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Three Essays On Agricultural Policy And Food Demand
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Book Synopsis Three Essays on Agricultural Policy and Food Demand by : Jing Zhao (Economist)
Download or read book Three Essays on Agricultural Policy and Food Demand written by Jing Zhao (Economist) and published by . This book was released on 2015 with total page 108 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: These essays study important causes and interactions of agricultural policy and food demand. Essay one identifies the pattern of wheat support and income over historical data. The results indicate that income has statistically significant effects on wheat support, the pattern is nonlinear and varies among support mechanisms, and this relationship permits estimation of the future support. Essay two examines the effect of China wheat stock policies in 2006-2013 on the market using a structural economic model. Simulation results suggest that government stock policies stabilized wheat market prices, if measured by the standard deviation, and raised production in China. Essay three applies fixed effect and demand system models to estimate how refrigerator ownership affects food consumption in rural China. Refrigerator ownership reduces total food expenditure and meat consumption quantity, according to the estimation results, and might increase the expenditure share of perishable foods, like meat, egg and seafood. Taken as a whole, the results suggest that scientists should consider the impact of expanding refrigerator ownership, recognize the potential effect of public stocks on the evolution of price, and include the income-to-support relationship in long-run analysis to generate more accurate projections of consumption, price volatility, and agricultural support.
Book Synopsis Three Essays on Natural Resource Economics, Agricultural Policy, and Food Policy by : Xiangrui Wang
Download or read book Three Essays on Natural Resource Economics, Agricultural Policy, and Food Policy written by Xiangrui Wang and published by . This book was released on 2018 with total page 112 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This dissertation consists of three independent papers in the field of Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics. The first paper is related to consumer-side water conservation policies. My coauthor and I introduce a structural water demand model based on the assumption that consumers are inattentive and apply a behavioral decision rule in water consumption. We found our model can capture our sample consumers behavior well, suggesting water conservation policies should incorporate non-price instrument to prod consumers for water saving. The second paper relates to the industrial organization and antitrust in the US beer market. My coauthor and I found that in a recent beer merger case, the justice department's divestiture requirement (a popular structural merger remedy tool) may not be effective in prevent merger brands' price from raising, at least in the short-run after the merger. This paper suggests that divestiture may fail as a merger remedy due to its certain idiosyncratic details. The third paper investigates the impact of corn production in US Midwest states on the US Reformulated Gasoline Program. We found that the US Reformulated Gasoline Program caused massive corn production in the Midwest, and the pollution from nitrogen-based fertilizer usage in agriculture reversely affect the efficacy of the Reformulated Gasoline Program, aiming to improve air quality.
Book Synopsis Handbook Of International Food And Agricultural Policies (In 3 Volumes) by :
Download or read book Handbook Of International Food And Agricultural Policies (In 3 Volumes) written by and published by World Scientific. This book was released on 2017-11-28 with total page 1243 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Handbook of International Food and Agricultural Policies is a three-volume set that aims to provide an accessible reference for those interested in the aims and implementation of food and farm policies throughout the world. The treatment is authoritative, comprehensive and forward looking. The three volumes combine scholarship and pragmatism, relating academic writing to real-world issues faced by policy-makers. A companion volume looking at the future resource and climate challenges for global agriculture will be published in the future.Volume I covers Farm and Rural Development policies of developed and developing countries. The volume contains 20 country chapters together with a concluding comprehensive synthesis of lessons to be drawn from the experiences of the individual countries.Volume II examines the experience of countries with food policies, including those dealing with food safety and quality and the responsibility for food security in developing countries. The chapters address issues such as obesity, nutritional supplements, organic foods, food assistance programs, biotech food acceptance, and the place of private standards.Volume III describes and explains the international trade dimension of farm and food policies — both at the bilateral and regional level — and also the multilateral rules that influence and constrain individual governments. The volume also looks at the steps that countries are together taking to meet the needs of developing and low-income countries.The volumes are of value to students and researchers interested in economic development, agricultural markets and food systems. Policy-makers and professionals involved in monitoring and regulating agricultural and food markets would also find the volumes useful in their practical work. This three-volume set is also a suitable source for the general public interested in how their food system is influenced by government policies.
