Suchergebnisse

AbstractA few highly publicized food supply chain disruptions early in the COVID‐19 pandemic were interpreted by some as evidence of a "broken" food system. One solution often brought in response to that perceived brokenness is urban agriculture. The literature, however, has sidestepped a key question: Who practices urban agriculture? Using survey data on 882 Montreal residents, we find that those who practice urban agriculture are more educated, and more likely to be homeowners and to report an income in the highest income bracket. This is consistent with urban agriculture being a luxury good.

AbstractContract farming, wherein a processor contracts out the production of an agricultural commodity to a grower, is the first step toward more vertically coordinated—and thus more modern—agricultural value chains. As such, in principle contract farming is a necessary condition for the structural transformation of developing economies to occur. Yet contract farming is far from monolithic, and the institution takes on a variety of forms. In this article, we describe how the institution of contract farming varies in cross‐sectional data covering 1,200 households across six regions of Madagascar, half of which are growers in contract farming agreements covering a dozen different crops. In this setting, participation in contract farming has been associated with increases in income, improvements in food security, and reductions in income variability. Given those presumed effects in this setting of participation in contract farming, we then look at the correlates in our data of participation in contract farming. as well as one's willingness to pay to participate in contract farming as a grower in an attempt to better target policies aimed at encouraging participation in contract farming.

AbstractIn the early days of the COVID‐19 pandemic, we launched the Online Agricultural and Resource Economics Seminar (OARES) in an ostensible effort to maintain a semblance of normalcy in agricultural and applied economics. Our goal with the OARES was to break down the privilege barrier in two ways: by (i) featuring research mainly by junior, female, or minority scholars, and (ii) bringing frontier research to those who may not have had access to a regular seminar series prior to the pandemic. We thus discuss the contribution of the OARES to diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging in agricultural and applied economics.