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The purpose of this paper is to investigate the impact of internet usage on financial performance of small farm business households in the USA. In particular, the authors want to assess the impact of internet usage on small farm businesses, where the owner’s main occupation is farming. Using a nationwide farm-level data in the USA and a non-parametric matching estimator, the study finds a significant positive impact of internet usage on gross cash income, total household income, off-farm income. The study further suggests that small farm businesses receive benefits from internet usage as it facilitates reduction in income risk through off-farm income sources, as well as a reduction in marketing and storage costs; households’ non-farm transportation and vehicle leasing expenses.

In this study, the authors use the “nearest neighbors” matching method in treatment evaluation, developed by Abadie and Imbens (2002). In this method, a weighting index is applied to all observations and “nearest neighbors” are identified (Abadie et al., 2004). Although matching estimation through the nearest neighbor method does not require probit or logit model estimation per se, the authors have estimated a probit model because it allows the authors to check the balancing property and to analyze the association of included variables with the likelihood of internet use.

The study suggests that small farm business households using the internet are better off in terms of total household income and off-farm income. As compared to the control group (which is counterfactual, representation of small farm businesses not using the internet), small farm businesses using the internet earn about $24,000-$26,000 more in total household income and about $27,000-$28,000 more in off-farm income. Also, small farm businesses using the internet earn about $4,100-$4,900 more in gross cash farm income compared to their counterpart. The estimate of ATT for NFI is not different from zero. However, gross cash farm revenue increased significantly.

To this end internet can provide an important role in information gathering. Internet is one of the convenient means to access and exchange information. Information and communication facilitation through internet have opened up new areas of commerce, social networking, information gathering, and recreational activities beyond a geographical bound. Producers and consumers can take advantages of internet in both collaborative and competitive aspects in economic activities as it can reduce the information asymmetries among economic agents.

Farmers will seek assistance in interpreting data and applying information to their farming operations, via the internet. Therefore, it is essential that land grant universities continue to improve the delivery of electronic extension and provide information in a clear and concise manner.

Studies in farm households have mainly investigated factors influencing internet adoption, purchasing patterns through internet, internet use, and applications. In most cases, impact analyses of communication and information technologies such as internet in agricultural businesses are discussed with references to large scale farm businesses. Thus, the authors know very little about access to the internet when it comes to small farm businesses and small farm households and about how it impacts well-being of small farm households.

Nonfarm small businesses are an integral part of the US economy, and access to credit is crucial to their success. In rural America, a significant proportion of these businesses are owned by farm households. The purpose of this research is to compare farm households that operate a nonfarm business to other farm households as well as to rural and urban households operating a small business; and identify key factors that differentiate these businesses in their access to credit.

The paper uses a unique data set to draw comparisons between farm households (from Agricultural Resource Management Survey data) and rural and urban small businesses (from Survey of Small Business Finances data). Each of these data sets asks similar financial, demographic, and access to credit questions. Combining these data provide a unique way to analyze the financial health of farm households that operate nonfarm businesses.

The paper finds that farm households with a nonfarm business tend to have more household income and assets than other rural and urban small businesses and farm households without a nonfarm business. However, rural small business owners as well as farmers were able to access credit more freely than their urban counterparts.

Many studies have looked at the farmer's decision to work or invest off the farm. However, no study has considered the impact of owning a nonfarm business on the financial health and creditworthiness of a farm household.

This chapter examines changes in smallholder agriculture in terms of processes of de-agrarianization in a rapidly changing regional economy of Costa Rica long characterized by small-scale commercial coffee farming.

The study is based on multiple periods (1990–1991, 1993, 2006, 2010–2012) of ethnographic research on household economic strategies among farming families in two districts in the canton of Pérez Zeledón, Costa Rica.

