Farm Size and the Share of Irrigated Land in total Landholding: the case of Water-Harvesting Irrigation in Ethiopia

Rain-fall shortage constrains production in small-holder agriculture in developing countries and with ongoing climate change these shortages may increase. Rain-water harvesting are interesting technologies that decrease this risk. Therefore, one would expect an increasing use of these technologies in drought-prone areas. However, data collected in Ethiopia shows that the share of irrigated land in total landholding declines with farm size. This study investigates why the share declines with farm size using panel data collected in 2005 and in 2010. A random-effect tobit model is estimated for the share of irrigated land as a function of variables affecting returns, market prices, source of finance and expectation formation. The findings show farm-specific factors such as credit per hectare, distance to market, ease of selling output, landholding, regional differences, aridity and distance of plots from natural water sources significantly affect the share. Thus, encouraging investment has to consider farm-size, and also geographical, environmental and regional diversity

Zijn biologische boeren minder risicomijdend dan gangbare boeren?

Het toepassen van biologische landbouwmethodes is voor individuele boeren in een aantal opzichten risicovoller dan het gebruik van gangbare productietechnieken. Dit suggereert dat biologische boeren meer bereid zijn risico's te accepteren dan hun gangbare collega's. Om dit te onderzoeken zijn met behulp van Bayesiaanse schattingstechnieken en panelgegevens individuele risicocoëfficiënten geschat voor biologische en gangbare boeren

Assessing the Long-term Impact of Microcredit on Rural Poverty: Does the Timing and Length of Participation Matter?

In recent years, microfinance institutions are seen as beacons of hope to help eradicate poverty through, among others, providing credit to poor rural households. Availability of small but repeated loans is, in the long-term, expected to impact on poverty. However, decades after the introduction of microfinance institutions into many rural areas, there are still questions as to what extent such long-term benefits are realized. This is because evaluating the long-term impact of microfinance provision on household welfare is difficult due to difficulties in controlling for heterogeneities in the borrower pool and subsequent borrowing dynamics. We use four rounds of panel data on rural households in Ethiopia that had access to microfinance credit to assess the long-term impact of credit by explicitly accounting for such borrowing dynamics. In a panel data setting where only the outcome variable is time-varying, potential future paths of individuals in the control group are considered to account for counterfactuals. Matching is used to adjust for initial differences between participants and controls. These combined methodological innovations enable us to overcome biases due to selection as well as problems of accounting for dropouts and new participants in microfinance impact assessments. Results suggest that the timing of membership matters: the earlier the onset of membership the better the effect. Results are robust compared to standard matched pairwise effects. The overriding implication from this comparison suggests that not accounting for future counterfactuals, for the most part, can lead to biased estimates and overestimates of the impact of credit on household welfare

Zijn biologische boeren minder risicomijdend dan gangbare boeren?

Het toepassen van biologische landbouwmethodes is voor individuele boeren in een aantal opzichten risicovoller dan het gebruik van gangbare productietechnieken. Dit suggereert dat biologische boeren meer bereid zijn risico's te accepteren dan hun gangbare collega's. Om dit te onderzoeken zijn met behulp van Bayesiaanse schattingstechnieken en panelgegevens individuele risicocoëfficiënten geschat voor biologische en gangbare boeren

Capital adjustment patterns on Dutch pig farms

This paper develops a generalised adjustment cost framework that explicitly accounts for zero investments on Dutch pig farms. A farm-specific flexible adjustment cost function is used to account for differences in adjustment costs between farms. Using the Generalised Method of Moments the Euler equations for investment in buildings and machinery are estimated on a panel of specialised Dutch pig farms. It is found that adjustment costs are an important determinant in investment for buildings but not for machinery

Comparing risk attitudes of organic and non-organic farmers with a Bayesian random coefficient model

Organic farming is usually considered to be more risky than conventional farming, but the risk aversion of organic farmers compared with that of conventional farmers has not been studied. Using a non-structural approach to risk estimation, a Bayesian random coefficient model is used to obtain individual Arrow-Pratt coefficients of absolute risk aversion for a sample of Dutch organic and non-organic arable farmers. The model is estimated using Gibbs sampling. The results indicate that organic farmers are significantly less risk averse than their non-organic colleague