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The Agriculture Improvement Act of 2018 directed the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) Risk Management Association to investigate a policy targeted to farms and ranches that sell through local food markets. However, there is no available research that quantitatively documents the extent to which local food producers utilize Federal crop insurance.

The authors utilize 2013–2016 USDA Agricultural Resource Management Survey data to compare farms and ranches with sales through local food markets to those with and without Federal crop insurance expenditure, as well as the distribution of Federal crop expenditure, across market channels and scales.

There is a little variation in Federal crop insurance expenditure across market channels, defined as direct-to-consumer only sales, intermediated sales, and a combination of direct-to-consumer and intermediated sales. Rather, the results show that scale is the primary predictor of Federal crop insurance expenditure; larger operations are more likely to have nonzero Federal crop insurance expenses.

This article provides the first national research to document descriptive statistics of the utilization of Federal crop insurance by US farms and ranches that utilize local food market channels.

The purpose of this article is to investigate how land tenure correlates with measures of profitability among young farmers and ranchers in the United States. The authors hypothesize that young producers who own a larger proportion of their operation face different incentives between short- and long-run returns than young producers who primarily rent their land. The authors analyze whether these differing incentives result in observable differences in various measures of profitability.

The authors use state-level data from the Agricultural Resource Management Survey (ARMS) from 2003 to 2018 to estimate fixed-effects panel models correlating land tenure with the value of farm production, expenditures on repairs and maintenance, net farm income, total operator household income from farming, rate of return on assets (ROA) and rate of return on equity (ROE).

The authors find different correlations for crop farms and livestock farms, as well as different correlations for farms with the lowest and highest gross sales. For crop farms, renting land is associated with higher production, higher income, higher ROA and higher ROE. For livestock farms, renting land is associated with lower production.

This study rigorously investigates the role of land tenure specifically among young farmers and ranchers in the United States. By better understanding how land ownership affects profitability among beginning farmers and ranchers, policymakers will be able to better target public resources to support the next generation of producers.

Limited data are available in facilitating nutritional interventions in developing countries. The objective of this study is to assess the mean dietary diversity score (DDS)of Mbororo minority women in the Northwest region of Cameroon.

The study used the random sampling technique within the Mbororo minority communities (Adorates). A questionnaire on dietary diversity, including 461 Mbororo women, provided information on food consumed using the 24-h dietary recall method.

Various socio-cultural and economic characteristics of the Mbororo women affected the nutrient level of their diet. Moreover, starchy staples, vitamin-A rich vegetables and palm oil and milk and milk products were consumed by more than half of the Mbororo community. Family herd size showed a positive influence on the dietary habit of the Mbororo population. The mean DDS significantly increased (p = 0.001), as herd size increased from below 50 (3.9 ± 1.1) to above 100 (4.8 ± 1.2).

Most of the diet consumed by the Mbororo women were low in iron, making them susceptible to nutrition anemia. The diet of the Aku women was more deficient in micronutrients than their Jaafun counterpart. These results indicate suitable areas of intervention for any nutrition program that targets the Mbororo minority group of Northwest Cameron.

DDS can be used in assessing and classifying the population in rural communities according to the deficiencies in micronutrients of their diet.

The use of DDS to assess the nutrient quality of diets is frequently used to evaluate the prevalence of micronutrient deficiencies but has never been applied to Mbororo minority women.

The purpose of this paper is to present AgProfit™ as a tool for users to assess economic risks associated with adoption of new technologies or production practices in production agriculture.

This paper presents the AgProfit™ software program, its approach to capital investment analysis and demonstrates the program use by developing a scenario for analysis and discusses the process and results of the analysis.

AgProfit™ was developed to assist growers in understanding the risks associated with technology adoption. The example presented in this paper demonstrates the value of the software program as a decision‐making tool on the complex question of how many acres are required for an economically beneficial adoption of a new technology. Thus, with this software program, a grower can base investment decisions on the net present value and internal rates of return on an investment rather than a sales pitch or “gut” feeling.

AgProfit™ is a recently developed software program that fills a void in available decision tools, providing users with the ability to assess the profitability and feasibility of production investment decisions.

A potential farm policy concern is that if nontraditional (vendor/point-of-sale) financing represents increased risk, it may have an aggregate effect on sector-wide farm financial risk. This analysis examines the use of nontraditional lender credit among borrowers in the US Department of Agriculture (USDA)'s Farm Service Agency (FSA)'s direct farm loan programs.

Data source included the USDA FSA direct operating loan program for 2011–2020. A Cox proportional hazards model was used to estimate the occurrence of default over seven-year term direct operating loans.