Though occupational multiplicity and non-farm-based livelihoods are on the rise, smallholder agriculture continues to play a substantial role in the livelihood strategies of both young and old and in the regional economy, not in spite of these trends, but because an expanding business sector and an increase in non-farm employment opportunities are creating a demand for agricultural produce and providing new opportunities for smallholders to diversify agricultural production, stabilize their incomes and maintain a significant presence in the regional economy. Specific historic conditions and state policies have been important factors in shaping rural economic change, livelihood strategies and smallholder agriculture in this region.

Sample sizes are relatively small and some data on children’s economic activities were obtained second hand from siblings and/or parents.

This research has implications for policy makers, planners and social activists interested in agrarian change.

This research provides an important longitudinal lens on the economic strategies of farming households, processes of de-agrarianization and the persistence of small-scale family farmers in today’s world.

The purpose of this study is to explore the relationship between migration, remittances and agricultural productivity by applying the new economics of labor migration model in the context of north‐west China. The specific objectives are to examine the impacts of rural out‐migration on agricultural productivity in various farming systems, and whether remittances have been reinvested in agriculture.

Cross‐sectional household survey data from three townships were analyzed with the three‐stage least squares (3SLS) regression model.

In multi‐cropping small farming systems, at least in the short run, the loss resulting from losing family labour on lower‐return grain crop production is likely to be offset by the gain from investing in capital‐intensive and profitable cash crop production.

This study provides empirical evidence for the MELM theory. It expands Taylor et al.'s studies by comparing investment behavior and production choices among multiple farm activities, and enriches previous studies by showing that the relation between remittances and agricultural investment depends on the farm activities' profitability.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the impact of mechanization services on farm productivity in Northern China from an empirical perspective, with the aim to identify the underlying market and institutional barriers.

The authors apply the regression method with the control of village fixed effects to examining the relationship between capital–labor ratio, mechanization service ratio and farm productivity, using the panel data collected in 2013 and 2015 by CCAP.

Mechanization services improve farm productivity through substituting labor, but it may generate a less positive impact on farms who do not have self-owned capital equipment.

It is the first study to investigate how mechanization services affect farm productivity for grain producers in Northern China.

This study aims to evaluate the effectiveness of crop diversification in increasing the income of farm households. In addition, this study introduces the impact of natural disasters in the analysis to determine how diversification helps mitigate the negative effect of disasters on farm income. More importantly, the study also analyses the effect of diversification on farm income by farm class to see where the benefits of diversification are concentrated.

This study uses a linear model, in which agricultural income is expressed as a function of diversification, natural disasters and several control variables. Diversification is measured using the Simpson index of diversification. The linear model is enhanced with the inclusion of an interaction term of natural disasters with the diversification index to shed light on the role of diversification in negating their harmful effect on agricultural income. Finally, to analyze the impact of institutional variables on farm income, the interactions of diversification with irrigation, insurance, usage of technical information and formal training are incorporated in the linear model.

The study highlights the importance of demographic, farm and institutional variables in raising farm income. The study suggests that an increase in education level, irrigation, usage of technical information and possession of Kisan Credit Card (KCC) have a positive impact on agricultural income. The study reveals that crop diversification has a positive impact on farm income and the benefits of diversification are conditioned by institutional factors. Thus, there is a need for policy intervention to ensure increased irrigation facilities along with extension services to provide information to the farm households. It has been found that small farmers gain more from crop diversification than larger farmers. Furthermore, the results show that natural disasters negatively impact farm income, but their impact can be mitigated by higher levels of diversification.

The results of the study are based on the recent unit-level data from the 77th Round of the National Sample Survey Office survey. The survey covers a large number of farm households and reports information for the year 2018–2019.

The purpose of this paper is to examine how households’ engagement in concurrent business (CB), which is measured by the contribution of off-farm income to household income, affects the farm size–technical efficiency (TE) relationship in Northern China.

This paper applies a stochastic frontier analysis method to analyze data on 1,006 rural households collected from four major wheat-producing provinces in Northern China, adopting a translog specification for the underlying production function.

