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A set of crop alternatives ranging from traditional, low risk to less common and/or high risk crops is ranked according to their impact on overall risk using two measures. These two measures would aid cropping decisions by providing (1) a priori guidance on overall risk impact, and (2) a means to reduce the need for complex E‐V frontier estimation. Results suggest the number of crops that may depend on the riskiness of crop alternatives form which a producer chooses. Some reductions in necessary calculations for E‐V analysis are therefore suggested.

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.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the characteristics of crop-livestock diversification among smallholders in the forest-savannah agroecological zone of Ghana.

The study uses a stochastic input distance function to investigate the evidence of economies of diversification and its effect on determining diversification decisions of smallholders in Ghana. Furthermore, this study also explores evidence of scale economies in integrated crop-livestock systems among smallholder farmers.

The empirical results show that economies of diversification are significant in determining diversification decisions of smallholders. The economies of scale are evident in integrated crop-livestock systems in Ghana, suggesting that opportunities exist to expand crop-livestock outputs without employing additional inputs or improved production technologies. Crop-livestock diversification is a desirable strategy for improving overall farm productivity among smallholders in Ghana. Economies of diversification were found to be significant among the output combinations, maize with other crops and other crops with livestock, in integrated crop-livestock production systems.

This study is based on a cross-sectional data set. Hence, the findings may be subject to some limitations; however, the authors have sought to minimise such limitations.

The results imply that crop-livestock diversification is a desirable strategy for improving overall farm productivity. Therefore, the findings are useful for policymakers to design appropriate strategies for enhancing the production of specific output combinations in crop-livestock diversification systems among smallholders in Ghana. Specifically, such policies should promote the production and integration of crops such as legumes with other crops, and livestock with other crops in diversified farming systems to enhance overall farm productivity. This will reduce food insecurity and poverty among rural farm households and the entire rural population.

These results indicate that to improve crop-livestock productivity through diversification, and reduce the effect of climate variability, it is imperative to provide the enabling environment that will facilitate and encourage production of these output combinations among smallholders in Ghana. The empirical results enhance the literature by providing empirical evidence of the complementary synergies and economies of diversification in integrated farming systems and, hence, make recommendations for improving these farming systems.

The peer review history for this paper is available at: https://publons.com/publon/10.1108/IJSE-04-2019-0274.

The purpose of this paper is to provide an understanding of what motivates farmers to participate in inter-organizational relationships with farm product buyers. Interest in inter-organizational relationships in the Ghanaian agri-food sector has been stimulated in recent years by policies seeking to reduce farmers’ market risks while improving buyers’ access to commodity inputs. The decision of how to sell farm produce is an economic imperative for the farmer; therefore, the coexistence of spot markets and inter-organizational relationships suggests that the farmers who use them must be having some gains from them.

This study employed binary logit regression using both qualitative and quantitative data and the transactions cost theory to understand the Ghanaian farmers’ motivation for participating in inter-organizational relationships.

This study found that a farmer having better information regarding product buyers’ needs was an important motivator for participation. The farmers’ certainty about the price they would get and the quantity they would sell were also major factors that motivated farmers’ participation. Again, the motivation to engage in inter-organizational relationships with processors was also influenced by the nature of the crop. Fruit farmers, for example, were 3.7 times more likely to participate in these relationships than non-fruit farmers.

This study considered analysis at the farmer level. However, some farmers produced multiple crops. This means that the farmers who participate in inter-organizational relations with buyers for one crop enterprise may be nonparticipant with the other crop(s). Future studies could target analysis at the crop level while accounting for the associated transactions costs.

This study explores how a combination of transaction costs theory and the different crops that farmers produce explains farmers’ decision to participate in inter-organizational relationships.

Enterprise diversification is a self‐insuring strategy used by farmers to protect against risk. This study examines the impact of various farm, operator, and household characteristics on the level of onfarm enterprise diversification. Evidence exists that larger farms are more specialized. Also, farmers who participate in off‐farm work, farms located near urban areas, or farms with higher debt‐to‐asset ratios are less likely to be diversified. In contrast, evidence suggests there is a significant positive relationship between diversification and whether the farm business has crop insurance, is organized as a sole proprietorship, or receives any direct payments from current farm commodity programs.

Farming in Bangladesh is confronted with various types of uncertainties, which contribute to farmers’ income volatility over the years. As a result, cereal, mainly rice, which is a less riskier crop remained dominantly planted in the current farm plan. But the return generated from rice cultivation has not been able to improve the livelihood of the poor, as rice profitability is low compared to some profitable but risky crops like jute and vegetables. To investigate the behavioral pattern of the farmers towards risk, Dhaka division, largely known as central region of Bangladesh, is selected. The prevailing farm plan of Dhaka division is compared with the efficient one at the current level of expected return in order to check whether the current farm plan is risky or otherwise. Quadratic and MOTAD as well as linear programming techniques have been employed for the analysis. The result of the study reveals that the prevailing farm plan in Dhaka division is risky compared to the efficient plan. Since the current return level is low, the study has recommended that more jute and vegetables should be planted to achieve higher remuneration.