Book Synopsis Three Essays in Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics by : Dallas Wayne Wood
Download or read book Three Essays in Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics written by Dallas Wayne Wood and published by . This book was released on 2015 with total page 129 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Book Synopsis Essays on Agricultural Economy by : G. B. Ayoola
Download or read book Essays on Agricultural Economy written by G. B. Ayoola and published by Xlibris Corporation. This book was released on 2018-12-06 with total page 583 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In particular, this book of essays is aimed at quenching the thirst of undergraduate and postgraduate students of agricultural economics in the institutions of higher learning at home and abroad for a quick reference book on Nigerian development, which they require for proper understanding of taught courses. In general, it is also aimed at dependent and independent professionals in the public and private sectors of the economy and development community at large, with a view to providing them with the institutional memory they require to demonstrate their expertise on the job much better. To this end, the book offers the benefit of many years of experience in teaching, research, and community services, through a menu of topics for profitable reading about the inner mechanisms of the policy process for agricultural development of the country in real time. Herein is strenuously articulated the systematic outputs of disciplined hard work spanning three decades, from 1988 to 2018, including the last ten years of active engagements in policy advocacy outside the university system. The menu of nonexperimental writings provides information about the seemingly dry area of agricultural historiography of the country embedded in a series of analytical thoughts and expositions on performance of successive programs and projects for developing the agricultural economy.
Book Synopsis Responding to the Global Food Crisis - Three perspectives: IFPRI 2007-2008 Annual Report Essay by : Joachim von Braun, Josette Sheeran, Namanga Ngongi
Download or read book Responding to the Global Food Crisis - Three perspectives: IFPRI 2007-2008 Annual Report Essay written by Joachim von Braun, Josette Sheeran, Namanga Ngongi and published by Intl Food Policy Res Inst. This book was released on 2008-09-10 with total page 32 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Book Synopsis Three Essays on International Trade and Policy by : Bowen Chen
Download or read book Three Essays on International Trade and Policy written by Bowen Chen and published by . This book was released on 2019 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: International trade in agricultural and food commodities has grown rapidly during the past five decades, with increasingly more countries participating in the international mar- kets either as food importers or as food exporters. Despite the fast growth, international agricultural trade, however, is still largely affected by various policy distortions. This is especially the case in developing countries, in which opening to the international market is often perceived to be in conflict with their policy objectives of ensuring food security. In this context, this dissertation constitutes three essays toward better understanding of how international trade is affected by policy and how it can affect food security in developing countries. The first essay conducts a case study with quantitative analysis regarding the trade policy for grain commodities in China. Specifically, China emerged as a grain importing country in mid 2000s. In 2016, the U.S., a major grain exporter, launched a trade dispute against China at the World Trade Organization, arguing that China has been restricting its grain imports via tariff quota administration. Despite the criticism of the U.S., little do we know about the extent to which the grain imports in China were actually restricted by its trade policy, mainly because China's grain import behaviors have not been sufficiently studied. For instance, even the import demand elasticity, a key input into policy assessment, is unknown. To fill this gap in the literature, this article investigates impacts of the tariff quota administration on China's grain imports from its trading partners. We estimate import demand elasticity for each grain commodity using a source differentiated import demand model and then use the elasticity estimates to quantify the policy impacts on trade. In particular, the tariff quota administration is treated as a non tariff barrier and measured by ad valorem tariff equivalents in the model. We find that the tariff quota administration might have reduced the quota fill rates for the grain commodities by 10-35% during 2013-2017 in China, and that the wheat imports from the U.S. were largely negatively affected. We also find that the tariff quota administration acts like an import variable levy - its import restrictiveness varies negatively with world prices, leading to lower import demand elasticities. The second essay concerns the trade impacts on food price variability in developing countries. In particular, we are interested in this question: do food imports increase the variability of domestic food prices? The question matters because if imports destabilize domestic prices, storing crops for future consumption may prove an appealing strategy to cope with the adverse supply effects of a more unstable climate. Unfortunately, public storage has proven to be unsustainable due to the high costs of carrying crop inventories over time and the inability of policy planners to correctly forecast changes in domestic supply. In this context, it is important to understand the roles of both imports and stocks in affecting domestic food price variability. Using maize prices observed in 76 maize markets of 27 maize net importers across Africa, Asia and Latin America during 2000-2015, we find that, on average, a 1% increase in the ratio of imports to total consumption