Individuals and groups have different preferences for the types of planning and development efforts that are undertaken by governmental agencies. Some people prefer programs aimed at alleviating unemployment situations. Others prefer programs designed to improve the natural environment, or to...

University of Minnesota, Agricultural Experiment Station, Scientific Journal Series Paper No. 10,188.

We examine the causal relationships between ethanol production and the agricultural economy and rural incomes in the United States for 1981 through 2010. We use bivariate cointegration and Granger causality procedures and account for two structural breaks in ethanol production in the analysis,...

Jatropha projects have been set up worldwide as solution to reduce competition between food and biofuel production. Jatropha is mostly produced on marginal land in developing countries and production is labour-intensive. The subject of this study is an existing Jatropha plantation in central...

Rural non-farm employment (RNFE) is thought to ease poverty, economic vulnerability and income inequality. Two key questions arise: (1) Do alternative income sources actually help to raise the welfare of small family farms? (2) How is the rural regional income distribution affected by mixed...

Access by smallholder farmers to markets has traditionally been constrained by lack of market information. Yet progress in smallholder agriculture is inconceivable without greater market participation. The desire to strengthen farmer access to market has thus resulted in the emergence of many...

Women rice farmers in Africa are often constrained in accessing resources and technologies adapted to their requirements. AfricaRice has targeted women in disseminating NERICA to consider their needs. Along with top-down strategies, also processes that strengthen women rice growers at the...

Consumers’ taste and preference for differentiated cocoa based on darkness and flavour quality has been rising over the years. Added value of such specialty cocoa is expressed by consumers’ willingness to pay more than the standard commodity price for the attributes and associations such as...

Markets for high-value agricultural commodities are growing and can contribute to reducing rural poverty. However, the poor may be unable to participate in such markets, and adverse environmental impacts may counterbalance short-term benefits. Hence, policies are needed that help reducing...

The management of natural resources is a challenging task owing to the complexity of the resources and the benefits they provide. Nowadays there is trend to transfer some management power to local communities driven by equality and sustainability assumptions. We studied two cases of local...