The cacao industry has played an important role in terms of export earnings and employment opportunities in Indonesia since 1980s. It is the main source of income for more than one million smallholder farmers in Indonesia, who are considered poor. Most planted areas of cacao are in Eastern...

This study analyzes the risk perceptions and risk attitudes of farmers practicing different rice-based cropping patterns in the rainfed lowland ecosystems of Ilocos Norte, Philippines. The Likert scale and Kruskal-Wallis test were employed to assess the farmers’ risk perceptions while the...

The economic costs of drought and rice farmers' coping mechanisms are analyzed using time series and farm survey data from China, India and Thailand. The economic cost was estimated to be 2-6% of the value of output. Farmers' coping mechanisms were found to be inadequate in preventing...

The complexity of modelling risk in farming systems is explained and the artistic nature of the task noted. A brief outline is presented of an appropriate conceptual framework, drawing attention to the merits of stochastic efficiency criteria for analysis of systems when risk preferences of...

Productivity change and real returns to resources are measured for a sample of farms in south-west Victoria that produce beef. A stochastic frontier production model is estimated from which annual production frontiers and individual farm technical inefficiencies are calculated during the survey...

We estimate total factor productivity in wool production spatially across benchmarked farms in four climatic areas in Eastern Australia. Estimates are decomposed into an environment-technology gap and technical efficiency relative to the production possibilities in each area. The...

In this paper, we assess the potential for rehabilitation of comparative analysis under its new guise of benchmarking. After a brief description of comparative analysis, we discuss the deficiencies that surrounded its fall in reputation: neglect of economic principles, limited scope for action,...

Chinese grasslands are suffering considerable pressures from human and livestock populations. It has been estimated that 90% of Chinese grasslands are suffering from light to heavy levels of degradation. Allied to this is the low household income of herders and farmers dependant upon livestock...

This paper identifies the optimal cutting and replanting rule for coffee farmers in Vietnam. Some previous studies examined the optimal price at which to cut trees for coffee farmers in Vietnam but they have not investigated the relationship between the age of tree and the cutting point....

Energy is a significant agricultural input in both Australia and New Zealand. Likewise agriculture in NZ Australia has the potential to produce significant energy sources - the extent to which depends on the price of competing energy sources - particularly oil. Higher energy prices, resulting in...