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on Agricultural Economics |
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Issue of 2013‒03‒30
nine papers chosen by |
| By: | Karim, Mohamed |
| Abstract: | The agricultural sector has always been the subject of a great attention from officials in Morocco as it is a sector that maintains exchange relations with the other sectors and a production sector of the most important Fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) in the rural and urban areas. Indeed, agriculture accounts for 15 to 20% of the GDP and 44% of total employment. If one adds food processing, its contribution to the GDP and employment passes respectively to 20 and 50%. However, Moroccan agriculture suffers from low productivity, low yields and high logistics costs, in particular in transport, lack of integration between production and market, insufficient development of post-harvest systems, high costs of production, high risks, low coordination within chains, inadequate post-harvest technologies, lack of quality assurance system, and limited expertise in the processing of the agricultural products. For these reasons, agriculture has benefited from huge tax exemptions extended until the end of 2013.The exemption of the sector is supposed to promote, attract and develop private investments in this sector. Effectively, for the past two years, the agricultural sector was the second sector, after the property, having benefited from tax derogations, which represents about 13.4% of total measures identified in 2011. However, it is admitted that these tax advantages are a source of distortions and inefficient allocation of investments and resources towards this sector. The optimal tax theory provides, for this purpose, lessons that are useful for our empirical study.¶ Today, and besides the question concerning the place of the Moroccan agriculture in the economy which led to the design and implementation of the Green Morocco Plan (GMP), it should be noted that the question of its taxation was not as much in the central concerns as evidenced by the Royal orientations to establish an appropriate system to the agricultural sector in 2014 by taking into consideration the social security of the small-holder farmers. The model used is a dynamic multi-sector general equilibrium model. It registered voter in the line of the models built by Shoven and Whalley (1970) like Decaluwé and Savard (2001). Three agents, namely explicitly there the consumers, the producers and the public authorities, are introduced. However, to take into account the foreign trade and more generally the degree of opening of the Moroccan economy, we add a fourth agent to it: the rest of the world. |
| Keywords: | Taxation; Agricultural sector; Computable General Equilibrium Model |
| JEL: | D58 H21 Q18 |
| Date: | 2013–04–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:45622&r=agr |
| By: | Christian Bidard |
| Abstract: | In order to extend the theory of value and the trade-off property to economic systems with lands, Ricardo reduced their study to that of productive systems without lands by considering the marginal agricultural methods. Sraffa generalised the analysis to prices of production and rejected the notion of order of cultivation. The strategy works sometimes for extensive cultivation, fails in most cases of intensive cultivation, and always when the net product of agriculture is increased by making use of corn saving methods in industry. |
| Keywords: | Land, rent, Ricardo, Sraffa, trade-off |
| JEL: | B12 B51 D24 D33 |
| Date: | 2013 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:drm:wpaper:2013-8&r=agr |
| By: | Singh, K.M.; Meena, M.S.; Kumar, Abhay; Singh, R.K.P. |
| Abstract: | Agriculture occupies a key position in the Indian economy providing a source of livelihood for a majority of the population. Successes in agricultural front with high production levels, especially in food grains have indeed been achieved. But more energy in the form of mineral fertilizers, chemical pesticides and farm machinery are required every year to produce the same quantity of farm products. Historically, women have been the managers of natural resources as they are dependent on them for their livelihood and their family’s needs. The consequences of over exploitation of these resources have rendered them scarce. The rural women collect over 28% of all energy consumed in India in the form of firewood. Most of the 140 million tonnes of firewood burnt annually come from forests. Poverty and unemployment in rural areas have resulted in large-scale migration to urban areas. Women are being forced to take up more drudgerous jobs as a source of livelihood as most of the migrants are absorbed into the construction sector. Women form the largest work force in agricultural sector. Caring for livestock comes naturally to women. The most drudgerous jobs in livestock production like cleaning of the cattle sheds, feeding the cattle, collection of fodder etc. always fall on the woman. Care for young animals and backyard livestock is also largely done by women. In caring for sick young animals women have evolved several ethno veterinary practices. Despite recent agricultural innovations there is no respite for rural women. While agricultural innovations leads to the reallocation of family labour and the assignment to men of complete control over output and income, without associated changes in the allocation of obligations, welfare and nutritional status of the family may actually decline |
| Keywords: | Women, NRM, Livelihood, Gender issue |
| JEL: | Q0 Q1 Q19 |
| Date: | 2013–01–08 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:45401&r=agr |
| By: | Tammy Warner (University of Connecticut); Rigoberto A. Lopez (University of Connecticut) |
| Date: | 2013–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zwi:outrep:11&r=agr |
| By: | Huanxiu GUO; Mary-Françoise RENARD |
