This study measures farmers' risk attitudes in rural China using a survey instrument and a complementary experiment conducted in the field with the same sample of subjects. Using a question asking people about their willingness to take risks "in general", we found that the average response of our sample is slightly risk averse. Farmers' exogenous factors (age, gender, and height) and self-repor...

The 2001 foot and mouth disease outbreak in the UK was widespread and devastating. Some areas (e.g. Cumbria) were very badly hit, but all farmers were affected to some degree. Huge numbers of animals, infected and healthy, were slaughtered. Tourism was badly affected. Data from three systematic studies found elevated levels of psychological morbidity among farmers and other rural workers, espec...

INTRODUCTION In Zambia, agriculture continues to be an important source of livelihood, supporting about 70% of the population. The country’s agriculture sector is dominated by small scale rural farmers, who largely depend on rain for crop production, mainly due to the absence of irrigation equipment in most rural communities. Thus any change in climate, mostly manifested as an increase in frequ...

With the rapid development of the information technology and e-commerce, it has become an inevitable trend to promote the application of e-business projects in rural China. Nevertheless, compared with the conventional businesses, the initial cost of an e-business project still remains relatively high in the rural areas. Therefore, it is an urgent issue to explore how to share the cost and benef...

Broadcast digitalization with its enormous benefits to the broadcasting industry will improve the quality of content of programs delivered by television stations. Africa has a switchover date of June, 2017. For Nigerians to have access to television broadcast once the switch over is completed, they must purchase high definition television sets or the set-up box. The awareness among urban dwelle...

The global food crisis of 2008 led to renewed interest in global food insecurity and how macro-level food prices impact household and individual level wellbeing. There is debate over the extent to which food price increases in 2008 eroded food security, the extent to which this effect was distributed across rural and urban locales, and the extent to which rural farmers might have benefited. Eth...

The Brazilian Amazon frontier shows how remarkable leadership can work towards increased agricultural productivity and environmental sustainability without new greenhouse gas emissions. This is due to initiatives among various stakeholders, including national and state government and agents, farmers, consumers, funding agencies and non-governmental organizations. Change has come both from botto...

The New Generation Cooperatives: Case Studies are made possible with support from the Illi-nois Council on Food and Agricultural Research (C-FAR) and the Illinois Institute for Rural Affairs (IIRA). A collection of ten case studies with an introduction is available from IIRA in print and on the IIRA web page. Quoting from these materials for noncommercial purposes is permitted provided proper c...

This paper presents observations from a project that combines participatory rural development methods with participatory design techniques to support a farmers’ co-operative in Madhya Pradesh, India.

The agricultural sector is the largest and most critical economic sector and a developing country like India, with its economic backbone as agriculture, is highly dependent to sustain its population. To compete with other agricultural economies, a need exists to create effective linkage between the seat of agricultural production and market forces involved in the provision of goods to the consu...