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The purpose of this paper is to examine the impact of farmers’ risk perceptions regarding rubber farming on their land use choices, including rubber specialization and crop diversification.

A cross-sectional survey data of some 600 smallholder rubber farmers in Xishuangbanna in Southwest China is employed. This paper develops a general conceptual framework that incorporates a subjective risk item into a model of farmers’ land use choices, thereby developing four econometric models to estimate the role of risk perceptions, and applies instrumental variables to control for the endogeneity of risk perceptions.

The results demonstrate that risk perceptions play an important role in smallholders’ decision-making regarding land use strategies to address potential risks in rubber farming. Smallholders with higher risk perceptions specialize in rubber farming less often and are more likely to diversify their land use, thereby contributing to local environmental conservation in terms of agrobiodiversity. The land use choices of smallholder rubber farmers are also associated with ethnicity, household wealth, off-farm employment, land tenure status, altitude and rubber farming experience.

This study contributes to a better understanding of the implications of farmers’ risk perceptions and shows entry points for improving the sustainability of rubber-based land use systems.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate farmers’ risk aversion using the equally likely certainty equivalent approach and the negative exponential utility function to identify risk preference classification.

Stochastic efficiency with respect to a function is applied to determine the risk efficient farming systems for the farmers in central and north-east regions of Thailand.

The study results showed that maize followed by sorghum is the most risk efficient farming system for the extremely risk averse rain-fed farmers in the central region of Thailand. Intensive planting of wet rice and dry rice cultivation is preferred by the extremely risk averse central region irrigated farmers. Wet rice and cassava together with raising small herd of cattle is the most economically viable farming system for the extremely risk averse rain-fed farmers in the north-east region, while two rice crops with raising cattle is preferred by the extremely risk averse north-east irrigated farmers of Thailand.

The findings of this study provide useful information to reinforce the empirical basis for risk analysis for Thai farmers. The results will provide more accurate information regarding risk at the farm level to policy makers and researchers.

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.

This study investigates implications of crop and income diversifications on consumption expenditure (welfare) of rice-producing households in Ghana. It further compares diversification by three rice production systems: two-season rain-fed, two-season irrigated and one-season rain-fed rice production.

Primary data were sourced from 225 rice farmers. Margalef index and three-stage least-squares were employed.

Majority of rice-farming households in Ghana diversify livelihoods. The extent of livelihood diversification differs among two-season rain-fed, two-season irrigated and one-season rain-fed rice-producing households. Credit, distance to district capitals, production purpose and number of farming seasons influence crop and income diversifications, and consumption expenditure of rice-producing households. While crop diversification reduces consumption expenditure, income diversification increases it. Crop and income diversifications positively influence each other. Consumption expenditure reduces crop diversification but increases income diversification.

Policy should be directed towards the promotion of more livelihood activities to boost rice farmers' welfare. There should be awareness creation and training programmes to enable rice farmers realize different economic activities within and outside the agricultural value chain.

Crop and income diversifications were measured as continuous response variables, unlike previous studies that used a binary response variable. The authors established a synergy among crop and income diversifications, and consumption expenditure (welfare). The authors further compared crop and income diversifications by three rice production systems: two-season rain-fed, two-season irrigated and one-season rain-fed rice production systems.

This paper aims to determine factors affecting adaptation to climate variability on crop production among farming households in Tyhume Valley.

This study conducted an empirical analysis of the impact of adaptation on crop yield of farming households and estimated the factors affecting adaptation to climate variability on farming households. The analysis used primary data from 205 farming households practicing crop production in Tyhume Valley communities.

Based on binary logit results, factors affecting rural farming households’ adaptation to climate variability are gender, age, heatwave, employment status, strong high wind occasional experience and cell phone. The adaptation measures adopted by the farming households in the study area include irrigation (94.8%), crop rotation (66%), changing crop variety (7.4%) and other methods of adaptation were found to be (1.3%). The other methods of adaptation used included the use of ash to kill (intuku) mole and using dirty water from washing dishes and clothes when irrigating to kill parasites on crops.

This research paper will be an addition to the body of knowledge on adaptation strategies to climate variability in South Africa, especially at the rural farming household level. This study may assist the rural communities in decision-making when dealing with the challenges of climate variability on their crop production, thereby increasing their crop production. The information gathered in this study might assist policymakers in revising the existing policies. This study will also help rural farming households to practice appropriate adaptation strategies.

Changes in climate may have both beneficial and harmful effects on crop yields. However, the effects will be more in countries whose economy depends on agriculture. This study aims to measure the economic impacts of climate change on crop farming in Bangladesh.

A Ricardian model was used to estimate the relationship between net crop income and climate variables. Historical climate data and farm household level data from all climatic zones of Bangladesh were collected for this purpose. A regression model was then developed of net crop income per hectare against long-term climate, household and farm variables. Marginal impacts of climate change and potential future impacts of projected climate scenarios on net crop incomes were also estimated.

The results revealed that net crop income in Bangladesh is sensitive to climate, particularly to seasonal temperature. A positive effect of temperature rise on net crop income was observed for the farms located in the areas having sufficient irrigation facilities. Estimated marginal impact suggests that 1 mm/month increase in rainfall and 10°C increase in temperature will lead to about US$4-15 increase in net crop income per hectare in Bangladesh. However, there will be significant seasonal and spatial variations in the impacts. The assessment of future impacts under climate change scenarios projected by Global Circulation Models indicated an increase in net crop income from US$25-84 per hectare in the country.

The findings of this study indicate the need for development practitioners and policy planners to consider both the beneficial and harmful effects of climate change across different climatic zones while designing and implementing the adaptation policies in the country.