The USDA’s Risk Management Agency (RMA) made several changes to the crop insurance products available to organic growers for the 2014 crop year. Most notably, a 5 percent premium surcharge was removed and organic-specific transitional yields (t-yields) were issued for the first time. The purpose of this paper is to use farm-level organic crop yield data to analyze the impact of these reforms on producer insurance outcomes and compare the insurance options for new organic growers.

This study uses a unique panel data set of organic corn and soybean yields to analyze the impact of organic crop insurance reforms. Actual Production History values and premium rates are calculated for each farm and crop yield sequence. Producer loss ratios and subsidized premium wedges are compared for yield, revenue and area-risk products before and after the instituted reforms.

Results indicate that RMA succeeded in improving the actuarial soundness of the organic insurance program, though further refinement of organic t-yields may be necessary to accurately reflect the yield potential of organic producers and avoid reductions in program participation.

This paper provides insight into the effectiveness of reforms intended to improve the actuarial soundness of organic crop insurance and demonstrates the effect that the reforms are likely to have on new and existing organic farms. Because this analysis uses data collected independently of RMA and includes farms that may or may not have purchased crop insurance, it avoids the self-selection problems that might affect analyses using crop insurance program data.

Rent seeking is endemic to the process through which any policy or regulatory initiative is developed in the USA. The purpose of this paper is to show how farm and other interest groups have formed coalitions to benefit themselves at the expense of the federal government by examining the legislative history of the federal crop insurance program.

The federal crop insurance legislation and the way in which the USDA Risk Management Agency manages federal crop insurance program are replete with complex and subtle policy initiatives. Using a new theoretical framework, the study examines how, since 1980, three major legislative initiatives – the 1980 Federal Crop Insurance Act, the 1994 Crop Insurance Reform Act and the 2000 Agricultural Risk Protection Act – were designed to jointly benefit farm interest groups and the agricultural insurance industry, largely through increases in government subsidies.

Each of the three legislative initiatives examined here included provisions that, when considered individually, benefitted farmers and adversely affected the insurance industry, and vice versa. However, the joint effects of the multiple adjustments included in each of those legislative initiatives generated net benefits for both sets of interest groups. The evidence, therefore, indicates that coalitions formed between the farm and insurance lobbies to obtain policy changes that, when aggregated, benefited both groups, as well as banks with agricultural lending portfolios. However, those benefits came at an increasingly substantial cost to taxpayers through federal government subsidies.

This is the first analysis of the US federal crop insurance program to examine the issue of coalition formation.

The aim of this paper is to show how provisions of the Supplemental Revenue Assistance Payments (SURE) program impacts production practices, and empirically examine changes in crop insurance participation rates as a means of measuring producer responses to the program.

The structure of the SURE program is described and a stylized theoretical model is used to show the SURE program's effects on farm‐level crop insurance and production decisions. A county‐level cross‐sectional empirical specification with regional fixed effects is used to test the hypothesis that producers who are most likely to benefit from production practice re‐optimization are more likely to participate in crop insurance.

Results from empirical analyses of corn, soybean, and wheat production areas show that the SURE program has had substantial impacts on crop insurance participation by producers who are more likely to receive SURE indemnities and exploit moral hazard opportunities.

Because the program has only recently been introduced, empirical estimates of the program's long‐run impacts are not estimable.

Results indicate that the program can have unexpected market consequences, with increased frequency and size of SURE indemnity claims than the Congressional Budget Office anticipated and increases in aggregate tax payer subsidies for both the crop insurance and SURE program. These outcomes can have important implications on motivating a restructuring of the program in the next farm bill.

Increased tax payer expenditures on the SURE and crop insurance programs in the form of subsidies can lead to non‐trivial reductions in social welfare.

This research is the first to develop a rigorous model of the SURE program's impacts on producer responses and associated effects on crop insurance participation. The study also provides empirical evidence of these effects.

This book is a policy proposal aimed at the democratic left. It is concerned with gradual but radical reform of the socio‐economic system. An integrated policy of industrial and economic democracy, which centres around the establishment of a new sector of employee‐controlled enterprises, is presented. The proposal would retain the mix‐ed economy, but transform it into a much better “mixture”, with increased employee‐power in all sectors. While there is much of enduring value in our liberal western way of life, gross inequalities of wealth and power persist in our society.