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The purposes of the study are to compare the investment behavior of farmers in Kazakhstan as a transforming country and in Germany as a Western industrialized country as well as to analyze whether the investment behavior of farmers is consistent with the normative benchmarks of the net present value approach or the real options (RO) approach.

The paper conducted an experiment with 100 Kazakhstani and 106 German farmers. The first part of the experiment describes an investment opportunity in an agricultural and in a non-agricultural treatment. The second part refers to a Holt and Laury lottery to determine farmers' risk attitude that could influence the investment behavior.

The results show that both approaches do not provide an exact prediction of the investment behavior of farmers. However, German farmers invest later than Kazakhstani farmers meaning that the investment behavior of German farmers is closer to the RO approach. This might imply that German farmers are more likely to take into account the value of flexibility when making investment decisions than Kazakhstani farmers.

Since investment behavior is country-specific, it is worth investigating whether farmers from other transforming countries would show different investment behavior compared to farmers from other Western industrialized countries. Furthermore, decision-making behavior related to investments could be different from that related to disinvestments. Therefore, it may be interesting to analyze the disinvestment decisions of farmers in transforming and Western industrialized countries.

The results show that it is not acceptable to apply the results of experiments investigating the investment behavior of entrepreneurs in a transforming country to entrepreneurs in a Western industrialized country and vice versa. Furthermore, training for farmers is needed because there is still room for improvement in order to achieve the RO benchmark. Finally, taking into account RO effects could improve the results of policy impact analysis.

This is the first experimental study comparing the investment behavior of farmers from a transforming country and from a Western industrialized country.

Index insurance is promising to mitigate drought-related income losses in agriculture. To reduce the basis risk of index insurance, the integration of satellite data is of growing interest in research. The objective of this study is to obtain preliminary evidence regarding farmers' perceived usefulness (PU) of satellite-based index insurance.

By modifying the transtheoretical model of change to a transtheoretical model of PU, German farmers' gradual PU of satellite-based index insurance was investigated.

The results show that the average farmer perceives satellite-based index insurance as useful. It can be particularly seen that a higher level of education in an agricultural context as well as higher trust in index insurance products increases farmers' gradual PU. Moreover, higher relative weather-related income losses increase farmers' gradual PU.

It is recommended to apply latent variables when conducting future investigations regarding farmers' PU.

To the best of the authors' knowledge, this is the first study to explore farmers' PU of upcoming satellite-based index insurance by modifying and applying the transtheoretical model in a new way.

The expected increase in milk price volatility after the milk quota abolition in the EU will lead to further planning uncertainty on dairy farms. Consequently, the modest supply of insurance and the hedging of milk prices through futures may increase. To shed more light on this possibility, the purpose of this paper is to calculate the additional willingness to pay (WTP) for risk-averse dairy farmers in order to cope with milk price volatility after the quota abolition.

After the European dairy quota abolition, European dairy farmers will be more dependent on the milk price of the world market. To reflect the world market, a time series of milk prices of a dairy processor from New Zealand (NZ) was used because NZ is exporting most of their dairy products under world market conditions. Based on the NZ price series, we approximated milk price volatility after the European dairy quota abolition and calculated the additional WTP of risk-averse dairy farmers in order to cope with milk price volatility.

Using a price series of NZ to approximate milk price volatility after the European dairy quota abolition and comparing it with a German milk price series before quota, the results suggest there might be increased WTP after the milk quota abolition in order to cope with milk price volatility. Following this assumption, the WTP of considerable risk-averse dairy farmers may exceed the initial transaction costs of hedging milk prices with futures on commodity exchanges. Nevertheless, a qualitative discussion of the results shows costs of education, basis risk, and the small size of farms could still keep dairy farmers from hedging the milk price.

In calculating the additional WTP for risk-averse dairy farmers to cope with milk price volatility, this is the first study to attempt to illustrate the expected influence of increasing milk price volatility at the dairy farm level after the dairy quota abolition in the EU. The additional WTP gives further insights into the need for and acceptance of insurance after the dairy quota abolition at the dairy farm level.

The purpose of this paper is to identify the perceptions of farmers on the major sources of risk and to examine the effectiveness of the risk management responses of rural smallholder farm households in the semi-arid region of Northern Ghana from the socioeconomic perspective.

Both descriptive statistics and exploratory factor analysis were used on a Likert scale question to rank and identify the important risk perceptions and management strategies of the farmers. The linear regression model was used to highlight the significant factors that affect the farmers’ risk perception and management responses.

The effects of the variations in crop yield, fertiliser prices and crop price on household income were perceived as the three most relevant sources of risk. Stabilising household income by growing different crops, storing feed/seed reserves and spreading sales were the most effective risk management strategies. Factor analysis identified market risk, production risk and human risk as major risk factors whereas diversification, financial strategy, and off-farm employment were perceived as the most effective risk management strategies. Farm and farmer characteristics were found to be significantly associated with risk perceptions and risk management strategies. Risk perceptions significantly increase the risk management strategy adopted by the smallholder rural farmers.

The findings of the paper call for the integration of farmers’ risk perceptions and management strategies in the development of agricultural policies for the semi-arid regions of Ghana.

This paper deviates from the traditional technology adoption studies by modelling rural household perceptions and management strategies using, using descriptive, factor analyses, and linear regression.

This chapter focuses on the Swedish agriculture policy from the 1940s to 1960s. Which gender visions were explicitly and implicitly expressed in Swedish agricultural policy discourse during the formative period of the welfare state? In what way were farming women, men and families represented in debates in the Swedish Riksdag (the Parliament) in the parliamentary processes, in bills, proposals and protocols? The point of departure is the concept of family farm, its introduction and the different understandings and discussions it was met with.