is correlated with a 0.29% reduction of the intra-annual coefficient of variation of maize prices; likewise a 1% increase in the amount of maize available in stocks at the beginning of the season is correlated with a 0.22% reduction in the said coefficient. We also find that climate-induced supply shocks toward mid-century may increase maize price variability in the focus countries by around 10%. These increases, however, could be offset with similar increases in the ratio of imports to total consumption or in the stock-to-use ratio at the beginning of the crop marketing year. The third essay also concerns the trade impacts on food price variability in developing countries. Rather than focusing on the roles of imports and stocks, we look into the effects of foreign yield shocks on domestic food price variability in this essay. Around two thirds of developing countries are now net food importers. While enjoying economical food in the international market, these countries have become increasingly more concerned that their food price stability is now vulnerable to foreign yield shocks, which are expected to grow in frequency and intensity in the future due to the climate change. Yet, the extent to which foreign yield shocks could affect food price stability in the food-importing countries have not been explicitly quantified in previous studies. This article aims to fill the gap by estimating the effects of foreign maize yield shocks on domestic maize price variability. We perform the analysis using price data of 74 maize markets in 24 net food-importing countries during 2000-2016. We find that positive foreign yield shocks have negative effects on domestic price variability, meaning that domestic prices become more stable under positive foreign yield shocks. Negative foreign yield shocks, however, do not have significant effects on domestic price variability, except for causing higher price variability in a few landlocked countries. We also find that domestic maize price variability could increase in the coming decades due to the increasing variability of maize yields under climate change. Yet, most focus countries seem to have accumulated stocks sufficient enough to maintain stable prices. We conclude that food-importing countries benefit from the international market in domestic price stability, and that storage could be an effective policy tool to complement international trade for price stabilization.
Book Synopsis Three Essays on International Food Prices by : D M Jagath Rohitha Dissanayake
Download or read book Three Essays on International Food Prices written by D M Jagath Rohitha Dissanayake and published by . This book was released on 2014 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Motivated by recent food price spikes, this thesis examines three issues relating to international prices of agricultural commodities. It focuses on the three most important food commodities in the world from a calorie viewpoint, namely wheat, rice and maize. Following the introductory chapter, Chapter 2 presents an overview of the determinants of agricultural commodity prices. Chapter 3 analyses political economy causes of trade policy interventions in response to commodity price spikes to reveal why governments alter trade interventions in order to cushion domestic prices from external shocks. To examine how much countries insulate their domestic markets from international markets, Chapter 4 estimates price transmission elasticities for wheat, rice and maize by employing a novel estimation approach. The first essay (Chapter 2) probes demand and supply shocks in global grain markets. Using annual data from 1961 to 2012, price fluctuations for wheat, rice and maize are decomposed into three components: supply shocks, demand shocks and other shocks. The ""other shocks"" here include policy responses of some governments, such as export restrictions and panic purchases when prices spike upwards. The chapter estimates how much each of these shocks contributed to the evolution of grain prices during the last half century. The results suggest that supply and demand shocks have contributed very little to price fluctuations, compared to other shocks. The other shocks seem to have exacerbated exogenous price rises due to a supply shortfall, particularly in periods when prices spike. The second essay (Chapter 3) studies the implications of reference dependence and loss aversion features of individual preferences in trade policy determination and shows that these behavioural features help explain why governments change their trade restrictiveness in order to cushion domestic prices from international price shocks. We show that this change comes irrespective of whether special interest groups are lobbying the government. Using a global dataset on agricultural price distortions, we find the available empirical evidence is consistent with our model predictions. The empirical evidence further suggests that governments' reactions to international prices are stronger for staple food items than for non-staples. A voluminous literature has estimated price transmission from international to domestic markets, ignoring unobserved common factors that affect all domestic markets. In the third essay (Chapter 4), this thesis estimates long-run and short-run transmission elasticities of world commodity price shocks to domestic markets using a framework that takes into consideration common factors that are correlated with regressors. The estimates are based on an annual panel dataset for rice, wheat and maize for both developed and developing countries over the period 1960-2007. The results from the common factor framework are compared to those that do not account for common factors. The findings suggest price transmission elasticities for rice, wheat and maize are around 0.4, 0.5 and 0.75 respectively. The findings suggest that ignoring common factors is likely to result in upwardly biased estimates of price transmission elasticities. The final chapter of the thesis (Chapter 5) contains a summary of the findings of the three main chapters in the thesis.