Results indicated that point-of-sale financing has a significant and positive relationship with risk for FSA direct operating loan borrowers. The presence of intermediate point-of-sale financing (mostly from machinery and equipment vendors) is associated with an increased probability of default of 9%, and the presence of such loan balances in the amount of $50,000 or more had a higher probability of default of 21%. Short-term nontraditional financing (for example from fertilizer vendors) was found to be positively related to borrower risk of default as indicated by a 22–25% increase in the likelihood of loan default.

Through FSA Farm Business Plan data, the authors were able to distinguish specific vendors and their loan purpose, which advances the knowledge beyond what is currently available through survey data. Findings indicate a minor increase in borrower risk for those with intermediate-term nontraditional financing. However, borrowers with short-term nontraditional financing and having large balances or greater number of nontraditional loans had increases in risk of default by substantive amounts.

Poverty alleviation has been a major theme of China's modernization process since the founding of New China. This paper points out that China's poverty alleviation process presents three stylized facts: “Miraculous” achievements of poverty alleviation have been made on a global scale; the poverty alleviation achievements mainly occurred in the high growth stage after reform and opening up; the poverty alleviation process is accompanied by the structural transformation of the urban–rural dual economy.

Therefore, a logically consistent analytical framework should form among the structural transformation of the dual economy, economic growth and the achievements in poverty alleviation. In logical deduction, the structural transformation of the dual economy affects rural poverty alleviation through the effects of labor reallocation, agricultural productivity improvement, demographic change and fiscal resource allocation.

The first two refer to economic growth, and the latter two are alleviation policies. The combination of economic growth and poverty alleviation policies is the main cause for poverty alleviation performance. China's empirical evidence can support the four effects by which the structural transformation of the dual economy affects poverty alleviation.

China's socialist system and its economic system transformation after reform and opening up provide an institutional basis for the effects to come into play. After 2020, China's poverty alleviation strategies will enter the “second-half” phase, namely, the phase of solving the problems of relative poverty in urban and rural areas by adopting conventional methods and establishing long-term mechanisms. This requires the facilitation of the reconnection between poverty alleviation strategies and the structural transformation of the dual economy in terms of development ideas and policy directions.

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.

This paper examines credit products, operational performance and business models employed by nontraditional lenders (NTLs) in agricultural credit markets.

Two research methods were employed in this study: (1) an executive interview to collect primary data and (2) a case study approach to analyze the findings and develop insights.

The findings indicate the presence of significant differences among lenders across and within three categories of NTLs (large volume, vendor financing and collateral-based NTLs). For example, collateral-based NTLs employ different strategies focusing on types of loans, funding sources, commodities they support and geographic coverage to further segment the market. NTLs in this study were able to capture market by successfully identifying gaps in the supply side of agricultural credit and developing products that meet the needs of that niche (e.g. heavy renters, large operations, producers seeking fixed interest rates for term loans, financially fragile producers). Most of the interviewed NTLs had credit standards comparable to those of traditional lenders and consider them both competitors and partners since many NTLs partner with traditional lenders on participation loans, loan servicing and/or sourcing funds.

The supply side of a nontraditional lending has not been studied extensively due to the proprietary nature of data. The executive interviews conducted in this study allowed for accumulation of industry data, which is not available otherwise.

The consumption of ethnic food is an integral part of the Hispanic culture. Therefore, this study was carried out with the intention of assessing the consumption and preferences for ethnic specialty produce by the Hispanics in the east coast of the USA with an aim of formulating production and marketing guidelines to meet the increasing demands of the rising Hispanic population in the USA.

Data were collected through telephone interviews from 542 randomly selected Mexicans and Puerto Ricans living in 16 east coast regions of the USA. Questions related to socio‐demographic details and consumption and preference for 20 pre‐determined ethnic specialty produce were asked. Data were analyzed using descriptive statistics and logistic regression.

Chain grocery stores were the most common outlets for ethnic produce. Freshness and quality were the most important criteria for both Mexicans and Puerto Ricans. Expenditure patterns revealed that they allocate 71 percent and 62 percent respectively on ethnic produce compared with other produce. Age and education had a negative influence while income had a positive influence on the willingness‐to‐pay for ethnic specialty produce.

In this study, only ten crops each were selected as ethnic specialty crops that are consumed by Mexicans and Puerto Ricans and the average willingness‐to‐pay for these crops were elicited.

Based on the expenditure patterns of 20 ethnic specialty produce commonly consumed and having a potential to be grown in the USA, this study recommends crops to be prioritized for production trials and grower recommendations.

The approach outlined in this paper uses a market‐driven assessment for crop prioritization research.

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.