in Malawi. With the following objectives, the study jointly (1) analyzed the effects of farm and non-farm micro-enterprises diversifications on rural household food access, and (2) analyzed relevant socio-economic and institutional factors on household dietary diversity in selected districts of Malawi. Data were collected from 1827 households; whereby 779 households were engaged in some kind of farm and non-farm micro-enterprises in six districts with high concentration of micro-businesses and population densities. Both parametric and parametric descriptive statistics, Poisson and Negative Binomial regressions were used for estimations. Of all the factors associated with household dietary diversity, farm and non-farm enterprise diversity, as well as expenditure on food items had played major roles in influencing household dietary diversity. Increasing farm and non-farm micro-enterprise diversity by one micro-business group is associated with the possibility of consuming or having access to all 12 groups of food by the households. Holding other things constant, it is surprisingly found that nutrition education (34.2%, ρ=0.000

Agricultural subsidies are considered an essential tool of policy to improve food production (or productivity), farmers’ income and welfare in developing countries. There is no doubt that the role of subsidies programmes is important for farmers or rural areas, but impacts of subsidies are different from crops, inputs, government programmes and so on. Over the past years, Ghana’s agricultural sector has experienced policies changes such as Ghana Shared Growth and Development Agenda (GSGDA I and II), Food and Agricultural Sector Development Policy (FASDEP I and II) and Medium Term Agricultural Sector Investment Plan (METASIP I and II) that support improving agricultural productivity, creating jobs and increasing income. The government of Ghana recognizes that food and nutrition are high priorities and conducts various subsidy programmes of agricultural inputs and outputs. Rice is the second most consumed crop in Ghana. Rice consumption in Ghana would keep increasing due to the growing population, urbanization and change in consumer lifestyles or food preference. This study analyzed the impacts of different subsidy programmes on rice production acrossthe 10 regions in Ghana. The data used in the study starts from 2005 to 2018. The first estimation model evaluated the impacts of before-subsidies and after-subsidies on rice production in Ghana. The results from the first model showed that rice production increased after subsidies. Specifically, fertilizer after subsidies had a positive impact on rice production. However, labor after subsidies did not have statistically significant effects on rice production. The second estimation model compared two different subsidyprogrammes: Fertilizer Subsidy Programme (FSP) and Planting for Food and Jobs (PFJ). This study found fertilizer with FSP was more effective than with PFJ; however, labor with FSP was less effective with PFJ. The programme of FSP was intensively focused on fertilizer; however, the programme PFJ aims to cover a diverse range of fertilizer, seed, extension services, marketing and so on. Key words: Rice, Ghana, Fertilizer, Labour, Subsidy programme, Random effects

This study aims to explore farmers’ perspectives on land management for agricultural entrepreneurship in Udayapur, Nepal. The research is based on cross-sectional explanatory research design, and a structured questionnaire was administered for collecting the data from 297 farmers in Tiryuga, Chudandhigadhi, and Belaka municipalities in Udayapur. The results were derived with the help of descriptive and inferential analysis using STATA. The results show that agricultural training and market information play significant roles in gaining awareness about agricultural entrepreneurship and ideas on land management. Agricultural training, credit facilities, and market information have a positive relationship with an awareness of agricultural entrepreneurship and ideas on land management. In contrast, the age, land size, crop cycle, credit facility and agricultural subsidy have a negative relationship with them. This study suggests the need for increasing and enhancing the knowledge for farmers about agricultural entrepreneurship and proper land management in Nepal. The outcome of this study remains significant mostly in developing nations like Nepal and even in the developed ones to feed the growing population’s increasing food demand, as land area is limited on earth and the population living on it is swelling.

Agricultural subsidies play an essential role in agricultural and rural development in many developed economies. Countries have implemented agricultural subsidy policies with a focus on food security and environmental protection. Agricultural production is risky and uncertain, influencing the efficiency of agricultural subsidies. This study develops a theoretical framework to analyze the effects of production uncertainties on the efficiency of agricultural subsidy policies under the double constraints of food security and environmental protection. The basic model is investigated under six different conditions, and expanded research also is presented. Our models show that uncertainty, including output, cost, and price uncertainties, and technology conversion efficiency significantly affects the efficiency of agricultural subsidies. Under high technology conversion efficiency, output-oriented subsidies are appropriate for food security and environmental protection goals. Policymakers should take both uncertainty and production efficiency into consideration when choosing between input-oriented and output-oriented subsidy policies.