Book Synopsis Essays on Food and Agricultural Policy by :
Download or read book Essays on Food and Agricultural Policy written by and published by . This book was released on 2006 with total page 114 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Book Synopsis Three Essays on Risk Management and Irrigation Water Demand in Agriculture by : Pin Lu
Download or read book Three Essays on Risk Management and Irrigation Water Demand in Agriculture written by Pin Lu and published by . This book was released on 2022 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Both extensive (share of insured acres in total insurable acres) and intensive (coverage level choice) margin participation rates in the U.S. crop insurance program have increased due to generous subsidies. On a national scale, this program has been well rated to satisfy the actuarial fairness requirement by USDA Risk Management Agency. However, sizeable spatial heterogeneity remains across the Great Plains and Corn Belt regions. If subsidies were to be reduced in the future because of financial constraints, such heterogeneity might be detrimental to the sustainability of the crop insurance program. A central theme of this dissertation is to investigate how farmers make participation decisions when risk factors exist. In a separate but related line of work, this dissertation also explores the irrigation water usage in the Great Lakes region because farmers' irrigation behavior reflects their risk preferences and impacts their incentives for enrolling in the program. The dissertation consists of three essays on farmers' decisions regarding premium mispricing, basis risk, and irrigation water usage. The first essay proposes a novel resampling procedure to estimate farm-level actuarially fair premiums. The resampling procedure mainly contains two parts: (i) semi-parametric quantile regression; and (ii) rejection method. Many previous studies explore whether county-level mispricing exists based on the historical loss ratio records. However, we can identify farm-level mispricing by imputing actuarially fair premiums based on historical yield records, consistent with theory. We find that farmers with lower land quality cropland paid fewer premiums than they should, but a contrary case happens for farmers with higher land quality cropland. Empirical evidence shows farmers may be more concerned about mispricing than subsidy transfer. Regression results support a conclusion that such farm-level mispricing deters farmers' crop insurance demand. Our analysis sheds light on the policy-making that: (i) mispricing may be a substitution of subsidy so mitigating mispricing can maintain high participation while saving subsidies; and (ii) imputation of premiums based on historical yield records can apply.The second essay focuses on the impact of basis risk on participation rates in the U.S. crop insurance program. In recent years, basis risk has been increasingly recognized as an essential driver for deterring insurance uptake. Most research concentrates on index insurance contracts; however, few investigate the effect of mismatch between cash and futures markets on farmers' insurance decisions. We first build a conceptual model to show farmers' acreage response to basis risk within the expected utility framework. Next, we apply the Fractional Probit with Control Function for the empirical analysis and find that the effects of basis risk on participation rates are significantly negative for nearly all insurance contracts. Our analysis implies that: (i) to remove basis risk, revision for revenue contract may be considered; (ii) subsidy structure may be adjusted to be consistent with the underlying basis risk. The third essay investigates irrigation water usage in the Great Lakes region. Although the water conservation policy was implemented, there has been an upward trend in irrigation water demand from 2003 to 2018, including irrigated acres and total water usage. We employ firm-level irrigation data to examine what factors impact farmers' response to irrigation water usage. We find that: (i) price elasticities vary significantly according to model specifications and water costs; (ii) demand at both extensive (irrigated acres) and intensive (water application per acre) margins is input price inelastic; and (iii) price elasticities are homogeneous across crops but heterogeneous across states. For the policy-making, if there is a 10% tax on irrigation water cost, total water usage decreases by about 4% for corn and soybean, respectively.
