Purpose – The use of weather derivatives is impaired with a basis risk which diminishes the hedging effectiveness and hinders the distribution of these risk management instruments in the agricultural sector. A frequently suggested approach to reduce the basis risk is the use of mixed indices...

Purpose – Increasing environmental concerns have placed the need for an enhanced water resources management on the policy agenda. In this context, a restrictive regulation of water withdrawals for irrigation has gained in importance. The purpose of this paper is to investigate how a reduction...

Purpose – Small-scale farmers in developing countries are undersupplied with capital. Although microfinance institutions (MFIs) have become well established in developing countries, they have not significantly extended their services to farmers. It is generally believed that this is partly due...

Purpose – Using cotton yield, and rainfall data from Tajikistan, the purpose of this paper is to investigate the magnitude of weather induced revenue losses in cotton production. Hereby the authors look at different risk aggregation levels across political regions (meso-level). The authors...

Purpose – Maize production in China is exposed to pronounced yield risks, in particular weather risk, which is one of the most important and least controllable sources of risk in agriculture. The purpose of this paper is to analyze the extent to which weather index-based insurance can...

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to examine the extent to which individual risk attitude determines a Cambodian smallholder's choice between a commercial informal loan and a credit from a licensed microfinance institution. Design/methodology/approach: The paper analyzes a sample of...

Purpose: Adoption rates of commodity futures contracts among farmers are rather low in Europe despite their political support. The purpose of this paper is to examine whether the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) can contribute to the understanding of farmers’ intention to use commodity...

Purpose: The expected increase in milk price volatility after the milk quota abolition in the EU will lead to further planning uncertainty on dairy farms. Consequently, the modest supply of insurance and the hedging of milk prices through futures may increase. To shed more light on this...

Purpose: Although the microfinance sector in developing countries has seen an impressive development in recent years, many small-scale farmers in rural areas are still undersupplied with capital. One of the main reasons for this undercapitalization is the exposure to weather risks. Weather...

Purpose: The outstanding reform of the Common Agriculture Policy allows for changes regarding its most criticized component, the direct payment scheme. The purpose of this paper is to investigate farmers’ acceptance of subsidized whole farm income insurance (WFI) and single-crop, multi-peril...