| Abstract: | Since 2003, a grass-roots movement of New Rural Reconstruction (NRR) has emerged in China to experience alternative model of rural development. The movement adopts a particular approach for rural development on basis of rural social and cultural reconstruction. In order to understand this social approach, we investigate an original NRR experiment in a poor village of south China, where organic farming is promoted by means of basketball game. An in-depth household survey is conducted to qualitatively analyze this social approach and derive intuitive hypothesis of extended social network for empirical test. With a panel structure dataset collected by the survey, we quantitatively identify the causal effect of social network by exploiting the endogeneity of social network formation. Our identification result provides micro evidence for a large social multiplier effect in the diffusion of organic farming, whereas it is negative for organic experts. Also, our results highlight the role of women, education and labor force for the development of organic farming. On basis of these results, we conclude that organic farming is suitable but challenging for small villages in China, while social activity is a good lever to achieve farmers' collective action for its large diffusion. |
| Keywords: | New rural reconstruction; Social network; Organic farming; China. D71, O33, Q55 |
| JEL: | Q55 O33 D71 |
| Date: | 2013 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cdi:wpaper:1423&r=agr |
| By: | James Alm (Department of Economics, Tulane University); Yongzheng Liu (Department of Economics, Andrew Young School of Policy Studies, Georgia State University) |
| Abstract: | China enacted a rural tax reform – the "Tax-for-Fee Reform" (TFR) – in the late 1990s. A crucial but unanswered question is whether this reform improved farmers' welfare in rural areas. This paper uses village-level survey data from the Chinese Household Income Project in order to examine the effect of the TFR on farmers' direct and indirect welfare. We find no evidence that the direct welfare effects improved farmer's net income. In contrast, the reform appears to have reduced the villages' financing capacity, and hence to have lowered their overall expenditures. These indirect effects have had significant negative impacts on farmers' welfare. |
| Keywords: | tax-for-fee reform, inequality, rural China |
| JEL: | H7 I2 I3 O1 O5 P3 |
| Date: | 2013–02 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:tul:wpaper:1305&r=agr |
| By: | Götz, Linde; Djuric, Ivan; Glauben, Thomas |
| Abstract: | Many countries restricted their exports to world agricultural markets during the most recent price peaks in order to insulate their domestic agricultural prices from price developments in international markets. Their ultimate aim was countering the rise in food price inflation and protecting consumers from high food expenses. This Policy Brief reviews the repeated export bans on wheat in Serbia and their impacts on domestic price developments for wheat, flour and bread and attempts to clarify whether end consumers or players along the added-value chain actually profited from political market interventions. -- Viele Länder haben ihre Exporte während der jüngsten Preisspitzen auf den Weltagrarmärkten beschränkt, um die inländischen Agrarpreise von den Preisentwicklungen auf den internationalen Märkten abzukoppeln. Letztlich sollte damit dem Anstieg der Nahrungsmittelpreisinflation entgegen gewirkt und die Konsumenten vor hohen Nahrungsmittelausgaben geschützt werden. Im Mittelpunkt dieses Policy Briefs stehen die wiederholten Exportverbote für Weizen in Serbien und deren Auswirkungen auf die inländischen Preisentwicklungen für Weizen, Mehl und Brot. In diesem Zusammenhang soll geklärt werden, ob tatsächlich die Endkonsumenten oder andere Akteure entlang der Wertschöpfungskette von den politischen Marktinterventionen profitiert haben. |
| Date: | 2013 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:iamopb:10e&r=agr |
| By: | Anna Bartczak (Faculty of Economic Sciences, University of Warsaw); Susan Chilton (Newcastle University Business School); Jürgen Meyerhoff (Technische Universität Berlin, Institute for Landscape and Environmental Planning) |
| Abstract: | A recent innovation in environmental valuation surveys has been to acknowledge the inherent uncertainties surrounding the provision of environmental goods and services and to incorporate it into non-market survey designs. So far, little is known about how people assimilate and respond to such uncertainty, particularly in terms of how it affects their stated valuations. In this paper we focus on the impact of risk preferences on people’s investments in environment. Individual risk preferences are elicited through a standard, incentivized multiple price list mechanism and used as a independent variable in the analysis of a choice experiment valuing the preservation of two threatened lynx populations in Poland. We find that risk-seeking respondents were more likely to choose the status quo option, which was the riskiest option in terms of the survival of the two distinct lynx populations. Risk seekers revealed also a significantly lower willingness to pay for lynx preservations. |
| Keywords: | choice experiment, environmental good, lottery experiment, lynx preservation, risk preferences, status quo effect |
| JEL: | Q23 Q51 Q56 Q57 |
| Date: | 2013 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:war:wpaper:2013-09&r=agr |
| By: | Aizhen Li (University of Connecticut); Boris E. Bravo-Ureta (University of Connecticut); David K. Okello (National Semi-Arid Resources Research Institute (NaSARRI)); Carl M. Deom (University of Georgia); Naveen Puppala (New Mexico State University) |
| Abstract: | This study contributes to understanding the relationship between climatic variables and groundnut production in different farming systems in Uganda. Alternative production function models are estimated using pooled cross-sectional time series data at the district level. The models incorporate land area, indicators for farming systems, technological change, and either rainfall or the El Niño–Southern Oscillation (ENSO) effect as variables to account for climatic conditions. The data set includes 333 observations corresponding to 37 districts for 9 consecutive years, from 1992 to 2000. Analyses were performed using a Translog functional form and GARCH estimators. The results suggest that the partial elasticity of production for land is positive, high and significant, which is consistent with a priori expectations. Farming systems are also found to have a significant impact on output variability. Climatic conditions, measured by rainfall, have a non-significant effect; but, when the ENSO phenomenon is used instead a significant negative effect is detected particularly for the warm phase. An important and alarming finding is a marked negative rate of technological change revealing productivity losses over the time period studied. |
| Keywords: | Uganda, Groundnuts, Productivity, GARCH, Rainfall, ENSO |
| Date: | 2013–02 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zwi:wpaper:17&r=agr |