At present, China’s food security situation is grim because cultivated land is the basis of food security, but abandoned cultivated land has become a common phenomenon of land use change. This study used the panel data of household survey in China to analyze the change of cultivated land use behavior and influencing factors of farming households that contracted cultivated land from 2010 to 2016, and examined the probability change and regional difference from the perspectives of explicit abandonment and implicit abandonment. The results show that:First, cultivated land contracted by farmers experienced both explicit and implicit abandonments.Implicit abandonment is relatively large, but the phenomenon of abandonment in the future will gradually decrease. Second, in terms of consistency, investment in seeds, pesticides, and fertilizers,and the implementation of agricultural subsidy policies have significant inhibitory effects on land abandonment, but their marginal effects will be reduced. Land expropriation will prompt farmers to choose land abandonment, which has a negative long-term effect. Third, the influencing factors of explicit and implicit abandonments are different. Explicit abandonment is significant in hilly areas.The scale of cultivated land and the strategy of returning the grain plots to forestry and grass can reduce the probability of implicit abandonment for farmers. Natural hazards will cause explicit and implicit land abandonment, the marginal effect of natural hazards on explicit abandonment will be reduced, but the marginal effect on implicit abandonment will increase. Last, in terms of spatial differences, it is still possible that the cultivated land in the economically developed areas will experience an explicit abandonment, and the main grain-producing areas may continue to experience an implicit abandonment. In the future, it is necessary to formulate and improve relevant land and agricultural policies, continue to increase agricultural investment, carry out largescale land transfers, and so on in order to solve the problem of farmland abandonment.

This paper provides evidence on the effects of US and Chinese trade policies on the 2020 US presidential election. In response to a series of US tariffs imposed on Chinese goods, China imposed retaliatory tariffs, especially on US agricultural products, which largely affected Republican-leaning counties. The US government then subsidized US farmers by providing direct payments through the Market Facilitation Program (MFP) to mitigate the Chinese retaliatory tariffs. Using the universe of actual county-level MFP disbursement data, we first document that US agricultural subsidies relative to the Chinese retaliatory tariff exposure were especially higher in solidly Republican counties, implying that Trump allocated rents in exchange for political patronage. Then, we find that US agricultural subsidies outweighed Chinese retaliatory tariffs and led to an increase in the Republican vote share in the 2020 presidential election. Finally, we uncover evidence that China’s retaliatory trade policy and US agricultural policy exacerbated political polarization in the US, especially the rural-urban divide.

This paper builds a theoretical model based on a representative peasant household in the neoclassical model, comprehensively considers three types of farmer households in China, and evaluates the effects of the agricultural subsidy policy under equilibrium conditions. Based on the two bottom lines of guaranteeing China’s grain security and ensuring no large-scale return to poverty, this paper uses 2010, 2012, and 2014 tracking survey data from the Mutual Aid Fund for Poverty-Stricken Villages in China to construct an econometric model to evaluate agricultural subsidy effectiveness from the three aspects of farmers’ total sown area, total grain output, and total income. The research draws the following conclusions: (1) Agricultural subsidies can significantly increase the sown area, grain production, and total income of farmers in poverty-stricken areas, which is conducive to improving the farmers’ comprehensive capacity for grain production as well as income, and this conclusion remains valid after performing a series of robustness tests and solving endogeneity problems. (2) The effects of the agricultural subsidy policy are affected by natural conditions, economic development levels, and functional orientation of grain production in different regions, and they have divergent influences on farmers’ total sown area, total output, and total income. (3) Agricultural subsidies boost farmers’ willingness to cultivate grain, reduce land abandonment, and increase the total sown area, total output, and total grain income. The willingness to cultivate grain is an important mechanism that affects the effectiveness of the agricultural subsidy policy.