Book Synopsis The Republic of Hunger and Other Essays by : Utsa Patnaik
Download or read book The Republic of Hunger and Other Essays written by Utsa Patnaik and published by . This book was released on 2007 with total page 248 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Book Synopsis Food Demand, Uncertainty and Investments in Human Capital by : Edoardo Masset
Download or read book Food Demand, Uncertainty and Investments in Human Capital written by Edoardo Masset and published by . This book was released on 2010 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This dissertation provides some explanations of the causes of poverty in rural India, by investigating poverty determinants that are too often neglected in the literature and in policy debates. It proceeds in three main chapters, each addressing a specific research question. The first chapter focuses on the process of agricultural transformation in the state of Andhra Pradesh. In the early stages of economic development, all countries undergo a process of transformation of their production and employment structure. As a result, agricultural output as a share of total GDP decreases, as does rural employment as a share of total employment. Over the last 50 years, the share of agriculture in total output has considerably declined in Andhra Pradesh. However, the agricultural sector continues to employ the great majority of the labour force. The theoretical section of this chapter shows how structural change is affected by the characteristics of food demand and by income inequality. The empirical analysis, using novel semiparametric methods, estimates food Engel curves and food elasticities, which are used to simulate the effects on changes in income distribution on the composition of demand. The second chapter analyses the stabilising effect of irrigation on household expenditure. The expansion of irrigation infrastructure, together with the introduction of hybrid seeds and chemical fertilisers, was the most important technological advancement in Indian agriculture of the last 50 years. The positive impact of irrigation on income of rural households has been extensively documented, but its stabilising effect has been largely neglected. The first part of the chapter builds a theoretical model that establishes the causal links between access to irrigation, income stability, and consumption smoothing over the seasonal cycle. The empirical analysis assesses the stabilising impact of irrigation on expenditure using modern impact evaluation techniques. The findings indicate that consumption patterns of households with access to irrigation are more stable over the seasonal cycle and over the years. The third chapter studies the effect of income uncertainty on educational choices made by the rural poor. It investigates the demand side of education in order to understand why a large number of rural children do not enrol or complete primary education. The theoretical part of the chapter presents an inter-temporal consumption model that shows how the expectation of income variability negatively affects household expenditure on education. The empirical analysis uses a duration model with time covariates in order to estimate the determinants of child progress in school, and provides evidence that income variability negatively affects investments in education.
Book Synopsis Essays on Externalities and Agriculture in the United States and Brazil by : Maria Susannah Bowman
Download or read book Essays on Externalities and Agriculture in the United States and Brazil written by Maria Susannah Bowman and published by . This book was released on 2013 with total page 65 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In these three essays collectively entitled "Essays on Externalities and Agriculture in the United States and Brazil", I discuss three topics. In the first essay, I review the economic literature on diversification in farming systems and comment on the economic incentives and disincentives for diversification in 21st century agriculture. In the second essay, I focus on deforestation in Brazil, which is an externality associated with the expansion of agricultural production at forest frontiers. Using a natural experiment (changes in international Foot-and-Mouth Disease certification), I identify the portion of annual deforestation that can be attributed to changes in disease status, and suggest that the mechanism for new deforestation may be due to increased prices when beef is considered to be safe for export. In my third essay, I discuss the production economics behind the use of sub-therapeutic antibiotics in U.S. pork and poultry production, and comment in detail on the potential for heterogeneity in the returns to antibiotic use (and costs of regulation). A more detailed summary of each essay follows. Chapter 1: Economic Factors Affecting Diversified Farming Systems In response to a shift toward specialization and mechanization during the 20th century, there has been momentum on the part of a vocal contingent of consumers, producers, researchers, and