Agriculture, the main sector of the Ethiopian economy, accounts for 85% of total employment and is the backbone and mainstay of the economy (Pausewang et al., 1990). However, agricultural productivity is decreasing because of land degradation, particularly due to soil erosion. Hurni (1988) estimated that the extent of erosion from arable land in the highlands of Ethiopia averaged 42 tons/ha/yr....

One of the objectives of agricultural development in Botswana is the increase of agricultural productivity in both arable and livestock production in order to increase farm incomes and thus help to make agriculture a sustainable activity. This paper looks at the challenges that Botswana faces in meeting this objective while minimizing any land degradation that may accompany the process of incre...

Total change in production and productivity are the two important dimensions of benefits of watershed development programmes along with the conservation of land and water resources. To segregate out the impact of various watershed-based interventions on crop productivity, a study was carried out in Bundelkhand region of Madhya Pradesh state of India. Data were collected from 240 farmers’ select...

This study takes advantages of recent developments in measuring total factor productivity in output specific directions to examine the influence of technological change in different agricultural sectors on land-use decisions in a cross-section of countries from 1969 to 2001. Results demonstrate a positive relationship between productivity and land in agriculture in most cases. The ruminant sect...

Increasing water use and droughts, along with climate variability and land use change, have seriously altered vegetation growth patterns and ecosystem response in several regions alongside the Andes Mountains. Thirty years of the new generation biweekly normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI3g) time series data show significant land cover specific trends and variability in annual producti...

Background: Recently, several papers have assessed land use consequences of biofuel expansion. In the absence of empirical evidence, these papers assigned subjective values to extensive margin (productivity of new croplands over productivity of existing croplands). Methods: This paper fills the gap in this area and provides a new data set which estimates land productivity at 0.5° × 0.5° (longit...

India, being an agricultural country analysis of soil texture and water resource plays a vital role in increasing the productivity of crops. The area of study is Vellore district in Tamil Nadu where agriculture is the main occupation. Though it is a fact, most of the land remains uncultivated due to the lack of knowledge of soil and water wealth. This paper proposes a method to analyze the suit...

We present the first nationwide index of directly-measured land values by metropolitan area and investigate their relationship with housing prices. Construction prices and geographic and regulatory constraints are shown to increase the cost of housing relative to land. On average, approximately one-third of housing costs are due to land, with an increasing share in higher-value areas, implying ...