The opinions expressed in this paper are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect official views or policies of the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), except as explicitly stated.

The study examined the nexus of interest rate deregulation, lending rate and agricultural productivity in Nigeria by employing co-integration and error correction techniques on annual data spanning 1986 to 2009. Nigeria has embarked on several agricultural policy measures aimed at repositioning and enhancing variables that affects the sector’s productivity. The findings from the study showed th...

The web site provides the possibility to download and examine the most recent documents produced by finalised and ongoing ESPON projects. This basic report exists only in an electronic version.

This paper aims at displaying the diversity between modern logistics of different districts and agricultural economy, and uses the Granger Causality Test to analyze the relationship between modern logistics and the local agricultural economy in four provinces in the east of China. The result shows that the agricultural economy of Jiangsu and Zhejiang province is more developed than AnHui and Ji...

Mass media plays a crucial role in information distribution and thus in the political market and public policy making. Theory predicts that information provided by mass media reflects the media’s incentives to provide news to different types of groups in society, and affects these groups’ influence in policy-making. We use data on agricultural policy from 67 countries, spanning a wide range of ...

This paper discusses the main issues and driving forces of government policies in the area of risk management in agriculture, with particular emphasis on good policy practices and the international environment. Four main ideas are developed. First, good policy and good policy analysis requires a holistic approach. This is particularly so in this policy area because risks interact prominently wi...

This study used an ECM to analyze the determinants of agricultural land expansion in Nigeria. Results show that at first differencing, Augmented Dickey Fuller test indicated stationarity for all the variables (p< 0.05) and there were 7 cointegrating vectors using Johansen test. The dynamic unrestricted short-run parameters of permanent cropland growth rates (68.62), agricultural production inde...

Introduction The evolution of agricultural research and development policy in Zambia is emblematic of the quiet crisis in African agricultural research. Zambia, a medium-sized country that has avoided internal conflict, has, until recently, been spared from natural disasters. It has also enjoyed periods of relative economic well-being and institutional growth based on its copper industry. Zambi...

Driven by global population and standard of living increases, humanity co-opts a growing share of the planet’s natural resources resulting in many well-known environmental trade-offs. In this study, we explored the impact of agriculture on a resource fundamental to life on Earth: terrestrial vegetation growth (net primary production; NPP). We demonstrate that agricultural conversion has reduced...