Literature survey of the Web of Science, Science Direct and Google Scholar indicates that this study is the first attempt to measure the economic impacts of climate change on overall crop farming sector in Bangladesh using an econometric model.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the adoption of two categories of agricultural technologies among beginning farmers (10 years or less of experience) operating in the specialty crops industry. A secondary goal is to characterize the beginning farmers' population in the specialty crops industry and compare them to more experienced farmers (more than 10 years of farming experience).

Using a series of regressions, this paper tests the hypothesis that beginning farmers are more likely to adopt agricultural technologies such as growing technologies (i.e. hydroponics and hoop houses) and value-added (VA) technologies (drying and cutting produce into customer-ready portions) relative to counterparts. Using a unique primary collected dataset of specialty crops farmers, the dependent variable for each model is the binary decision to adopt each agricultural technology, while the main variables of interest are the dummy variables beginning farmers and the interaction terms created between beginning farmers and land farmed, percent of land rented, crop diversification, local sales, and part-time farming.

Farmers' characterization suggests that, on average, beginning farmers are more likely to adopt growing technologies than more experienced farmers. However, after controlling for other determinants of adoption, there is no significantly difference between the two groups. Lastly, results suggest that beginning farmers are more likely to adopt VA technologies relative to experienced farmers.

While the adoption of agricultural innovations can lead to increases in economic and environmental resilience, little is known about beginning farmers adopting agricultural technologies, and studies are even less common for specialty crops operations. As the world population continues to grow rapidly, the demand for agricultural food products is expected to increase up to 100% between 2010 and 2050. This growth places additional stress on the limited access to land and water for agricultural production. Farm profitability can be boosted by increasing economies of scope through the use of growing technologies that increase yield or by adding value to specialty crops. The increasing global demand for food makes it imperative to understand what influences the adoption of agricultural technologies among beginning farmers growing food crops.

The purpose of this paper is to identify the trends in crop diversification (CD) while examining its impact on the technical efficiency of peasant farmers in Nigeria.

The paper employs the Herfindahl and Ogive indices to compute the diversification indices and the stochastic frontier production model (SFPM) to estimate the technical efficiency (TE) level of the farms using unbalanced panel data covering three farming seasons (2006/2007 to 2008/2009).

The results of both the Herfindahl and Ogive indices showed that cropping pattern increased significantly with the intensification of crop diversification in the study across the three seasons. The result of the SFPM shows evidence of decreasing returns‐to‐scale and technical progress in the food crop production in the region. Education, extension, and CD are identified as efficiency increasing policy variables while an average TE level of about 81 percent was obtained from the analysis.

To the best of the author's knowledge, this the very first study that employs panel data to analyze technical efficiency of farms in Nigeria.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the economic performance of Norwegian crop farms using a stochastic frontier analysis.

The analysis was based on a translog cost function and unbalanced farm-level panel data for 1991–2013 from 455 Norwegian farms specialized in crop production in eastern and central regions of Norway.

The results of the analysis show that the mean efficiency was about 78–81 percent. Farm management practices and socioeconomic factors were shown to significantly affect the economic performance of Norwegian crop farms.

Farmers are getting different types of support from the government and the study does not account for the different effects of different kinds of subsidy on cost efficiency. Different subsidies might have different effects on farm performance. To get more informative and useful results, it would be necessary to repeat the analysis with less aggregated data on subsidy payments.

One implication for farmers (and their advisers) is that many of them are less efficient than the estimated benchmark (best performing farms). Thus, those lagging behind the best performing farms need to look at the way they are operating and to seek out ways to save costs or increase crop production. Perhaps there are things for lagging farmers to learn from their more productive farming neighbors. For instance, those farmers not practicing crop rotation might be well advised to try that practice.

For both taxpayers and consumers, one implication is that the contributions they pay that go to subsidize farmers appear to bring some benefits in terms of more efficient production that, in turn, increase the supply of some foods so possibly making food prices more affordable.

Unlike previous performance studies in the literature, the authors estimated farm-level economic performance accounting for the contribution of both an important farm management practice and selected socioeconomic factors. Good farm management practices, captured through crop rotation, land tenure, government support and off-farm activities were found to have made a positive and statistically significant contribution to reducing the cost of production on crop-producing farms in the Central and Eastern regions of Norway.

The purpose of this paper is to assess the impacts of GM crop adoption on the profitability of farms operated by young and/or beginning farmers and ranchers (YBFR).

This research uses weighted quantile regression analysis in conjunction with 2004‐2006 Agricultural Resource Management Survey to evaluate the impact of GM crop adoption on financial performance of farms operated by YBFR. The methodology employed in this study corrects for the simultaneity of technology adoption and farm financial performance.

As expected, the impact of GM crop adoption on profitability is positively affected by the scale of operation and leverage. On the other hand, off‐farm employment by “beginning” farmers has a negative impact on farm's profitability if they choose to adopt GM crops. Finally, quantile regression results from a farm household study shows that the model performs better at the higher quantile of the distribution.

This study helps to determine whether the adoption of GM crops increases the profitability of farms operated by “beginning” farmers. In addition, it explores the impact of other factors (such as farm, operator, demographic, and financial characteristics) on the profitability of farms operated by “beginning” farmers.

Computing the profitability of adoption decisions for YBFR will provide significant information to YBFR that they can use in constructing their farm operations strategic business plan and future decisions regarding farming operations.

Existing research does not examine the impact of GM crops adoption on farm profitability of YBFR. Furthermore, YBFR operators face significant challenges in making their operations financially viable, owing to lack of access to capital and land.