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There seems to be no controversy about Nigeria being an agricultural country with food sufficiency up till the late 1970s. However, in recent times the country is finding it very difficult to provide sufficient food for the teeming population which has resulted in the majority of the country’s citizens slipping into poverty. The ability of the country to provide sufficiently for the citizens was a result of a lack of reliable and effective developmental and transformational strategies in the agricultural sector of the country which is a major employer of labour in the rural community. To this end, this chapter mainly focuses on factors inhibiting the development of agricultural companies in Nigeria and how to overcome the developmental barriers in the agricultural sector in Nigeria. The findings from the review show that the bane of the agricultural sector in Nigeria is due to the lack of an agricultural regulatory framework and policy transmission mechanism and over-dependence on oil revenue amongst other things (Adams, 2016). It is therefore imperative for the country to embark on the development of a reliable agricultural framework and model that will aid food sufficiency in the country.

The American agricultural economist Marion Clawson advised the Israeli government during 1953–1955. Clawson, a protégé of John D. Black and Mordecai Ezekiel, criticized the government for ignoring economic considerations, and stated that Israel’s national goals – defense, Negev Desert irrigation, immigrant absorption via new agricultural settlements, and economic independence – were mutually contradictory. His major recommendations were to improve the realism of Israel’s agricultural plan; end expensive Negev irrigation; enlarge irrigated farms eightfold; freeze new settlements until the number of semi-developed settlements falls from 300 to 100; and limit new Negev settlements to 10 over 5–7 years. Thus, Clawson ignored political feasibility and made value judgments. Minister of Finance Levi Eshkol and Minister of Agriculture Peretz Naphtali rejected Clawson’s recommendations because they ignored Israel’s national goals. By September 1954, Clawson shifted towards greater pragmatism: He acknowledged that foreign advisors should not question the national goals or make value judgments, and sought common ground with the Ministry of Agriculture. At his initiative, he wrote Israel Agriculture 1953/54 in collaboration with the Ministry of Agriculture. Israel Agriculture was a consensus document: Clawson eschewed recommendations and accepted that the government might prioritize non-economic goals. In proposing Israel Agriculture, Clawson made a pragmatic decision to relinquish some independence for (potentially) greater influence. Ultimately, Clawson was largely unsuccessful as an advisor. Clawson’s failure was part of a general pattern: Over 1950–1985, the Israeli government always rejected foreign advisors’ recommendations unless it was facing a severe crisis.

Polish agriculture is one of the main sectors of the national economy that, under the influence of political transformations and European integration, is subject to measures stimulating its development. The instruments of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) have been an important supporting stimulus.

This chapter aims to evaluate the significance of the common agricultural policy to the growth and development of agriculture and to structural transformations therein triggered primarily by the influx of additional CAP funds.

The agricultural sector was examined together with its selected characteristics in the context of CAP instruments' impact after 2004. Data included the streams of funding for Polish agriculture and indicators illustrating changes in structural features, economic performance and productivity of production factors. The indicators included changes in the number, structure and potential of farmsteads, changes in the level of employment in agriculture, this sector's share in total gross value added, profitability of farmsteads, capital expenditure level and changes in labour and land profitability compared with changes in the level of employment and agricultural production intensity. They were calculated based on data from EUROSTAT, Statistics Poland and Farm Accountancy Data Network (FADN).

The outcomes confirm that common agricultural policy has contributed to create development processes in Polish agriculture. Changes in the sector affected structural characteristics, production factors productivity and the income of agricultural producers. Since Poland joined the European Union (EU), the percentage of agricultural workers declined by 8.4 p.p. and the number of farms decreased by nearly 30%. These changes were accompanied by a nearly twofold increase in agricultural labour productivity, 50% increase in land productivity and the profitability of land increased by 43%.

This paper investigates the effects of the total abolition of all forms of agricultural subsidies to producers and border tariffs on the prices of staple cereals.

The authors use the GTAP global economy-wide model and focus on 27 countries and 8 regions. The GTAP database that is used contains information on budgetary transfers to producers and market price support such as domestic price support, tariffs, export subsidies, quotas on exports or imports and other border measures.

The removal of subsidies is estimated to significantly increase the prices of wheat and other cereal grains in Japan, paddy rice in Malaysia and Indonesia, processed rice in Malaysia and Indonesia and wheat in Brazil and India. When border tariffs are removed, cereal prices are projected to fall in several countries, but the decline is more pronounced for wheat in Kenya and Japan, other cereal grains in South Korea and all staples in Nepal.

