BACKGROUND Pesticide consumption is increasing in Bolivia as well as pest resistance, pesticide poisonings and pollution of the environment. This survey evaluates the training of small holder farmers on pesticide handling and ecological alternatives to reduce the negative pesticide effects. METHOD A baseline survey was performed in 2002 and follow-up surveys in 2004 and 2009. Farmers were sel...

The study was conducted to document farmers' livelihood aspects and agribusiness potentials in wetland areas of Bangladesh. A total of 120 farmers and 24 service providers were interviewed for data collection. Most of the farmers were small farmers having less than 1.0 ha of cultivable land. The differences in productivity of crop farming and poultry rearing between wetland area and main land w...

Weather is a key source of income risk, particularly in emerging market economies. This paper uses a randomized controlled trial involving a sample of Indian farmers to study how an innovative rainfall insurance product affects production decisions. We find that insurance provision induces farmers—particularly educated farmers—to shift production toward higherreturn but higher-risk cash crops. ...

I analyze the impact of food price inflation on parental decisions to send their children to school. Moreover, I use the fact that food crop farmers and cotton farmers were exposed differently to that shock to estimate the income elasticity of school enrolment. The results suggest that the shock-induced loss in purchasing power had an immediate effect on enrolment rates. Instrumental variable e...

In the Savannah region of West Africa, the highly variable rainfall and poor soils have been shown to di€erentially a€ect the yield potential of various crops. The paper applies a simple risk programming model to assess the e€ects of price and yield risk on the incomes of smallholder farmers in northern region of Coà te d'Ivoire. The analysis showed that by considering price and yield risks, it...

Intensified livestock production is considered as a promising pathway for smallholder farmers. Nevertheless, this may entail prohibitive investment requirements of labour, capital or trade-offs at farm level that preclude sustainable intensification. We used fuzzy cognitive mapping (FCM) to assess farmers' perceptions changes in the household system resulting from adding their mixed farms. Farm...

Peanut and corn are two major crops in the tri-state area of the southeast USA, an area encompassing north Florida, southwest Georgia, and southeast Alabama. Sharecroppers in this region apply higher amount of input in crop production than the average farmers. We analyzed the behavior of sharecroppers in this region with regard to their fertilizer application decisions. Two hypotheses were form...

INTRODUCTION One strategy for lowering the prevalence of obesity is to increase access to and affordability of fruits and vegetables through farmers' markets. However, little has been documented in the literature on the implementation of such efforts. To address this gap, the Division of Nutrition, Physical Activity, and Obesity (DNPAO) sponsored an evaluation of the New York City Health Bucks ...

Every innovation is targeted towards adoption; a process which involves several levels of risks. Bio-fortified Vitamin A cassava variety is an innovation targeted not only to solve the yield of farmers but to increase the nutritional intake of Nigerian household. The research specifically seeks to investigate; the risks involved in the adoption of vitamin A cassava variety; the risk attitude of...

China enacted a rural tax reform known as the “Tax-for-Fee Reform” (TFR) in the late 1990s, in large part driven by an attempt to address farmers’ complaints about their perception of a heavy tax burden. A crucial but unanswered question is whether this reform actually improved farmers’ welfare. This paper applies several estimation methods, including both cross-sectional propensity score match...