Bioeconomic farm models have been very instrumental in capturing the technical aspects of human-nature interactions and in highlighting the economic consequences of resource use changes. They may elucidate the tradeoffs that farm households face in crop choice and farming practices, assess the...

In Poland and Russia, small-scale individual farms employ more labor per hectare of land than large-scale corporate farms, without suffering from lower labor productivity. Individual farming is a labor sink for the rural population, and land policies promoting individualization of agriculture in...

We study levels and trends in agricultural pesticide use for a large cross-section of countries using FAO data for the period 1990–2009. Our analysis shows that a 1% increase in crop output per hectare is associated with a 1.8% increase in pesticide use per hectare but that the growth in...

This paper studies the diffusion of greenhouse agriculture in a watershed in the northern uplands of Thailand by applying econometrics and agent-based modeling in combination. Adoption has been rapid by farmers in the central valley of the watershed, while farmers at higher altitudes, lacking...

This study quantifies private and social levels of agricultural pesticide overuse by combining an abatement function approach to estimate the marginal benefits of pesticide use with the Pesticide Environmental Accounting (PEA) tool to estimate marginal social costs. We applied the method to one...

Litchi is an important crop in the mountainous part of northern Thailand yet its profitability has declined during the last 15 years. The replacement of litchi fruit orchards for seasonal flowers and vegetables has external costs related to increased levels of soil erosion, pesticides, and...

Agriculture in mountainous areas in Vietnam has much intensified since the introduction of market-based reforms in the mid 1980s. The adoption of hybrid maize varieties, mineral fertilizers and reduction in fallow periods has improved farm incomes, but has also led to a dramatic increase in soil...

In response to the chronic overuse and misuse of pesticides in agriculture, governments in Southeast Asia have sought to improve food safety by introducing public standards of good agricultural practices (GAP). Using quantitative farm-level data from an intensive horticultural production system...