policy makers who call for a transition toward a new model of agriculture. This model employs fewer synthetic inputs, incorporates practices which enhance biodiversity and environmental services at local, regional, and global scales, and takes into account the social implications of production practices, market dynamics, and product mixes. Within this vision, diversified farming systems (DFS) have emerged as a model that incorporates functional biodiversity at multiple temporal and spatial scales to maintain ecosystem services critical to agricultural production. This essay's aim is to provide an economists' perspective on the factors which make diversified farming systems (DFS) economically attractive, or not-so-attractive, to farmers, and to discuss the potential for and roadblocks to widespread adoption. The essay focuses on how a range of existing and emerging factors drive profitability and adoption of DFS, and suggests that, in order for DFS to thrive, a number of structural changes are needed. These include: 1) public and private investment in the development of low-cost, practical technologies that reduce the costs of production in DFS, 2) support for and coordination of evolving markets for ecosystem services and products from DFS and 3) the elimination of subsidies and crop insurance programs that perpetuate the unsustainable production of staple crops. This work suggests that subsidies and funding be directed, instead, toward points 1) and 2), as well as toward incentives for consumption of nutritious food. Chapter 2: Foot-and-Mouth Disease and Deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon Deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon released approximately 5.7 billion tons of CO2 to the atmosphere between 2000 and 2010, and 50-80% of this deforestation was for pasture. Most assume that increasing demand for cattle products produced in Brazil caused this deforestation, but the empirical work to-date on cattle documents only correlations between cattle herd size, pasture expansion, cattle prices, and deforestation. This essay uses panel data on deforestation and Foot-and-Mouth Disease (FMD) status--an exogenous demand shifter--to estimate whether changes in FMD status caused new deforestation in municipalities in the Brazilian Amazon and cerrado biomes during the 2000-2010 period. Becoming certified as FMD-free caused annual deforestation to be 42% to 85% higher than deforestation rates in infected municipalities, on average, during the 2000-2010 period. Chapter 3: Potential for heterogeneity in the returns to sub-therapeutic antibiotics in U.S. pork and poultry operations Each year, more than 50,000 people in the U.S. die from hospital-acquired bacterial infections, millions experience episodes of foodborne illness, and reported cases of "superbugs" such as Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) and vancomycin-resistant enterococci (VRE) are on the rise. For those who acquire a resistant infection in their food, in their community, or in a hospital, resistance is associated with a longer duration of treatment, the use of more potent antibiotics, and longer hospital stays. This, in turn, means increased health care costs and costs to society due to antibiotic-resistant infections. Antibiotic resistance is contributing to the scope and severity of this health care crisis, and at least some of the responsibility for antibiotic resistance sits on the shoulders of industrial livestock production. In livestock operations, low or sub-therapeutic doses of antibiotics (STAs) are used to promote growth, in addition to their use to prevent and control disease. Today, more antibiotics are used in livestock production and the production of milk and eggs than in humans. While the use of sub-therapeutic doses of antibiotics is regulated less stringently in the United States than in the European Union, there is movement toward and potential for such regulation. Beginning in the 1970s, economic researchers began to study the potential impacts of bans on the use of sub-therapeutic antibiotics on the pork, poultry, and beef sectors and on U.S. consumers, but there has been little study of how heterogeneity impacts antibiotic use, and in turn, how it impacts returns to using antibiotics in U.S. livestock operations. I concentrate on U.S. pork and poultry operations since they are the largest users of sub-therapeutic antibiotics by volume in the U.S., and explore the existing literature on the economics of sub-therapeutic antibiotic use for glimpses of heterogeneity in the returns to antibiotic use. Perhaps the most interesting source of heterogeneity in returns to antibiotic use may be heterogeneity in management and/or the use of potential substitutes for antibiotics, such as improved sanitation practices and more modern facilities. Productivity and use of technologies that substitute for STA use vary amongst producers, and likely by region and farm size. Thus, the marginal abatement costs of reducing STA use vary across industries, producers, production systems, and regions.
