The study carried out an assessment of agricultural land management practices in food crops production among small scale farmers in Kwara Sate, Nigeria. Specifically, the study determined the socio economic characteristics of crop farmers in Kwara State; ascertained the cropping patterns common among them; highlighted the soil conservation methods adopted by the farmers; examined the relationsh...

This paper examines how changes in major elements of the U.S. federal crop insurance program affect the structure of the agricultural insurance industry. We model interactions between farmers, insurance agents and insurance companies. Marginal changes in government policy (premium subsidy rate, A&O subsidy rate, and loading factor) affect the insurance premium rate, agent compensation rates, ag...

In response to this, an Australian Centre for International Agricultural Research (ACIAR) project titled “Farmer-based Adaptive Rodent Management, Extension and Research System in Cambodia” (referred to as the FARMERS project in this paper) has been trialing a physical method of rodent control called the Community Trap Barrier System or TBS (ACIAR 2001). TBS consists of a lure crop and trapping...

This paper examines the impact of climate change on primary crops grown in Africa. An innovative approach is presented that bridges the gap between agro-economic and traditional Ricardian models. We label it a ‘structural Ricardian model’. It first captures the type of crop a farmer will select and then examines the conditional net revenue of that crop. The model is estimated using a sample of ...

The study has assessed the performance of crop insurance scheme on beneficiary and non-beneficiary farms in Salumber tehsil of Udaipur district during 2008-09. The study has revealed that farm income per family is higher on beneficiary farms as compared to non-beneficiary farms. The progress of crop insurance scheme in Rajasthan has been found positive, as is evidenced through compound and line...

Monitoring is one way to alleviate the moral hazard problem rampant in crop insurance programs. Lacking data on monitoring, we test the effectiveness of monitoring on reducing moral hazard behavior indirectly. We first propose a theoretical model that takes into account several features of the Philippines crop insurance program. Our model predicts that if monitoring is effective, then crop insu...

To guide soil fertility investment programmes in sub-Saharan Africa, better understanding is needed of the relative importance of soil and crop management factors in determining smallholder crop yields and yield variability. Spatial variability in crop yields within farms is strongly influenced by variation in both current crop management (e.g. planting dates, fertilizer rates) and soil fertili...

The aim of this study was to assess the process and extent of sedentarisation among Fulani cattle owners in the derived savannah zone of south-west Nigeria. The results, based on a survey of 66 randomly-selected cattle owners, indicate an on-going process of settlement. Previously cattle owners visited the zone for dry season grazing but an increasing number were found to be settling and becomi...

Plant breeding by researchers has become increasingly isolated from the plant breeding of farmers. Collaborative plant breeding (CPB) offers the possibility of bringing these two plant breeding traditions together to increase the usefulness of new crop varieties to farmers, especially small-scale farmers working in stress environments with limited external inputs. This paper presents a framewor...

Preventing the introduction of weeds into the farming system through sowing of clean seeds is an essential component of weed management. The weed seed contamination of cleaned grain and herbicide resistance levels of the recovered weed seeds were examined in a study conducted across 74 farms in the Western Australian grainbelt. Most farmers grew and conserved their own crop seed. The majority o...