 Even though the poultry sector is only a small part of the Kenyan economy, almost all farmers are connected to poultry production and because of that, their livelihoods are likely to be affected by an avian flu outbreak.  Increasing the severity, duration and geographic spread of an avian flu outbreak may lead to significantly larger declines in poultry production.  The economywide costs of...

THE CASE FOR COLLECTIVE ACTION IN SMALLHOLDER MARKETING Issues concerning farmers with small land holdings figure prominently in global discussions about poverty reduction, as the majority of the world’s poor belong to such households. Most of these households are linked to the market in one way or another. Thus, the opportunity for smallholders to raise their incomes from agricultural producti...

The objective of the present study was to financially compare chemical and agricultural management methods of rice blast disease, as a prevalent disease in paddy fields of Langerood in Guilan Province, Iran. Thirty-three rice experts and 373 paddy farmers were selected by random sampling procedures. Data were collected by a research made questionnaire and were analyzed by SPSS. Benefit Cost Rat...

A stochastic cost equation was estimated for US dairy farms using national data from the production year 2000 to determine how farmers might reduce their cost of production. Cost of producing a unit of milk was estimated into separate frontier (efficient) and inefficiency components, with both components estimated as a function of management and causation variables. Variables were entered as im...

We demonstrate that the agrarian unrest in the United States between 1870 and 1900 can be given an economic explanation, despite its association with increases in the real price of agricultural produce. It was not merely the result of nominal illusions as other scholars have suggested. Falling transportation costs allowed for the extension of the frontier and for more farmers to enter the inter...

It is widely argued that farmers are unwilling to pay adequate fees for surface water irrigation to recover the costs associated with maintenance and improvement of delivery systems. In this paper, we use a discrete choice experiment to study farmer preferences for irrigation characteristics along two branch canals in Punjab Province in eastern Pakistan. We find that farmers are generally willi...

Agri-environmental schemes provide payments for farmers in return for environmental services. Their implementation induces transaction costs for administration and farmers. Although transaction costs became subject of research in recent years, little attention has been paid to activities which create them. This paper uses insights from Principal-Agent-Theory to show, how information gaps betwee...