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Livestock Risk Protection (LRP) insurance can reduce losses from price declines for cattle producers, but LRP adoptions has been limited. In 2019 and 2020, LRP subsidies were increased to lower the cost, but it is unclear how much these changes lowered the cost. The objective of this research was to estimate the impact of the subsidy increase on the cost of LRP for feeder and fed cattle by month and for various insurance period lengths and levels.

The authors collected United States LRP offering data from 2017 to 2021. The authors estimated separate generalized least squares regression for feeder cattle and fed cattle with producer premium as the dependent variable. Independent variables were dummy variables for coverage level, insurance period, month and year as well as dummy variables in commodity years 2019 and 2020 when the LRP subsidy was increased.

The authors found the subsidy increases did reduce the cost of LRP policies for feeder and fed cattle LRP policies. Producer premiums for feeder cattle LRP polices have declined between $1.41 to $1.90 per cwt and $0.95 to $1.56 per cwt for fed cattle LRP policies depending on the coverage level. Results indicate these subsidy increases did lower the LRP premium costs to producers.

Results show policy implications from the subsidy increases and will be informative to producers when exploring the cost of LRP. This study extends the literature by estimating the reduction in subsidy costs while considering total premiums changed.

Premium subsidy rates were increased in 2019 and 2020 for livestock risk protection (LRP) insurance, which is price insurance for cattle producers. The authors examined if the LRP subsidy rate changes affected the LRP coverage levels purchased by feeder and fed cattle producers.

The authors collected the United States Department of Agriculture Risk Management Agency summary of business sales data for daily LRP purchases from 2015 to 2023. The authors estimated a multinomial logit model to determine if subsidy rate changes were associated with the likelihood of LRP policies being purchased at different coverage levels.

After the 2019 and 2020 subsidy rate changes, the likelihood of producers buying LRP-feeder cattle policies with coverage over 95% increased relative to the policies with coverage less than 89.99% but did not influence the likelihood of producers buying LRP-feeder cattle policies with coverage between 90 and 94.99% relative to policies with coverage less than 89.99%. Marginal effects show these subsidy rate changes increased the likelihood of buyers purchasing LRP-feeder cattle policies with greater than 95% coverage. The subsidy change did not affect the purchase of LRP-fed cattle policies.

The results demonstrate the influence of the recent LRP policy adjustments on insurance purchases, which could be important for agency officials and policy makers. This is the first study to explore the LRP policy purchases which provides the United States cattle industry insight into the LRP price insurance take-up, which can guide producer extension education on managing price risk.

This paper aims to investigate the effect of using indigenous forecasts (IFs) and scientific forecasts (SFs) on pastoralists’ adaptation methods in Rwenzori region, Western Uganda.

Data were collected using a household survey from 270 pastoralists and focus group discussions. The multivariate probit model was used in the analysis.

The results revealed that pastoralists using of IF only more likely to be non-farm enterprises and livestock sales as adaptation strategies. Pastoralists using both SF and IF were more likely to practise livestock migration.

Other factors found to be important included land ownership, land tenure, gender, education level, non-farm and productive assets, climate-related risks and agricultural extension access.

Increasing the number of weather stations in pastoral areas would increase the predictive accuracy of scientific climate information, which results in better adaptive capacity of pastoralists. Active participation of pastoral households in national meteorological dissemination processes should be explored.

A two-prong approach that supports both mobile and sedentary pastoralism should be adopted in rangeland development policies.

This study has shown the relevance of IFs in climate change adaptation methods of pastoralists. It has also shown that IFs compliment SFs in climate change adaptation in pastoralism.

The purpose of this study is to investigate the determinants of agricultural insurance adoption by farmers of the state of São Paulo, Brazil.

Primary data from the 2015/2016 crop season was collected from a sample of 175 farmers. Logit econometric models were applied to identify the variables that affect the probability of agricultural insurance adoption.

The empirical results show that the education level, access to technical assistance, use of management tools and farm size positively affect the probability of adopting agricultural insurance. In addition, farmers who produce soybean and/or corn are more likely to use insurance. On the other hand, the higher the farmers’ propensity to take risk the lower the likelihood of using insurance.

The empirical analysis is based on cross-sectional data of a sample of 175 farmers of the state of São Paulo. The use of panel data with a larger sample of farmers, considering a period of years, could provide additional information.

To the best of the knowledge, this is the first empirical analysis about determinants of agricultural insurance adoption by Brazilian farmers, considering behavioral factors. The findings provide useful insights for policymakers in formulating risk management programs in the Brazilian agricultural markets. A better understanding about the determinants of insurance adoption is also relevant for private companies that sell insurance to farmers. Therefore, the paper may contribute with the diffusion of rural insurance as risk management tool in Brazilian agriculture.