Book Synopsis Three Essays on Agricultural Industries by : Danielle A. P. Torres
Download or read book Three Essays on Agricultural Industries written by Danielle A. P. Torres and published by . This book was released on 2006 with total page 262 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Book Synopsis Essays on the Economics of Policy and Regulation in Agricultural and Food Markets by : Shuay-Tsyr Ho
Download or read book Essays on the Economics of Policy and Regulation in Agricultural and Food Markets written by Shuay-Tsyr Ho and published by . This book was released on 2019 with total page 170 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This dissertation analyzes the empirical implications of selected policies and regulations applied to agricultural and food markets in the United States. It focuses on the policies at the regional level where the role of government influences the dynamics of agricultural markets and consumer behavior. In the first essay, in Chapter 2, I examine how regulation affects household diversity-seeking behavior for alcohol. Here I hypothesize that different state-level regulatory regimes in alcohol retail sales impact shopping convenience. I use a consumer panel dataset to examine household purchases of alcohol between 2004 and 2016. By focusing on a subset of households that moved between regulatory regimes in the pooled cross-sectional dataset, I am able to treat the time-invariant regulatory rules as a natural experiment to identify the causal impact of grocery store sales of alcohol on consumer choice diversification. The key finding suggests consumers further diversify their product selections in states that allow alcohol sales in grocery stores which reduces consumer's shopping costs and increases convenience. In the second essay, in Chapter 3, I focus on the effects of crop insurance on the supply of specialty crops in the United States. I use a nationally-representative farm-level dataset to evaluate the impacts of crop insurance on the acreage and crop value of fruits and vegetables. The empirical strategy addresses the potential endogeneity between the provision of crop insurance and the economic significance of the crops. In assessing how the availability of crop insurance affects supply, I use a number of variables to instrument insurance availability for fruits and vegetables. Instruments include i) the number of policies sold and premium subsidies for field crops within the same county, ii) the number of policies sold and premium subsidies for fruits and vegetable crops in the neighboring counties, which characterize various degrees of insurance demand. The two-stage findings suggest that crop insurance has increased both the harvested acreage and production value of fruits and vegetables. In the final essay, presented in Chapter 4, I worked with a team to evaluate several risk management strategies for cherry growers facing crop losses due to spring frost and excessive summer rain. Here we developed a framework to model stochastic prices, yields, and revenue for sweet cherries in New York and Michigan in a Monte Carlo simulation framework. This research constructed a novel dataset comprised of state-level market information for sweet cherries, station-level weather data, and the monitored performance of high tunnel at horticultural trials from research farms. Our results show that when there are significant price premiums for early season fruit, a high tunnel system could be the optimal strategy as it has the capacity to generate higher net profits compared to a variety of alternative strategies using insurance products.
Book Synopsis Essays on Agricultural Productivity and the Impact of Food Price Change on Welfare in Africa by : Manzamasso Hodjo
Download or read book Essays on Agricultural Productivity and the Impact of Food Price Change on Welfare in Africa written by Manzamasso Hodjo and published by . This book was released on 2020 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Africa is the most food-insecure continent in the world, according to the World Bank and the United Nations Food and Agricultural Organization. While low purchasing power is the main cause of food insecurity, inefficient domestic food production is also a major constraint. Our study specifically focused on four food production issues in Africa, namely, agricultural productivity, cropland use, food demand and welfare analysis, and demand-led crop breeding. First, we assessed the impact of public spending on agricultural productivity in Africa. We estimated the effect of two government-spending measures: Agriculture Budget Share (BS) and Research Share of Agricultural GDP (RS) on agriculture total factor productivity growth (TFPG). We used a panel fixed-effect estimator to control for the country-specific characteristics of twenty-eight African economies from 1991-2012. Although North African economies appeared to have the highest TFPG, this did not translate into the highest agricultural and research budget share. Meanwhile, Central African economies exhibited the lowest BS and RS, along with the lowest TFPG of the continent. The panel fixed-effect estimator revealed a marginal impact of 6.77% for RS on TFPG after seven years. However, the cumulative marginal impact of BS on TFPG is estimated at 7.21% over the eight years that follow the budget increment. Our findings suggest that a BS of 14% and a RS of 15% are required for a country to double its TFPG in the eight following years. Therefore, additional, and continuous investment in research and development is required for a significant productivity enhancement, especially in Sub-Saharan Africa. Second, we assessed the factors that shape cereal cropland allocation