China has made great achievements in agricultural development since the “open and reform policy”. However, due to the long time high intensity development mode of farmland, its soil fertility has been seriously deteriorated during the past few decades, which lead to the decline of agricultural products quality, loss of biodiversity and deterioration of environment. Conservation agriculture (CA),which is claimed to generate a number of agronomic, economic and environmental benefits, has been increasingly promoted world widely. Farmers’ adoption behaviors of CA technologies and their influencing factors have been widely explored in both developed and developing countries, but the effect on farmers’ income has been still in fierce debated, of which, the endogeneity caused by farmers’ adoption behavior in developing countries has attracted the most attention. Based on a face to face field survey with 454 rice growers in Jianghan Plain, China, this study aims at shedding some light on the potential impact of CA adoption on farmer’s agricultural income by applying propensity score matching method (PSM) and endogenous switching regression model (ESR). The empirical results showed that: (1) Households in Jianghan Plain showed high participation rate in CA technologies adoption, which consisted of straw returning field and crawfish-rice system in this paper. 91.90% of the interviewed farmers have adopted the at least one of the two above technologies. (2) The average treatment effect (ATT) of the ESR for those who have adopted CA was -1.638, and the average treatment effect of non-adopters (ATU) was -1.244. These indicated that the income effects have a negative feedback to farmers’ decision on CA adoption (43.09%). Further, farmers with deeper cognition of CA, less level of agricultural subsidy were more likely to adopt conservation agricultural technologies. (3) After capturing the endogeneity caused by unobservable factors in ESR results, the average treatment effect (ATT) was -8.681 and the average treatment effect (ATU) of non-adopters was -0.314, which indicated that adopting CA technologies reduced farmers’ agricultural income by 78.68%. Additionally, cognition level of CA supporting policies significantly improved the adoption rate of CA, while traditional agricultural subsidies imposed significantly negative effect on the adoption of CA. Therefore, to help farmers benefit from the CA technologies adoption, policy makers in Jianghan Plain should design more targeted CA supporting policies such as ecological compensation mechanism and CA technology promotion training program. Particularly, due to the CA technologies were adopted involuntarily in Jianghan Plain and the determinants of the CA technologies vary considerably among the regions, the above results can only provide policy implication for regions with similar situations.

We consider a three-level contract-farming supply chain with a risk-averse farmer, a risk-neutral supplier and a risk-neutral distributor, in which the farmer faces a yield uncertainty and the government offers agricultural subsidy to the farmer. The CVaR criterion is used to describe the risk-averse behavior of the farmer. We derive the optimal strategies of the supply chain and perform some sensitivity analysis to investigate the effects of the government subsidy and other factors. The results indicate that, as the subsidy increases, the farmer's total target production increases. Further analysis shows that the total production increase is mainly from the increased farm size, and the farmer's endeavor actually decreases. In addition, the results indicate that the profits of the supplier and the distributor both increase with respect to the subsidy. However, the impact of the subsidy on the farmer's profit depends on the farmer's degree of risk-averse. In particular, the impact of the subsidy to the farmer's profit tends to be positive for farmers with high degree of risk-averse, and the impact tends to be negative for those with low degree of risk-averse. The sensitivity analysis is also performed for the level of yield uncertainty in term of the standard deviation.

Policymakers and donors increasingly rely on farmer organisations (FOs) when implementing rural development strategies, though research suggests that targeted groups such as poorer households tend to participate less in FOs than richer ones. Here, we discuss mechanisms that may contribute towards the inclusion of disadvantaged households, using primary data from Zambian FOs involved in implementing an agricultural subsidy programme, and applying qualitative comparative analysis to identify individual and combined effects of four explanatory factors on inclusion. Our results suggest long-term commitment as a necessary condition. We further identify three alternative pathways that explain inclusion while within-case analysis describes their underlying causal mechanism: inclusion develops in FOs that show commitment and either provide financial services to vulnerable members, promote social identities or compensate disadvantaged members for not being able to access subsidised inputs. These results can explain why some FOs are more effective than others in reaching disadvantaged target groups.

