This study offers evidence of the robustness of farmer rice varieties (Oryza glaberrima and O. sativa) in West Africa. Our experiments in five West African countries showed that farmer varieties were tolerant of sub-optimal conditions, but employed a range of strategies to cope with stress. Varieties belonging to the species Oryza glaberrima - solely the product of farmer agency - were the most...

In recent years, entrepreneurship has been gaining more prominence as a potential tool for solving poverty in developing countries. This paper mainly examines the relationship between farmer entrepreneurship and rural poverty alleviation in China by assessing the contribution of farm entrepreneurs towards overcoming poverty. Data were collected from 309 employees of farmer entrepreneurships in ...

Economics has looked at the decision process of politicians but the decision process of agency staff has primarily been the purview of sociologists. Agencies affect the final form of regulations, they may enforce or ignore regulations that exist, and they provide information to the political process. Policies recommended by economists for nonpoint source pollution control are seldom supported b...

The government of Viet Nam places a high priority on upgrading the quality of farmers' lives. Providing adequate occupational safety and health (OSH) protection for all farmers is an important challenge. The Ministry of Labour, Invalids and Social Affairs (MOLISA) of Viet Nam trained WIND (Work Improvement in Neighbourhood Development) farmer volunteers. From 2004-2007, MOLISA in cooperation wi...

With numerous challenges hindering smallholders’ adoption of externally developed technologies, it is often argued that farmer innovation can play an essential role in rural livelihoods. Yet a rigorous assessment of the impact of farmer innovation is lacking. We address this issue by analyzing the effect of farmer innovation on household welfare, measured by income, consumption expenditure, and...

A shrimp farmer in Taiwan practices innovation through trial-and-error for better income and a better environment, but such farmer-based innovation sometimes fails because the biological mechanism is unclear. Systematic field experimentation and laboratory research are often too costly, and simulating ground conditions is often too challenging. To solve this dilemma, we propose a decision suppo...

A critical step in the quantification of soil quality (SQ) is the selection of SQ benchmarks. The benchmarks used in this study were SQ ratings made by 32 farmer collaborators representing a range of farming systems, scales of operation and geographic locations in the Mid-Atlantic region of USA. Soils from 45 pairs of sites identified by their farmers as having good and poor SQ were sampled ove...

This study examines the impact of contract farming with Farmer Organizations on farmers’ income. Contract farming with farmer organizations is a smallholder farmer-inclusive contract farming system. Field surveys were conducted in August 2010 with 75 farmers (including 39 contract farmers) in Kampong Thom province, Cambodia. The analysis—i.e., using a treatment effects model—indicates that cont...