decisions in Nigeria and Niger. We theoretically derived the key cropland allocation arguments using the household model. Next, we used the World Bank LSMS-ISA data to map acreage mean centers and fit a fractional regression model using the panel fixed-effect estimator. We assessed the traditional Mendelsohn land use model and uncovered its limitation in efficiently approximating cereal cropland allocation. We improved the appropriateness of fit of the traditional Mendelsohn model by controlling for additional factors, such as food prices, socio-demographics, and food trade factors. Overall, we found cereal acreage shares in Nigeria and Niger to be spatially heterogeneous and determined by climatic, price, and trade factors. Additionally, farmers tend to base their cropland allocation decisions upon the price of the most important staples: maize in Nigeria; millet and sorghum in Niger. Furthermore, due to their tolerance to heat and drought, sorghum and millet compete for northeast farmland in both countries, especially for rainfed croplands. Thus, our study illustrates that millet and sorghum are key choices in ensuring food security in the context of global warming and rainfall instability. Our findings fill a literature void and provide policy makers with evidence to foster geo-referenced farmer cooperatives aimed at enhancing food production. Furthermore, our findings could be incorporated into a land use framework for planning, environmental monitoring, scenario analysis, and impact assessment. The third essay analyzed the staple foods consumption patterns of households in Niger by estimating a complete demand system. Demand elasticities are estimated using the Niger 2011 and 2014 LSMS-ISA household survey data to fit the modified Linear AIDS model. The results indicated that food consumption patterns in the country are affected by income and prices, as well as by socio-economic and geographic factors. All food items have positive expenditure elasticities and negative own-price elasticities, with rice exhibiting the most elastic demand. We found millet to be a necessity while rice and sorghum are luxuries. Additionally, our analysis revealed that urban households had a more diversified staple demand pattern. Furthermore, the welfare analysis revealed that an increase of millet price reduces rural welfare more than an increase in sorghum price. On the other hand, a sorghum price increase adversely affects the welfare of urban households the most. For example, a 20% increase of the millet or sorghum price reduces the average household welfare by 5.88% and 4.38%, respectively. This study highlights the importance of estimating staple food demand elasticities for both research and policymaking during a food price shocks. Our findings revealed that millet price is the canal that might foster support programs targeting the poorest households in Niger. Our fourth and last essay is a theoretical argument for demand-led breeding in a small-scaled farming system. Our investigation stems from the fact that agricultural productivity lags in small-scaled farming in Sub-Saharan Africa. While inadequate production capital, water control and poor infrastructure remain important challenges, the low adoption of improved and high-yielding varieties is a key limiting factor for productivity enhancement. Often, studies elucidating improved technology implementation are focused upon the adoption (demand) rather than the creation (supply). In this analytical essay, we reviewed theoretical causes and solutions to low varietal uptake for sorghum. Consistent with much of the structural research framework, we presented asymmetric information, bounded rationality, and weak intellectual property as key causes of seed market coordination failure. Leaning on the technology adoption under uncertainty model, we showed how market-induced uncertainty, compounded with other factors, reduces farmers' willingness to trade traditional seeds for improved ones. Furthermore, we used the matching theory, supported with a general equilibrium model, to show how consumer preference drives farm-level adoption. We argued that breeding programs can benefit from effective preference matching across the food value chain while leveraging on the growing demand-led breeding literature. Finally, we presented hypotheses that can be empirically used to assess stakeholders' weigh and ranking of varietal attributes across the food value chain.
Book Synopsis Ill Fares the Land by : Susan George
Download or read book Ill Fares the Land written by Susan George and published by . This book was released on 1984 with total page 144 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Abstract: Six scholarly essays about food and nutrition policy challenge long-held credos and strategies for feeding hungry people and satisfying food shortages over the long term. The author presents a two-pronged approach in her discussion of food policy and hunger. The first involved de-constructing the prevailing assumptions regarding hunger (i.e. hunger is caused by over-population, can be alleviated by food trade and assistance, and is a scientific problem that can be alleviated by technological innovation), demonstrating their empirical inadequacy and their hidden political assumptions. The second involved an outline of an agenda for research and action to reconstruct an alternative knowledge about hunger. It is concluded that hunger is a political program of power and will and a problem of poverty, and that scholars should study the poor less and the powerful more, challenging the systems of power and privilege. It also concluded that, without this challenge, the same inadequate patterns will be repeated over and over again. (wz).