The alternative scenarios on the removal of agricultural subsidies in all agricultural sectors and the elimination of border tariffs are purely speculative as the analysis ignores important political economy considerations of agricultural and food policy reforms.

The findings from this study point to the importance of implementing additional policy measures to mitigate the possible negative effect of repurposing the support to agriculture and ensure the food security and welfare of those categories of buyers who heavily depend on the price of staple food for their livelihoods.

This study’s findings confirm that the elimination of agricultural subsidies would impact global food security directly by making staple food less affordable to the poorest and indirectly by decreasing the available household budget for other presumably more nutritious food groups. Consequently, it is expected that these price increases could make segments of the world population poorer, particularly the net-food buyers due to a decline in their real income.

The authors assess the impact of removing the subsidies on the economy in a comprehensive way, particularly given the recent policy focus on net zero emissions and Sustainable Development Goals that include healthy foods. The authors also consider the counter effects of tariff reduction on this, which is price-reducing.

The present study provides evidence on export advantages of horticultural commodities based on competitiveness, trade balance and seasonality dimensions.

The study delineated horticultural commodities in terms of comparative advantage, examined temporal shifts in export advantages (mapping) and estimated seasonality. Product mapping was carried out using the Revealed Symmetric Comparative Advantage (RSCA) and Trade Balance Index (TBI). Seasonal advantages were examined through a graphical approach along with the objective tests, namely, modified QS-test (QS), Friedman-test (FT) and using a seasonal dummy.

Cucumbers/gherkins, onions, preserved vegetables, fresh grapes, shelled cashew nuts, guavas, mangoes, and spices emerged as the most favorable horticultural products. India has a strong seasonal advantage in dried onions, cucumber/gherkins, shelled cashew nut, dried capsicum, coriander, cumin, and turmeric. The untapped potential in horticulture can be addressed by handling the trade barriers effectively, particularly the sanitary and phytosanitary issues, affecting the exports. Proper policies must be enacted to facilitate the investment in advanced agricultural technologies and logistics to ensure the desired quality and cost effectiveness.

Commodity-specific studies on value chain analysis would provide valuable insights into the issues hindering exports and realizing the untapped export potential.

There is no holistic and recent study illustrating the horticulture export advantages covering a large number of commodities in the Indian context. The study would be helpful to the stakeholders for drawing useful policy implications.

Evaluating the economic effects of climate change is a pivotal step for planning adaptation in developing countries. For Bangladesh, global warming has put it among the most vulnerable countries in the world to climate change, with increasing temperatures and sea-level rise. Hence, the purpose of this paper is to examine how climate change impacts the economy in Bangladesh in the case of climate scenarios.

Using a dynamic computable general equilibrium (CGE) model and three climate change scenarios, this paper assesses the economy-wide implications of climate change on Bangladesh’s economy and agriculture. It is clear from the examination of the CGE model that the impacts of climate change on agricultural sectors were felt more sharply, reducing output by −3.25% and −3.70%, respectively, and increasing imports by 1.22% and 1.53% in 2030 and 2050, compared to the baseline.

The findings reveal that, relative to baseline, agricultural output will decline by a range of −3.1% to −3.6% under the high climate scenario (higher temperatures and lower yields). A decrease in agricultural output results in declines in agricultural labor and household income. Household income falls in all categories, although it drops the most in urban less educated households with a range of −3.1% to −3.4%. On the other hand, consumption of commodities will fall by −0.11% to −0.13%, according to the findings. Although climate change impacts had a relatively small effect on gross domestic product, reducing it by −0.059% and −0.098% in 2030 and 2050, respectively.

As agricultural output, household consumption and income decline, it will impact the majority of the population’s health in Bangladesh by increasing malnutrition, hidden hunger, poverty, changing food environment, changing physical and mental health status and a changing health-care environment. Therefore, population health and food security will be a top socioeconomic and political concern for Bangladesh Government.

The examination of the dynamic CGE model is its originality. In conclusion, the evidence generated here can provide important information to policymakers and guide government policies that contribute to national development and the achievement of food security targets. It is also necessary to put more emphasis on climate change issues and address potential risks in the following years.

This study aims to examine farmers' decision to use smartphone agricultural applications (SAAs) and how SAAs adoption impact their land transfer behaviors in terms of the current land transfer-in area (LTA) and the future willingness to renew land transfer-in after it expires (WTR).

This study provides empirical evidence on the relationship between farmers' use of SAAs and land transfer choice, using a field survey data of 752 rural farm households in 2020 from Sichuan province of China. The endogenous switching models are employed to address potential self-selection bias associated with voluntary SAAs use and to quantitatively examine the impacts of SAAs use on land transfer choice.

