Agricultural economists and world poverty: progress and prospects

New development paradigms come and go, seemingly with increasing rapidity, yet poverty remains the scourge of the developing nations. As we enter the new millennium, we fear that still more development fads and fancies will emerge, to be taken up and then dropped by the development community. These swings in fashion bring with them the danger that the ‘basics’ of effective development strategies for poverty reduction will be neglected. In this article, we advance some personal and perhaps controversial views about the virtues of getting agriculture moving as a means of reducing poverty, and about the role that agricultural economists can and should play in that endeavour.Food Security and Poverty,

Strategies for Melanesian agriculture for 2010 : tough choices

A majority of the people in Melanesian countries depend on agriculture for at least a part of their livelihood. In the long-term development of these economies, agriculture will decline in relative importance. Notwithstanding this, by 2010 agriculture must provide the fundamental driving force for long-run economic transformation. 'Although employment will need to be expanded in all major productive sectors in Melanesian economies. only agriculture has the potential for increases in employment on the scale required. and within the cost constraints prevailing in these capital scarce countries.' 'if Melanesian governments are serious about providing rural employment opportunities. support for the smallholder agricultural sector has to be a vital plank of their employment strategies.

Farm risk management: past, present and prospects

The integration of ideas about utility and subjective probability into modern decision analysis is outlined. Despite being widely adopted, some aspects, are still contentious. The legitimacy and practicality of utility functions to reflect risk aversion has been challenged and there is far from general acceptance of subjective probabilities as a basis for risky choice. While subjective expected utility does not always explain behaviour under risk, it is arguably the best basis for prescriptive decision analysis. The focus on the limitations of utility theory may have diverted attention from the more important task of devising and applying ways to get good probabilities, especially in data-sparse cases. It is argued that more attention needs to be given to the important risks that farmers face. As these are often those for which frequency data are sparse or unavailable, the need for wider acceptance of well-considered subjective probabilities as descriptors of uncertainty is clear, requiring a difficult paradigm shift

The Relevance and Usefulness of Farm Business Management in Enhancing Small Farmer Income in the South Pacific: Report on Farm Business Training in the South Pacific

The ways in which smallholders in developing countries plan their farm operations and manage the farm business have come under scrutiny in recent years. The traditional production orientation of farm management training has been considered inadequate in an era of increasing commercialization of smallholder farming. As a consequence, the provision of a broader set of business advisory services has emerged to complement this production orientation. Entrepreneurial skills and attitudes towards business plans have been identified as key contributors to both a sustainable commercial farm operation and to general economic growth in rural areas. An implication of this assessment is that inadequate entrepreneurial and business planning skills can prevent smallholders in developing countries from participating successfully in free-market transactions and contract farming. Responsibility for the traditional farm management training and extension approach lay chiefly with government ministries/departments of agriculture until the 1980s. Growing concern about the ineffectiveness of this approach and an inability of these ministries/departments to provide adequate agribusiness advice led some donors to extend their funding arrangements to non-government organizations (NGOs) and the private sector. Currently, the need to redefine the public sector advisory services in line with the changing needs of farmers is recognized as a major task for governments. ... In this study, we attempt to answer the following questions in respect of South Pacific agriculture: • What farm business management advice and training do farmers really need? • How relevant and useful are the concepts and techniques transmitted to smallholders in developing their farm business management skills? • To what extent do training and decision support services help farmers to manage their businesses more profitably'? • What topics of farm business management should be included in future training workshops and field-level extension work

Ilmu Usahatani Dan Penelitian Untuk Pengembangan Petani Kecil

Didalam buku ini memuat informasi tentang bagaimana melakukan penelitian usahatani kecil, sumber-sumber data yang digunakan dan cara pengumpulannya, serta analisis data sederhana. selain itu juga mengkaji tentang perencanaan usahatani, analisis anggaran parsial, analisis anggaran masukan-hasil, pendugaan dan analisis fungsi produksi serta analisis keputusan berisiko.253 Ha

