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Farm Sector (farm + sector)

Distribution by Scientific Domains
Business, Economics, Finance and Accounting100%

Selected Abstracts

Rural nonfarm activities and agricultural crop production in Nigeria

AGRICULTURAL ECONOMICS, Issue 2 2009
Gbemisola Oseni
Nigeria; Rural nonfarm activities; Agricultural crop expenditures; Credit constraints Abstract Although most rural households are involved in the farm sector, the nonfarm sector has grown significantly in recent decades, and its role in rural development has become increasingly important. This article examines the effect of participation in nonfarm activities on crop expenses of farm households in Nigeria. The relationship is modeled using a nonseparable agricultural household model that suggests that participating in nonfarm activities can relax the credit constraints facing farm households and reduce risk thereby helping households improve farm production and smooth consumption over time. The results show that participation in nonfarm activities by Nigerian farmers has a positive and significant effect on crop expenses and in particular on payments for hired labor and inorganic fertilizers. Separate analysis of the six geopolitical zones in Nigeria indicates that it is in the South-South and South-East zones where nonfarm participation appears to induce more hiring of labor. The results support the hypothesis that nonfarm participation helps relax liquidity constraints but suggests how that liquidity is used is zone-specific. In general, the results also indicate that liquidity is used more to pay for inputs into staple production as opposed to cash crops. [source]

Horticulture exports, agro-industrialization, and farm,nonfarm linkages with the smallholder farm sector: evidence from Senegal

AGRICULTURAL ECONOMICS, Issue 2 2009
Miet Maertens
Farm,nonfarm linkages; Agri-food exports; Smallholder farming; Rural development Abstract In this article we address the question of farm,nonfarm linkages at the household level in Senegal. We examine whether increasing off-farm employment opportunities for rural households,resulting from increased horticulture exports and associated agro-industrialization,has benefitted the smallholder farm sector through investment linkages. We use data from a household survey in the main horticulture export region in Senegal. We find that access to unskilled employment in the export agro-industry has contributed to the alleviation of farmers' liquidity constraints, resulting in increased smallholder agricultural production. [source]

Do family farms really converge to a uniform size?

AUSTRALIAN JOURNAL OF AGRICULTURAL & RESOURCE ECONOMICS, Issue 1 2010
The role of unobserved farm efficiency
We analyse the growth of family farms in Israeli cooperative villages during a period of economic turmoil. We use instrumental variables to account for the endogeneity of initial farm size, and correct for selectivity as a result of farm survival. We also include a technical efficiency index, derived from the estimation of a stochastic frontier production model, as an explanatory variable. Our aim is to check whether ignoring efficiency could have been the reason for convergence results obtained elsewhere in the literature. We found that technical efficiency is an important determinant of farm growth, and that not controlling for technical efficiency could seriously bias the results. In particular, larger farms are found to grow faster over time, while without controlling for technical efficiency the farm growth process seemed to be independent of initial farm size. The increasing polarisation of farm sizes in Israel has ramifications for the inefficiencies induced by the historical quota system, for the political power of the farm sector and for the social stability of farm communities. [source]