The empirical results reveal that SAAs significantly improves the probability of transfer-in of more land by 39.10%. We find SAAs use has heterogeneous impacts on land transfer-in choice in the groups of agricultural technology, extension service, marketing and credit. Besides, we also find that SAAs use exerts highly positive and significant impact on farmers with less land area transfer-in. Moreover, SAAs can increase the probability of farmers' willingness to renew the land transfer-in by 30%.

To the best of our knowledge, this study is the first to explore the quantitative relationship between the use of SAAs and farm households' land transfer choice. The findings of this work can provide policy-related insights to help government promote the development of digital applications in the agricultural sector.

The author attempts to examine the existence and pattern of coalitions in international relations across countries, and investigates whether international relations of coalition partners influence a country's enaction of agricultural non-tariff measures (NTMs).

The author adopts a machine learning technique to identify international relation coalition partnerships and use network analysis to characterize the clustering pattern of coalitions with high-frequent records of global event data. The author then constructs a monthly dataset of agricultural NTMs against China and international relations with China of each importer and its coalition partners, and designs a panel structural vector autoregressive (PSVAR) model to estimate impulse response functions of agricultural NTMs with regard to international relation shocks.

The author finds countries to establish coalition partnerships. Two major clusters of coalitions are noted, with one composed of coalitions primarily among “North” countries and the other of coalitions among “South” countries. The United States is found to play a pivotal role by connecting the two clusters. The PSVAR estimation reveals reductions of NTMs against China following improved international relations with China of both the importer and its coalition partners. NTM responses are more substantial for measures that are trade restrictive. These results confirm that coalitions in international relations lead to coordination of agricultural NTMs.

The author provides international political insights into agricultural trade policymaking by showing interactions of NTM enaction across countries in the same coalition of international relations. These insights offer useful policy implications to predict and cope with hidden barriers to agricultural trade.

Numerical literature shows that agricultural insurance can affect pesticide investments, but few of them are devoted to explain how agricultural insurance affects farmers’ selection on green or traditional pesticides. This paper aims to develop a theoretical model about how agricultural insurance influences on green pesticides selections and tests our conclusions by using the data from China land economic survey (CLES) from 2020 to 2021.

We employ probit model to capture the effects of agricultural insurance on green pesticides adoption.

We indicate that green pesticides have a stronger effect on stabilizing yield and increasing income than traditional pesticides, but there are still risks disturbing farmers’ decisions on green pesticides usage. By providing premium subsidies after the farmers are affected by natural risk, agricultural insurance improves the farmers’ expected income and encourages farmers to use green pesticides. Further, we further confirm these conclusions by considering different scenarios such as climate risks, farmers’ entrepreneurship and credit constraints. We find that the effects are more salient if croplands are under higher natural risks and, farmers are equipped with entrepreneurship and formal credit. This paper implies that the agricultural insurance decoupled with green technologies also have salient positive effects on agricultural pollution control.

The potential contributions of this paper can be outlined in three aspects in detail. Firstly, this paper aims to revel the effects of agricultural insurance on pesticide selection by structuring a general theoretical model. By using the CLES data from 2020 to 2021, we confirm that agricultural insurance increases the probability for adopting green pesticides. Secondly, this paper discusses the effects of farmers’ characteristics on the results and finds that if farmers have entrepreneurship, the effects of agricultural insurance on green pesticide usage will be more salient. Thirdly, it uncovers some practices in China, which will supply experiences for other developing countries. For example, this paper further demonstrates that “insurance + credit” plan the present Chinese government carried out will be an important measure for strengthening effects of agricultural insurance on green pesticides usage. Moreover, it shows that decouple agricultural policies will also guide farmers to use green technologies eventually if the technologies are reliable and farmers can afford.

This paper aims to test the impact of remittances receipt on agricultural productivity. The paper empirically assesses whether heterogeneity in economic activity of farming households affects the effects of remittances on productivity of tradable and nontradable crop farming households in Ghana.

The authors employ propensity score matching (PSM) methods to address potential endogeneity issues that could arise from the estimation due to selection bias. This paper uses the seventh round of Ghana living standard survey dataset for Ghana.

The authors find that, the involvement of farming households in other economic activities alters the impact of remittances on crop yield. This differential impact also varies according whether the crop is tradeable or not.

Policy can reduce the cost of sending remittances and include financial literacy modules in the farmer training modules to increase farmers' knowledge on investment of remittance in agricultural production.

The authors distinguish the paper from others by controlling for crop types (particularly tradeable or otherwise and gestation period), farming of a second or more crops and engagement of smallholder farmers in nonfarm economic activities.