The farm bill is the primary legislative vehicle for federal food and agricultural policies in the United States that is renewed roughly once every five years. Most current farm bill subsidy and other domestic support programmes for agriculture have their origins in legislation introduced in the 1930s to alleviate poverty among farm households during the Great Depression. Although US farm households have enjoyed higher incomes and wealth than the average US family for many years, legislation to support agricultural commodity prices and to increase farm incomes has persisted. A new farm bill offers the US Congress an opportunity to reform agricultural subsidy policies. But if recent history is a guide, what will emerge is likely to resemble much of what was in the 2014 bill. As was the case with that bill, maintaining the status quo will represent a missed opportunity to cut farm subsidies and make agricultural programmes more market oriented, and be unlikely to improve trade relations for the United States in the context of its commitments under current World Trade Organization agreements. In many ways, agricultural policy in the United States seems to be firmly marching back to the past rather than looking to the future.

While agri-environmental policies that target different problems are often simultaneously implemented at the same place, little attention has been paid to the interactions of the policies, either in policy design or evaluation. The goal of this study is to understand the potential interactions (synergies or trade-offs) between an agricultural subsidy program and two payments for ecosystem services (PES) programs, namely the Conversion of Cropland to Forest Program (CCFP) and the Ecological Welfare Forest Program (EWFP), and their effects on household land use decisions. Data collected from 481 rural households in Anhui, China are used for the exploration. The Sustainable Livelihoods Framework is used to identify factors that may affect household land use decisions, i.e., whether to expand, stabilize, or shrink the cropland area, and further to identify whether to abandon or rent out land if the shrinkage decision is made. The results show that: (1) most rural households (58%) in the study area reduce cultivated land, and mostly via cropland abandonment, while only 16% of the interviewed households expand land area; (2) the most important factors determining cropland expansion include farm tools and transportation equipment, while the number of parcels and financial support are the dominant factors that stimulate households to adopt abandoning over renting-out decisions when deciding to shrink cropland; (3) EWFP payment has a significant direct impact on cropland management, while no significant influences are observed from the other two programs; (4) there exist complex trade-offs among the three government programs with similar or conflicting aims, which highlights the need to take policy interactions into account when designing new agri-environmental policies.

Understanding household labor and land allocation decisions under agro-environmental policies is challenging due to complex human-environment interactions. Here, we developed a spatially explicit agent-based model based on spatial and socioeconomic data to simulate households’ land and labor allocation decisions and investigated the impacts of two forest restoration and conservation programs and one agricultural subsidy program in rural China. Simulation outputs revealed that the forest restoration program accelerates labor out-migration and cropland shrink, while the forest conservation program promotes livelihood diversification via increasing non-farm employment. Meanwhile, the agricultural subsidy program keeps labor for cultivation on land parcels with good quality, but appears less effective for preventing marginal croplands from being abandoned. The policy effects on labor allocation substantially differ between rules based on bounded rational and empirical knowledge of defining household decisions, particularly on sending labor out-migrants and engaging in local off-farm jobs. Land use patterns showed that the extent to which households pursue economic benefits through shrinking cultivated land is generally greater under bounded rationality than empirical knowledge. Findings demonstrate nonlinear social-ecological impacts of the agro-environmental policies through time, which can deviate from expectations due to complex interplays between households and land. This study also suggests that the spatial agent-based model can represent adaptive decision-making and interactions of human agents and their interactions in dynamic social and physical environments.

Food and agricultural policies shape what types of food are produced and their movement through the food supply chain at the global, regional, and local levels. Well-functioning, ideal food supply chains provide sufficient safe, nutritious food for everyone around the world. This chapter discusses the many different types of food supply policies relevant to diets and nutrition, as well as the role that different actors play in shaping these policies. Policies that affect food production and trade; processing and packaging; and markets, distribution, and public procurement represent opportunities to improve supply chains and leverage them for nutrition and health goals.