This paper aims to discuss the roles of social protection in reducing and facilitating climate-induced migration. Social protection gained attention in the international climate negotiations with the establishment of the Warsaw International Mechanism for Loss and Damage. Yet, its potential to address migration, considered as a key issue in the loss and damage debate, has not been sufficiently explored. This paper aims at identifying key characteristics of social protection schemes which could effectively address climate-induced migration and attempts to derive recommendations for policy design.

Based on the existing literature, the paper links empirical evidence on the effects of social protection to climate-related drivers of migration and the needs of vulnerable populations. This approach allows conceptually identifying characteristics of effective social protection policies.

Findings indicate that social protection can be part of a proactive approach to managing climate-induced migration both in rural and urban areas. In particular, public work programmes offer solutions to different migration outcomes, from no to permanent migration. Benefits are achieved when programmes explicitly integrate climate change impacts into their design. Social protection can provide temporary support to facilitate migration, in situ adaptation or integration and adaptation in destination areas. It is no substitution for but can help trigger sustainable adaptation solutions.

The paper helps close research gaps regarding the potential roles and channels of social protection for addressing and facilitating climate-induced migration and providing public support in destination, mostly in urban areas.

The purpose of this systematic review was to assess the determinant factors of climate change adaptation (CCA) in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA).

Studies that focused on determinant factors of CCA by crop–livestock farmers and pastoralists in SSA and written in English were reviewed from five major databases using the applications of Endnote and NVivo. The review process followed a sequence of steps to reach into the final selection.

A total of 3,028 papers were recovered from the databases and screened for duplicates (777) and publications before 2000 (218). The titles and abstracts of 2,033 papers were reviewed, and 1,903 of them were excluded owing to preliminary exclusion criteria. Finally, 130 papers were selected for full-text review and more detailed assessment, where 36 papers qualified for the final review. The most important determinant factors of CCA by pastoralists were household income, access to information, access to extension services, government support and access to market. In the case of agro-pastoralists, access to information, household income, age and land/livestock ownership were found as the major determinant factors. Household income, land ownership, access to information, farm size, household size and access to extension services were the determinant factors found for CCA by smallholder farmers.

This systematic review identified the major determinant factors according to production systems and highlights the importance of considering specific factors in designing CCA strategies.

After clearly stating the research question, a literature search was conducted from the major databases for climate-related research, and a comprehensive search was performed by two independent researchers.

The paper provides a detailed historical account of Douglass C. North's early intellectual contributions and analytical developments in pursuing a Grand Theory for why some countries are rich and others poor.

The author approaches the discussion using a theoretical and historical reconstruction based on published and unpublished materials.

The systematic, continuous and profound attempt to answer the Smithian social coordination problem shaped North's journey from being a young serious Marxist to becoming one of the founders of New Institutional Economics. In the process, he was converted in the early 1950s into a rigid neoclassical economist, being one of the leaders in promoting New Economic History. The success of the cliometric revolution exposed the frailties of the movement itself, namely, the limitations of neoclassical economic theory to explain economic growth and social change. Incorporating transaction costs, the institutional framework in which property rights and contracts are measured, defined and enforced assumes a prominent role in explaining economic performance.

In the early 1970s, North adopted a naive theory of institutions and property rights still grounded in neoclassical assumptions. Institutional and organizational analysis is modeled as a social maximizing efficient equilibrium outcome. However, the increasing tension between the neoclassical theoretical apparatus and its failure to account for contrasting political and institutional structures, diverging economic paths and social change propelled the modification of its assumptions and progressive conceptual innovation. In the later 1970s and early 1980s, North abandoned the efficiency view and gradually became more critical of the objective rationality postulate. In this intellectual movement, North's avant-garde research program contributed significantly to the creation of New Institutional Economics.

This paper investigates constraints to yield enhancing technology adoptions, highlighting credit using data pooled from the first three waves of the Ethiopian socio-economic surveys.

Direct elicitation methodology is used to identify household's non-price credit rationing status. The panel selection model specified to examine causal effects of credit constraint on adoption variables allows us to tackle self-selection into adoptions and potential endogeneity of credit constraint while controlling for unobserved heterogeneity in both the selection and main equations.

Results show that about 54% of sample households face credit rationing, predominantly demand-side risk rationing. There is a negative association between measures of credit constraint status and adoption variables. The effect is stronger when the demand-side credit rationing is accounted for and when within household variation in credit constraint status overtime is considered as opposed to across constrained and unconstrained households.

Expanding physical access to institutional credit alone may not necessarily spur increased uptake of credit and instant investment by farm households. For a majority of them to take advantage of available credit and improved technology, interventions should also aim at minimizing downside risks.

This paper incorporates the role of downside risk in influencing farmer's decisions to uptake credits and subsequently his/her adoption behaviors. The researcher approached the topic by state-of-the-art method which allows obtaining more reliable results and hence more specific contributions to research and practice.