The analysis yields three findings. First, the farm size–TE relationship is inverted U-shaped for all CB engagement levels higher than 5 percent, and the most technically efficient farm size increases with the level of household CB engagement. Second, how TE varies with the level of CB engagement depends on farm size: an inverted-U relationship for relatively small farms (<10μ), a positive relationship for middle-size farms (10–20μ), and a negative relationship for large farms (>20μ). Finally, the overall TE score, 0.88, suggests that wheat output can be increased by 12 percent in Northern China if technical inefficiency were eliminated.

Unlike most previous studies that examine the impacts of farm size and households’ off-farm business involvement separately, this paper examines how these two factors interact with each other.

The purpose of this paper is to present theoretical synopsis of risk balancing hypothesis (RBH) and estimate empirical models examining debt, savings and debt-to-equity use decisions of small US farms.

The authors use primary survey data from Tennessee and generalized linear models (GLMs).

The study’s findings suggest that the perceived higher business risk (BR) significantly increases the extent of debt use, savings use and debt-to-equity of small farmers. Moreover, results indicate that factors such as age and education of the operator, family involvement, incomes, land acreage, adoption of alternative on-farm enterprises and farmers' continuation plan significantly influence the financing decisions of small farm operations.

The authors investigated an essential empirical question examining the risk balancing behavior of small US farm operations. While risk balancing has been a theme of several studies, none of the previous studies have specifically looked at the behavior in the context of small US farms. The theoretical synopsis and empirical findings contribute to the literature of risk balancing, debt use and savings use decisions and the policy discussions on farm financial and support strategies.

The number of farms engaged in grain production in China has been declining in recent years. Limited efforts have been devoted to examine why producers quit from grain production and how such exits affect China's grain output. Such information, however, is invaluable in understanding whether the exit from grain production should be encouraged and if so, how. The purpose of this paper is to identify the factors that influence farmers' decision to quit from grain production, with a view to drawing implications for devising policies to deal with such exits.

Both descriptive statistics and econometric techniques are used to analyse a set of unique and comprehensive farm‐level survey data to identify key factors that affect farmers' decision to quit from grain production.

Key factors that influence a farm to quit from, or stay in, grain production include: family size, the share of farming labour out of total family labour, per capita arable land, the proportion of land used for grain production, the share of family income from grains. It was also found that the level of grain prices and the sunk cost in farming, chiefly in grain production, also affect the likelihood that a household will stay or exit from grain production. Further, farmers in more economically developed regions are more likely to quit from grain production.

The paper's findings clearly indicate that farms with a larger scale of grain production and earning higher income from grain are the major contributors to China's grain production. Potential exists for China to raise its total grain output if the land from those exiting farmers is readily made available to larger producers, enabling them to further benefit from the economies of scale.

The Old Farmer Pension Program (OFPP) represents Taiwan’s long-standing efforts aiming at improving farm household income and well-being; however, how effective the pension program is in terms of achieving the policy agenda has remained unclear. The paper aims to discuss this issue.

Based on data drawn from the Survey of Family Income and Expenditure during 1999–2013, two identification strategies are used to examine the effect of OFPP. First the authors apply the Blinder-Oaxaca decomposition to address the concern if the program reaches the socially/economically disadvantaged farm households. The second identification strategy involves using the static and dynamic decomposition approaches to identify the major factors contributing to farm household income inequality and the redistribution role of the OFPP.

Results from the Blinder-Oaxaca decomposition indicate that about 60 percent of the income gap can be eliminated if the pension recipients’ socio-economic characteristics are the same as the non-recipient group, suggesting it is the disadvantaged group that receives the old farmer pension. Moreover, the results suggest the significant contributions of household investments in health and human capital as well as diversification toward nonfarm activities, to income inequality among Taiwan’s farm households. Results from the dynamic decomposition suggest that the first-wave adjustment of the OFPP enlarges farm household income inequality, the following two waves of adjustment, however, plays an equalizing role.

This study adds to the literature by providing a methodological refinement promoting the view that it calls for the use of the dynamic (change) decomposition framework to investigate the inequality-enlarging or inequality-equalizing role each income determinant plays.