Cropping pattern in the Himalayan region of India has undergone a significant change in the recent past. Introduction of horticultural crops of vegetables, fruits and flowers have led to more intensive agriculture. Such a change, resulting in higher incomes and improvements of the overall living...

In arid countries worldwide, social conflicts between irrigation-based human development and the conservation of aquatic ecosystems are widespread and attract many public debates. This research focuses on the analysis of water and agricultural policies aimed to conserve groundwater resources and...

Smallholder farmers’ land allocation decisions in marginal areas of developing countries typically involve a substantial element of risk, especially when they concern input intensive cash crops. Hence, apart from farmers’ resource endowment, their individual level of risk aversion is a...

This study develops and uses a programming model for farm-level resource use and output supply response to estimate the effects of agricultural land tax in South Africa: A case study of Free State, a region of extremely large commercial farms that gained their size and economic heft during the...

Communal land use system has existed in pastoral Afar (as in many other pastoral areas) since time of immemorial accommodating the interests of different user groups. This form of land use system, which has adapted to the harsh environment in which herders raise their livestock, enables...

The agricultural sectors of Kazakhstan and Germany are at different development levels. One possible explanation for this might be the different investment behavior of farmers. We experimentally analyze whether the investment behavior of farmers is consistent with the normative benchmarks of the...

This paper investigates the effects of network based individual social capital on the access of rural households to services. In the context of development economics, an innovative data collection approach is used to determine network based social capital. The approach originates from the field...

In emerging markets for high-value food products in developing countries, processing companies search for efficient ways to source raw material of consistent quality. One widely embraced approach is contract farming. But relatively little is known about the appropriate design of contracts,...

In order to stimulate investments, agricultural policies frequently use price floors, which guarantee a price above a certain limit. In some cases, however, a price floor does not have the desired effects. In this study, we experimentally analyse differences in the investment behaviour with...

We use experimental and survey data from two natural-hazard prone countries in Latin America to test the hypothesis that natural hazards affect risk aversion. We use two methods to measure risk aversion: simple questions on the willingness to pay for a hypothetical lottery and more complicated...