Technology and innovation play an increasingly important role in the economic development of both developed and developing countries. We investigate how policy and market factors influence firms’ (or other potential innovators’) decisions on innovation or imitation by developing a conceptual...

This paper is Selected for presentation at the Southern Agricultural Economics Association Annual Meeting, Atlanta, Georgia, January 31-February 3, 2009. The research is partially funded by ERS/USDA China Project and Social Science Fund of Jiangsu Province in China. The authors are grateful for...

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This paper is Selected for presentation at the Southern Agricultural Economics Association Annual Meeting, Atlanta, Georgia, January 31-February 3, 2009. The research is partially funded by ERS/USDA China Project and Social Science Fund of Jiangsu Province in China. The authors are grateful for...

Outsourcing may well be a tool for increasing the efficiency of Japanese agriculture. However, outsourcing is not frequently used by Japanese farmers in their day-to-day management. This has resulted in a weakly developed market for agricultural contracting services. In order to take a closer...

Sorghum is one of the world’s most important cereals in terms of total production. Grown largely as livestock feed in the US, sorghum is a primary food staple and source of cash for smallholder farming families in the West African savannah. The dominant type of sorghum produced in this region...

Land degradation cripples smallholder crop production in Sub-Saharan Africa, including those found in the densely populated, grain basket areas of Kenya. Research in the early nineties already documented and rated nutrient depletion to be very high in the east African Highlands. Whereas some of...