How to make money by feeding the tourists: the case of Fiji

This paper reports a study of the horticultural chain in Fiji. The objectives of the research was to understand how the domestic horticultural supply could meet the demand currently generated by the tourism sector, i.e. how new income opportunities for the rural people could be generated by feeding the tourists. If policy interventions are to be directed at strengthening backward economic linkages between tourism and local food supplier, a better understanding of factors driving farmers marketing choice is required. This paper aims to contribute in this regard by analyzing the decisions of farmers to engage in direct selling to hotels. Hotels pay premium prices for quality fresh produce and direct marketing can allow farmers to retain the highest possible portion of this premium without sharing it with intermediaries. The results of the application of a discrete choice model to data collected in the chain study, suggest that quality is the most important factor among those affecting the choice of direct marketing to hotels. Other variables influencing the decision were found to be ethnicity, distance from the market and the availability of transportation means of property.horticultural markets, direct marketing, discrete choice models, Fiji., Community/Rural/Urban Development, Marketing,

Farm level impact of rural development policy: a conditional difference in difference matching approach

We use a conditional difference-in-difference matching estimator and a 2003-2007 balanced panel drawn from the FADN Italian sample to evaluate the impact at the farm level of the implementation of the first Italian Rural Development Programme (RDP). We find that, in average, farms receiving at least a RDP payment increased family labor, while they did not increase total labour employed on farm. In addition, they experienced an increase in labor profitability and added value, even though the estimate significance varies accordingly to the matching method used. Our findings, suggest that the implementation of the first RDP produced a positive direct impact on rural GDP, while it did not prove to be effective in terms of rural employment growth.Common Agricultural Policy, Rural Development Policy, conditional diff-in-diff matching, Agricultural and Food Policy, Q12, Q18, C14,

Alternative producer-consumer relationships: the AgroGeoTrace project and the speciality products virtual roads

The AgroGeoTrace (AGT) project makes use of Geographical Information Systems and multichannel information technologies to facilitate the access of final consumers to local food speciality products. The project builds a prototype of an informative system designed, first, to help consumers to understand the agronomic and technological characteristics that make the targeted products special ones, and, second, to precisely and easily locate the sites (farms and oil mills) where they can buy them. The information made available through the project is intended to the symbolic relocalization of the regional products, hence to promote them and to create added value. The final outcomes of the project are the virtual maps of on-farm shops made available on Digital television (channel In+), PDAs and mobile phones.food speciality products, short agro-food chains, Geographical Information Systems, Agribusiness,

Modelling Spatial Regimes in Farms Technologies

We exploit the information derived from geographical coordinates to endogenously identify spatial regimes in technologies that are the result of a variety of complex, dynamic interactions among site-specific environmental variables and farmer decision making about technology, which are often not observed at the farm level. Controlling for unobserved heterogeneity is a fundamental challenge in empirical research, as failing to do so can produce model misspecification and preclude causal inference. In this article, we adopt a two-step procedure to deal with unobserved spatial heterogeneity, while accounting for spatial dependence in a cross-sectional setting. The first step of the procedure takes explicitly unobserved spatial heterogeneity into account to endogenously identify subsets of farms that follow a similar local production econometric model, i.e. spatial production regimes. The second step consists in the specification of a spatial autoregressive model with autoregressive disturbances and spatial regimes. The method is applied to two regional samples of olive growing farms in Italy. The main finding is that the identification of spatial regimes can help drawing a more detailed picture of the production environment and provide more accurate information to guide extension services and policy makers

Agricultural and Rural Household Income Statistics

Farm Management,

Pluriactivity Decisions by Farm Households in Italy

In this article we test whether in Italy the off-farm participation decisions of household members in working age are taken jointly and what are the variables that affect them. We find that the decisions of the operator, the spouse and the eldest child are not joint. Conversely, the participation decision of the operator and the spouse, that is of the two household's members belonging to the same generation, are found to be joint. The results suggest that policy actions for the purpose of encouraging off-farm participation rely on measures geared at improving the level of education and providing childcare services.off-farm work participation, multivariate probit, household models, Consumer/Household Economics, Labor and Human Capital, C35, J43, Q12,

Do Caring Services Affect Off-Farm Work? Evidence from Italy

The article investigates the determinants of the off-farm work decision in Italian farm households, highlighting the role of caring services. Assuming that the household simultaneously decides over the optimal allocation of time of each of its members, a multivariate probit model is used to estimate the off-farm participation equations and to control for possible correlation among them. Evidence of correlation between spouse and descendant equations are found. Results suggest that policy actions geared at encouraging the off-farm participation of farm household members ought to enhance the availability and accessibility of caring services and increase the level of education of household members.Off-farm work participation, multivariate probit, household behavioural models, caring services, Agricultural and Food Policy, Consumer/Household Economics,

Direct Selling: a Marketing Strategy to Shorten Distances between Production and Consumption

Direct sales became in recent years a diversification strategy increasingly used by farms to answer the CAP reform, as well as to react to the continuous price squeeze. Direct sales is in fact a form of marketing that allow farmers to retain a higher share of the final value of products. Far from being a way back to tradition, short chains and direct sales can be seen as strategies to capture new segments of demand interested in local and fresh food, and in more direct contact between consumers and suppliers. The aim of this work is to study the recent evolution of direct selling in Italy and the determinants of the adoption of this marketing strategy. The first part of the paper analyses the evolution of Italian short supply chains and the development of the related institutional framework (national laws and financial incentives). In the second part of the paper the analysis is focused on the determinants of the adoption of direct selling. Specific attention will be devoted to empirically test if the probability of using of this marketing channel is influenced by the farm location in proximity to urban areas.farm diversification, direct selling, short supply chain, periurban agriculture, discrete choice models, Marketing,

Once part-timer always part-timer? Causes for persistence in off farm work state of farmers

Off-farm labour participation is an important way in which farm households adapt their labour resources to farm labour needs, and is often viewed as an income integration and an insurance against risk. Nevertheless, it has also been questioned as a step for exiting agriculture. It is therefore important to assess whether or not it is a permanent status and which are its determinants. Most papers on this issue are based on cross-sectional analyses and thus disregard the problem of persistence in the state. Using a 5-wave panel of Italian family farms we estimate different dynamic nonlinear panel data models of the determinants of off-farm labour participation. We allow for two sources of persistence: unobserved heterogeneity and state dependence, and in addition we control for the initial conditions problem. We find a strong persistence in the state and our findings show that, when taking all these features into account, the present work state is almost totally explained by the previous state and by idiosyncratic characteristics. The variables concerning the farm and the farmer’s characteristics, typically found to be relevant in cross-sectional analyses, are not significant in the dynamic setting. The reasons for the inconsistency between our results and those of cross-sectional studies are discussed, and an interpretation of how the determinants influence the off-farm labour participation is presented. The distinction between true state dependence and individual heterogeneity has important policy implications that are discussed

Construction and Simulation of the General Economic Equilibrium Model Meg-Ismea for the Italian Economy

Common Agricultural Policy, Agricultural policy, reform, Computable general equilibrium models.