Regional Trade Agreements (RTAs) are important as they can create an economic impact on international businesses and influence global policies. The key objective of this study is to understand whether India's agricultural export competitiveness with its partners has improved after the creation these Agreements. applies Revealed Comparative Advantage (RCA) index gauge India RTA partners. data be...

The growing demand for high-value food commodities is opening up opportunities for farmers, especially smallholders to diversify towards commodities that have strong potential for higher returns to land, labour and capital. However, there is an apprehension about the capability of smallholder farmers to participate in the market-oriented production due to their lack of access to markets, capita...

There is an unresolved debate about the potential effects of financial speculation on food prices and price volatility. Germany's largest financial institution and leading global investment bank recently decided to continue investing in agricultural commodities, stating that there is little empirical evidence to support the notion that the growth of agricultural-based financial products has cau...

Soil serves as a reservoir for Aspergillus flavus and A. parasiticus, fungi that produce carcinogenic aflatoxins in agricultural commodities. Populations in soil are genetically diverse and individual genotypes show a clustered distribution pattern within fields. Surveys over large geographic regions suggest that climate and crop composition influence species density and aflatoxin-producing pot...

As the sophistication and sensitivity of chemical instrumentation increase, so does the number of applications. Correspondingly, new questions and opportunities for systems previously studied also arise. As with most plants, the emission of volatiles from agricultural products is complex and varies among commodities. Volatiles are indicative of characteristics such as food quality, cultivar typ...

Scientific and technological developments in the agricultural sectors in the recent past has resulted in increased food production and at the same time led to certain public health concerns. Unseasonal rains at the time of harvest and improper post harvest technology often results in agricultural commodities being contaminated with certain fungi and results in the production of mycotoxins. Cons...

In this paper, we evaluate the downside risk of six major agricultural commodities – corn, wheat, soybeans, soybean meal, oil and oats. For research purposes, first use an optimal generalised autoregressive conditional heteroscedasticity (GARCH) model to create residuals, which later for measuring risks via parametric semiparametric approaches. Modified value-at-risk (mVaR) modified (mCVaR) pro...

In order to ensure edible safety, more regard has been paid to pesticide contamination on agricultural product. Conventional techniques are used to measure pesticide contamination. However, the conventional analyses are not possible because of their destructive characteristic and the limitation of time and labor. Spectral technique can provide a rapid, nondestructive means to assess quality and...

Agricultural research has transformed agriculture and in doing so contributed to the transformation of economies. Economic issues arise because agricultural research is subject to various market fail­ ures, because the resulting innovations and technological changes have important economic consequences for net income and its distri­ bution, and because the consequences are difficult to discern ...