Agricultural credit is a vital policy in improving farm performance since agricultural households face financial constraints in their business. This study aims to: (1) examine the impact of credit s on agricultural productivity while investigating the difference in impact generated by loans originating from governmental program loans and nonprogram loans and; (2) identify the characteristics of farm households that influence the use of credit in their business. This study employed cross-sectional micro-data at the household level drawn from the 2013 Indonesian Agricultural Census, in which 86,922 rice farm households were randomly selected as the research sample. The model was examined by using Two-Stage Least Square to avoid the selectivity bias. Results show that credit originated from government programs has a small impact on agricultural productivity, although the significant correlation appears. Furthermore, the use of credit, both government programs, and non-programs are determined by socio-economic aspects, agricultural subsidy, perceptions on risks, and perception on-farm profitability. Based on the results, the provision of credit to agricultural activities has to be supported by the provision of supporting incentives, such as agricultural counseling and irrigation facilities, in order to boost agricultural productivity effectively.

This paper provides evidence on the unintended effects of US and Chinese trade policies on the 2020 US presidential election. In response to a series of US tariffs imposed on Chinese goods, China imposed retaliatory tariffs, especially on US agricultural products, which largely affected Republican-leaning counties. The US government then subsidized US farmers by providing direct payments through the Market Facilitation Program (MFP) to mitigate the Chinese retaliatory tariffs. Using the universe of actual county-level MFP disbursement data, we find that US agricultural subsidies outweighed Chinese retaliatory tariffs and led to an increase in the Republican vote share in the 2020 presidential election. The impact is more pronounced in solidly Republican states, implying that Trump allocated rents in exchange for political patronage. However, the MFP payments were not influential enough in swing states to win the election. Finally, we uncover evidence that China’s retaliatory trade policy and US agricultural policy unexpectedly exacerbated political polarization in the US, especially the rural-urban divide.

Tanielian A. 2020. Review: Market, capital, and foreign labor access for all Thai farmers. Asian J Agric 4: 52-70. In this quantitative study of agricultural economic indicators for Thailand, its provinces, and seventeen other countries it is shown that Thailand's agriculture sector desperately needs assistance to lift farmers out of poverty and Thailand out of the middle-income trap. Data shows diminishing activity in the agricultural sector may be harming productivity and growth. Prices and yields plateau and fall as producer costs increase and farm incomes remain among the lowest. In 2006 and 2014, the military ousted two Shinawatra Prime Ministers amid corruption and misappropriation scandals relating to failed agricultural subsidy schemes that cost the government billions of dollars, while failing to substantially improve the situations of millions of smallholder farmers throughout the Kingdom. Analysis of primary data and literature suggests Thai farmers lack sufficient access to labor, capital, and markets that would give them the resources to improve farming methods, hire short-term labor, and ultimately rise in socioeconomic status along with the rest of the population. Recommendations include a series of government-sponsored and joint public-private initiatives that organize farmers into unions and connect them with human, financial, scientific, market, and educational resources via a range of mobile applications.

