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Agricultural Innovations (agricultural + innovation)

Distribution by Scientific Domains

Humanities and Social Sciences	60%
Business, Economics, Finance and Accounting	40%

Selected Abstracts

European Sugar Policy Reform and Agricultural Innovation

CANADIAN JOURNAL OF AGRICULTURAL ECONOMICS, Issue 4 2008
Koen Dillen
In July 2006, the European Union's (EU) Common Market Organization (CMO) for sugar underwent the first radical reform since its establishment in 1968. In this article, we study the incentives for adoption of new technologies before and after the policy reform. We build a stochastic partial equilibrium model and use it to analyze the effect of the policy reform on the adoption incentives of genetically modified herbicide tolerant sugar beet. Our findings show that the adoption incentives of high-cost sugar beet farmers are significantly reduced under the new CMO. Medium-cost producers, in contrast, have greater incentives to adopt new technologies, while low-cost producers are largely left unaffected. The reduced adoption incentives of high-cost farmers lead to lower flexibility and competitiveness of these farmers and therefore coincides with the goals of the reform to crowd out high-cost producers and increase competitiveness of the European sugar market. En juillet 2006, l'Organisation commune du marché (OCM) du sucre a subi sa première réforme radicale depuis sa mise en place par l'UE en 1968. Dans la présente étude, nous avons examiné les incitatifs offerts pour l'adoption de nouvelles technologies, avant et après la réforme. Nous avons élaboré un modèle stochastique d'équilibre partiel et l'avons utilisé pour analyser les répercussions de la réforme sur les incitatifs offerts pour l'adoption de variétés de betteraves sucrières génétiquement modifiées résistantes aux herbicides. Selon nos résultats, les incitatifs offerts aux producteurs de betterave sucrière ayant des coûts marginaux élevés ont significativement diminué depuis la réforme de l'OCM du sucre. Par contre, les incitatifs offerts aux producteurs ayant des coûts marginaux moyens se sont accrus, tandis que ceux offerts aux producteurs ayant de faibles coûts marginaux n'ont pas changé. La diminution des incitatifs offerts aux producteurs ayant des coûts marginaux élevés entraîne une diminution de la souplesse et de la capacité concurrentielle de ces producteurs et, par conséquent, coïncide avec les objectifs de la réforme qui visent àévincer les producteurs ayant des coûts marginaux élevés et à accroître la capacité concurrentielle du marché européen du sucre. [source]

Agricultural innovation and food security in Sub-Saharan Africa: Tracing connections and missing links

JOURNAL OF INTERNATIONAL DEVELOPMENT, Issue 3 2010
Julius T. Mugwagwa
Abstract Grounded in research carried out by researchers investigating different aspects of technological and institutional innovation in agriculture in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), this special issue seeks to make a contribution to empirical evidence and literature on agricultural innovation globally. The contributors explore the relationship between technology, policy and public engagement approaches and wider concepts of technology development and governance, and collectively argue for a broadened perspective on innovation towards generating new ways of thinking that can ultimately improve upon existing practices in the quest for sustainable solutions to food insecurity. Overall, this is not a negative story. Instead of the now common despair about the abilities of Africa to meet it is own food-security requirements, this issue presents articles which demonstrate how much is already in place, with reflections and suggestions on how such resources can be made to work together for the greater socio-economic good of the continent Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source]

Adoption of agricultural innovations as a two-stage partial observability process

AGRICULTURAL ECONOMICS, Issue 3 2003
Efthalia Dimara
Innovation adoption; Organic agriculture; Partial observability Abstract In this paper, we reconsider the appropriateness of certain statistical analyses in innovation adoption studies and suggest that partial observability models may sometimes be more useful. The proposed models allow for a flexible specification of the process of adoption from one stage to two stages, facilitate the modelling of non-adopters and remedy the violation of the assumption of full information. An application to the adoption of organic cultivation in Greece demonstrates the relative merits of the proposed analysis. [source]

Global geographies of innovation diffusion: the case of the Australian cattle industry

THE GEOGRAPHICAL JOURNAL, Issue 1 2010
MATTHEW TONTS
The geographies and histories of the introduction of cattle breeds to Australia in the period since white settlement are documented as an example of the diffusion of agricultural innovations. Three phases of development are identified: a colonial expansion phase from the late eighteenth to the early twentieth century during which a number of primarily British cattle breeds were imported by the colonial settlers; an innovative phase in the mid twentieth century when both governments and private interests sought to produce or import new breeds deemed to be better adapted to Australian environments; and a multifunctional phase in recent decades. In this final phase, government deregulation and new technologies, such as the long distance transport of genetic packages, have facilitated the importation and development of many new cattle breeds in Australia. While this has produced a significant rise in the total number of breeds represented nationally, many recent and historic breeds currently exhibit extremely small numbers and a few generally well-established breeds such as Holstein, Hereford and Angus still dominate the national herd. This study of changing breed types and introductions provides some evidence of post-productivism and of a multifunctional transition in that several cattle breeds favoured by hobby farmers and boutique breeders are now represented, but the aggregate numbers for these breeds remain small and the numbers for several of the traditional (or colonial) breeds are currently in decline. Overall, it is apparent that Australia's cattle industry retains a strongly productivist ethos and that, particularly given the country's very great environmental variation, its levels of breed diversity remain low. [source]