Agricultural risks constitute a fundamental challenge in Nigeria, hence the importance of agricultural insurance in managing farm risks cannot be underestimated. As the crop sub-sector contributes about 85% of the agricultural GDP in Nigeria, this study focussed on awareness and factors that can enhance the adoption of crop insurance among crop farmers in Nigeria. Data collected from 310 random...

Our paper ‘Loading the dice in favour of the farmer: reducing the risk of adopting agronomic innovations’ revealed mean increases but also large variation in the impact of four agroforestry practises on maize yield, as experienced by farmers in Malawi. This prompted a response from Sileshi and Akinnifesi that was critical of the data and methods used. Their main concern was that farmers did not...

Crop model simulates growth and yield of crop in field scale and can be used to provide useful field information for farmers, such as irrigation application dates and amount, fertilizer application dates and amount, the choose of crop variety. Researchers have used crop models for many years, but they have had limited success in packaging these complex models in a framework that make them easy ...

This study was designed to measure technical efficiency and identify its determinants in crop production in Lafia Local government Area of Nasarawa State of Nigeria using a stochastic frontier production model. Double stage random sampling technique was used to select 100 crop farmers from which input-output data were collected based on 2005 cropping season. The results revealed that sixty five...

Farmers’ decisions about how much crop insurance to buy are not generally consistent with either expected profit or utility maximization. They do not pick coverage levels that maximize expected subsidy nor do they demand full insurance coverage. In addition, the absolute size ...

The purpose of the study was to identify and document technical knowledge and information gaps that can inform development of appropriate training programs for cane farmers. The study employed a survey research design; involving 105 small scale farmers in selected from eight Sub-counties of Kakamega County. Data was analyzed using both descriptive and inferential statistics. Pearson’s product m...

IInstitutional analysis can be used to understand the value placed on crop diversity by farmers as a social process, and to uncover the market-related constraints and incentives that influence farmer management of genetic resources. This is particularly important for capturing the dynamics of crop populations and the collective impact of individual decisions regarding crop diversity. In the app...

BACKGROUND Sorghum is one of the main staple crops for the world's poorest and most food insecure people. As Ethiopia is the centre of origin and diversity for sorghum, the crop has been cultivated for thousands of years and hence the heritage of the crop is expected to be rich. Folksong based appraisal of bioecocultural heritage has not been done before. METHODS In order to assess the bioeco...

This study used the C4.5 data mining algorithm to model farmers’ crop choice in two watersheds in Thailand. Previous attempts in the Integrated Water Resource Assessment and Management Project to model farmers’ crop choice produced large sets of decision rules. In order to produce simplified models of farmers’ crop choice, data mining operations were applied for each soil series in the study ar...

To obtain higher yields, farmers may excessively use pesticides when they grow crops (like rice, vegetables, or fruit), causing moral hazard behavior. This paper examines how Chinese farmers’ moral hazard behavior in crop production is influenced by their traditional culture. A semi-parametric logistic model is used to investigate the impact of Chinese traditional culture on farmers’ moral haza...