The Federal Government of Germany, as well as the European Commission, are discussing the enhancement of animal welfare requirements. This study aims to explore different groups of conventional German pig farmers with respect to their understanding of animal welfare. Based on the results, a target group is determined that is willing to take part in an animal welfare programme in accordance with the current state of research, i.e. considering the four “Welfare Quality” principles: good housing, good feeding, good health and especially appropriate behaviour.

Data were collected from 160 German pig farmers between March and May 2010 using an online questionnaire. Data analysis combines two quantitative methods. To reduce complexity and to identify the animal welfare perceptions of the farmers first an explorative factor analysis was conducted. Subsequently, based on the determined factors, the sample was divided into different groups by means of a cluster analysis.

Three groups of pig farmers were defined with regard to the establishment of an animal welfare programme according to the current state of research. While a broad acceptance of the principles good housing, good feeding and good health exists among the farmers, the appropriate animal behaviour is only important for a small group of pig farmers. Therefore, the three groups should be addressed by the developers of an animal welfare programme, using different strategies to gain the support of all farmers.

To successfully introduce new animal welfare requirements, farmers are important actors to take into account. This paper is the first analysis of the animal welfare perceptions of conventionally producing German pig farmers and determines different groups for a comprehensive animal welfare husbandry system as currently discussed by scientists and politics.

In the context of rural development, the question how farmers are interconnected with local rural communities is crucial, as farmers historically have played a key role in rural areas, always shaped by the cultural-systemic context in which they acted. The purpose of this paper is to explore this connection in North-East (NE) Germany and Switzerland, two countries whose agricultural systems can be seen as diametrically opposed to each other with respect to their structure.

The authors conducted a survey on NE German and Swiss farmers to assess the connectivity between farms and rural communities in terms of the farm managers’ perceptions of their social networks, social support, sense of belonging, and active involvement in organizations.

The results show commonalities and differences between both study regions. Smaller farms are characterized by strongly locally based networks and a higher sense of community belonging, whereas larger farms rather have networks with strong ties outside the local dimension. Moreover, farmers’ local origin and farm diversification are positively associated with strengthening the connection between farms and local communities. Off-farm work is a means for this connection only in NE Germany.

This paper contributes to the discussion about adverse effects of farming scale and corporate farming on community well-being by simultaneously delivering insights into two structurally different agricultural systems. At the same time the approach allows for a comparison between the systems.

The outstanding reform of the Common Agriculture Policy allows for changes regarding its most criticized component, the direct payment scheme. The purpose of this paper is to investigate farmers’ acceptance of subsidized whole farm income insurance (WFI) and single-crop, multi-peril revenue insurance (RI) that are associated with a reduction of direct payments.

By applying a generalized multinomial logit model on data of a discrete choice experiment, German farmers’ preferences, expressed as their willingness to pay (WTP), for WFI and RI are revealed.

The results show a positive WTP for WFI and RI. The average farmer has a higher WTP for WFI than for RI. By increasing the coverage level, the negative influence of a reduction of direct payments on WTP for insurance can be compensated. Individual risk attitude and assessed importance of direct payments for the farm business show a statistically significant influence on the WTP.

The results suggest that, even if direct payments were abolished in order to subsidize WFI or RI, German farmers’ WTP for both insurance products would remain positive. However, to finally assess whether subsidizing insurance is the right means of providing public support, it is necessary to assess whether farmers’ WTP meets the costs for such an insurance scheme.

To the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study investigating German farmers’ WTP for WFI and RI using an experimental approach by explicitly considering the partial to complete replacement of direct payments by subsidized insurance.

People’s tendency to overestimate their ability to control random events, known as illusion of control, can affect financial decisions under uncertainty. This study developed an artifactual field experiment on illusion of control for a farm machinery investment.

In an experiment with two treatments, the individual farmer was either given or not given a sense of control over a random outcome. After each decision, the authors elicited perceived control, and a questionnaire collected additional indirect measures of illusion of control from 78 German farmers and 10 farm advisors.

The results did not support preregistered hypotheses of the presence of illusion of control. This null result was robust over multiple outcomes and model specifications. The findings demonstrate that cognitive biases may be small and difficult to replicate.

The sample is not representative for the German farming population. The authors discuss why the estimated treatment effect may represent a lower bound of the true effect.

Illusion of control is well-studied in laboratory settings, but little is known about the extent to which farmers’ behavior is influenced by illusion of control.

The business environment of the EU dairy sector has altered drastically because of changes in EU agricultural and trade policy, consumer demand, and innovations since the turn of the millennium. This created new market income opportunities for dairy processors, but also fostered the necessity for investments to access these markets. A literature review sees cooperatives to be disadvantaged at this point, because their organisational structure hinders their access to external financial resources. Confronted with these equity constraints, the purpose of this paper is to investigate how German dairy marketing cooperatives adapted to the new business environment and have been performing from 2000 to 2012.

An approach combining descriptive data from public sources and financial ratio analysis was used to test hypotheses, derived from Transaction Cost Theory.

Contrary to assumptions, cooperatives gained market shares on the German dairy market. However, dairy cooperatives managed to overcome the internal equity constraints only partially via mergers, which intensified structural change. Focusing on cost leadership, German cooperatives were not able to successfully diversify their product portfolio and still operate mainly in the fluid, low margins dairy market segments. Frustrated by their diminishing influence on the decision making process in the vastly grown cooperatives, a majority of farmers cancelled their cooperative membership.

Until today an absolute turning point for the cooperative organisational form has not yet occurred, but if cooperatives do not find the means to invest more heavily in the new markets, a slow decline of cooperatives is expected.

The paper contributes to the existing literature on marketing cooperatives by providing insights on the performance of cooperatives through combination of from theory derived assumptions with qualitative and quantitative analysis methods.