Economics and Policy of Food Production

Despite decades of development efforts, poverty and food insecurity are still core problems that beset the modern world. A number of factors contribute to widespread and protracted hunger. These factors are examined, and prospects for mitigating them are considered. Since the 1940s, governments, with the support of international agencies, have adopted various policy measures to improve food security. While there are various policy instruments that governments can and do use to improve food availability, the cornerstone of food security lies in poverty alleviation. Only thereby can there be improvement in the economic and physical access to food for the most needy. In most developing countries (DCs), where the majority of the poor live in rural areas, poverty reduction can be achieved via broad-based rural and agricultural development. For such efforts to succeed requires good macroeconomic policies that encourage long-term development and economic growth, improved technologies for food production and marketing, better infrastructure that will increase the flows of inputs and outputs and enhance the interface between rural and urban areas, improved access to resources by the poor, and investments in people to improve their capacities. About 70% of the world's poor live in rural areas. Targeting poverty reduction in rural areas will therefore do much to reduce the incidence of world poverty and of food insecurity. Agricultural development results in increased employment in the rural sector through jobs created by the multiplier effects of increased incomes of farmers. Benefits from agricultural growth linkages are expected to flow on to the urban sector, too. Developing the agricultural sector is therefore a good way of reaching a large part of the population. In the past, increases in agricultural production have primarily come from expansion of cultivated land as well as from agricultural productivity increases. Most of the productive land is now being utilized. Hence, future increases in food production will have to be as a result of increases in agricultural productivity. The prospect for meeting future food demand is, however, bright. Advances in new technology, particularly in biotechnology, are offering great opportunities to increase food production and meet the food challenge. The real challenge, however, is ensuring access to food by the poor. Agricultural development therefore needs to remain high on the policy agenda

Risk Aversion in Economic Decision Making: Pragmatic Guides for Consistent Choice by Natural Resource Managers

Risk in agriculture and natural resource management (NRM), as in life, is everywhere. But dealing with it systematically, whether for farmers, other natural resource managers, researchers or anyone, is difficult. The difficulty comes from the complexity of risky choice and so cannot be avoided. In this chapter we deal with only one aspect of that complexity, namely risk aversion. We review the capture of risk aversion in economic decision making through consistent application of the subjective expected utility (SED) hypothesis, and examine how some of the inherent challenges in applications to NRM might best be handled. We do not here take up some of the modem alternatives to SEU such as reviewed by Chambers and Quiggin (2000)

Stochastic Dynamic Optimisation: An Analysis of Surface Grading of Peat Soils in Northern Norway

Farmers in northern Norway have experienced severe winter damage on grassland rather frequently, especially on flat areas and peat soils in regions with an unstable winter climate around zero degrees Celsius. Traditional drainage with drainpipes is normally not sufficient to prevent such damage in these areas. During the past two decades the use of open ditches and surface grading has become the main method of reclaiming and draining peat land. A new heuristic stochastic dynamic analysis method for problems like this, combining simulation and optimisation, is used to explore the profitability of surface grading of peat soils. This analysis indicates that the year in which a ley should be reseeded depends on stage in the growth curve when eventually the winter damage happens as well as on the severity of the damage. Given the present acreage subsidy payment, surface grading is normally profitable from a farmer's point of view

How Should Governments Make Risky Policy Decisions?

Public policy-making does not follow the long-established and well-recognised principles of rational decision analysis under risk. Public views of risk are often inconsistent and seemingly irrational, and a gulf exists between risk perceptions and attitudes of the public and those of 'experts'. On the other hand, experts often claim unjustifiably high levels of confidence in their predictions of policy choice outcomes, creating a lack of public faith in their recommendations. While risky policy choices deserve more systematic decision analysis, many challenges remain to effective implementation of such analyses. Among the suggestions for improvement that we offer is the need for more effective interaction between policy-makers, decision analysts and the public