The provision of commodities for feed, food and energy production is the main task of the agricultural sector but it is obvious that agriculture is also essential for the viability of most rural areas. Although the consequences of agriculture on the landscape are extensively described, the...

The post 2015 Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) reforms may bring a substantial change in the way farm payments are paid in Scotland where earlier farm payments were based on historical entitlements. Scottish farms now have to follow a Basic payment Scheme (BPS) which would be determined under a...

The paper investigates determinants of quality upgrading in the European Union agri-food exports using panel data models in the 2000-2011 period. Employing highly disaggregated data we show that export unit value is positively associated with level of economic development and the size of...

Cross-border trade in food commodities within sub-regional economic blocks in Sub-Sahara Africa (SSA) is believed to be faster, cheaper, more convenient and welfare-enhancing than trade between SSA countries and the USA or EU. The difficulty of commodity arbitrage across borders in SSA is...

Food and fuel security in the face of population growth and climate change represent key societal challenges. Extending an arable farm-level bio-economic optimisation model ‘MEETA’ to include dedicated energy crops (DECs) and water metrics, we quantify water use implications and trade-offs...

Agriculture makes a significant contribution to Norway’s emissions of greenhouse gases (GHG). Although the sector accounts for only 0.3 per cent of GDP, it accounts for roughly 9 per cent of total GHG emissions. Norwegian agriculture is dominated by livestock production; ruminants (cattle and...

In this paper the dynamic information flows among monthly prices of agricultural commodities in the United States (U.S.) and Mexico for the years 2000-2012 are analysed. Error correction models and directed acyclical graphs are employed with observational data to identify the dynamic...

This study aimed at estimating the implicit prices farmers are willing to pay (WTP) for maize traits with deliberate focus on drought tolerance. Using choice experiment, we generated 12600 observations from a random sample of 1400 households in communal areas within 14 districts of Zimbabwe....

There is increasing evidence that improved agricultural technologies benefit smallholder farmers in sub-Saharan Africa. This evidence is however relatively clearer for innovations in smallholder crop production systems as compared to innovations in livestock production systems. Moreover, it is...

The introduction of genetically modified (GM) crops to Europe has been a significant source of tension among EU member states. While the political landscape is much divided there is also much unknown at the consumer level. The question of whether European consumers want GM foods made available...