Despite the wide technological development that has occurred in the last decades, Brazilian agribusiness is still susceptible to climatic weather conditions that can cause significant losses in crop productivity in certain areas. In order to provide more security to rural producers, the government has historically adopted some risk mitigation systems. One of the most common is that of subsidized agricultural insurance, which in Brazil since 2003, has been improved through the creation of the Rural Insurance Award (PSR) Subsidy Program. As this system is a strategic tool for both producers and the government, having knowledge of the probability of a certain climatic weather and the ability of these to cause damage to crops, makes the agricultural insurance system more effective in national agricultural development. In this way, in the present work, the activations of agricultural insurance in the municipalities of Maringá, Londrina and Irati in the state of Paraná were analyzed, comparing with planting simulations on different dates using the IrriPlus® software. The results obtained highlight the importance of the PSR for both rural producers and the public authorities and conclude that crop simulations have ample potential for predicting occurrences of weather conditions during the crop cycle, which can improve the efficiency of agricultural insurance. A pesar del amplio desarrollo tecnológico que ha ocurrido en las últimas décadas, la agroindustria brasileña aún está sujeta a condiciones climáticas que pueden causar pérdidas significativas en la productividad de los cultivos en ciertas áreas. Con el fin de brindar mayor seguridad a los productores rurales, históricamente el gobierno ha adoptado algunos sistemas de mitigación de riesgos. Uno de los más comunes es el seguro agrícola subsidiado, que en Brasil desde 2003 se mejoró con la creación del Programa de Subsidio de Prima de Seguro Rural (PSR). Dado que este sistema es una herramienta estratégica tanto para los productores como para las autoridades públicas, conocer la probabilidad de ocurrencia de un determinado evento climático y su capacidad de causar daños a los cultivos hace que el sistema de seguros agrarios sea más efectivo en el desarrollo agrícola nacional. Así, en el presente trabajo se analizaron siniestros de seguros agrícolas en los municipios de Maringá, Londrina e Irati en el estado de Paraná, comparándolos con simulaciones de plantaciones en diferentes fechas utilizando el software IrriPlus®. Los resultados obtenidos enfatizan la importancia del PSR tanto para los productores rurales como para las administraciones públicas y concluyen que las simulaciones de cultivos tienen un amplio potencial para predecir la ocurrencia de mal tiempo durante el ciclo del cultivo, lo que puede mejorar la eficiencia de los seguros agrarios. Apesar do amplo desenvolvimento tecnológico ocorrido nas últimas décadas, o agronegócio brasileiro ainda é passível de intempéries climáticas que podem causar perdas significativas na produtividade das culturas em determinadas áreas. Com o objetivo de fornecer mais segurança aos produtores rurais o poder público historicamente adota alguns sistemas de mitigação de riscos. Um dos mais comuns é o de seguro agrícola subsidiado, que no Brasil desde 2003, vem sendo aprimorado através da criação do Programa de Subvenção ao Prêmio do Seguro Rural (PSR). Sendo este sistema uma ferramenta estratégica tanto aos produtores quanto ao poder público, ter conhecimento da probabilidade de ocorrer determinada intempérie climática e da capacidade de estas causarem prejuízos às safras, faz com que o sistema de seguros agrícolas possa ser mais eficaz no desenvolvimento agrícola nacional. Desta forma, no presente trabalho foram analisados os acionamentos dos seguros agrícolas nos municípios de Maringá, Londrina e Irati no estado do Paraná, comparando com simulações de plantios em diferentes datas utilizando o software IrriPlus®. Os resultados obtidos salientam a importância do PSR tanto para os produtores rurais como para o poder público e concluem que as simulações de cultivos têm amplo potencial de prever ocorrências de intempéries climáticas durante o ciclo das culturas podendo aprimorar a eficiência do seguro agrícola.

The valuation of natural capital within individual farms could inform environmentally beneficial land use change and form the basis of agricultural subsidy schemes based on the provision of ecosystem services. Land cover extents can be used in a benefit transfer approach to produce monetary valuations of natural capital rapidly and at low cost. However, the methodology has not before been used within individual farms, and the impact of land cover data characteristics on the accuracy of valuations is uncertain. Here, we apply the approach to five UK farms of contrasting size, configuration and farming style, using three widely available land cover products. Results show that the land cover product used has a substantial impact on valuations, with differences of up to 58%, and the magnitude of this effect varies considerably according to the landscape structure of the farm. At most sites, valuation differences are driven by the extent of woodland recorded in the landscape, with higher resolution land cover products incorporating larger amounts of woodland through inclusion of smaller patches, leading to higher overall valuations. Integrating more accurate land cover data and accounting for the condition, configuration and location of natural capital has potential to improve the accuracy of valuations.

The current European agricultural subsidy policy cannot prevent the market displacement of small and medium-sized enterprises in favor of large enterprises in the long term. In this context, the EU risks missing the key objectives of the European common agricultural policy—CAP for short—(ensuring product diversity and product quality, income support and job retention for farmers, price stability for agricultural products) and self-set targets on climate change, soil and water protection, biodiversity protection and global equity goals through the sustainable use of resources and fair foreign trade. Furthermore, the EU runs the risk of neglecting the formation of a broad social consensus on the future direction of European agriculture.