The purpose of this study is to analyze agricultural producers’ willingness to adopt regenerative cover crop practices in their operation and the effects of producer and farm characteristics on willingness to accept (WTA) values. The paper utilizes the double-bounded contingent valuation method to analyze survey responses submitted by producers and non-operating landowners in the Texas and Oklahoma portions of the Southern Great Plains. Results showed an average WTA of $26.38/acre for producers to adopt cover crops and that programs aimed at increasing adoption rates may require more substantial investment compared to those focused on continuity with current adopters.

This paper investigates the factors that drive farmers’ simultaneous adoption of six water conservation practices (WCPs) and the intensity of their adoption. We estimate farmers’ adoption of these WCPs with a multivariate probit model, and for the intensity of their adoption, an ordered probit model is estimated. Our results show that gender, age, education, and farm size (among other factors) influence the probability and extent of adoption of WCPs. Furthermore, combinations like drip and/or sprinkler irrigations and cover cropping, drip and/or sprinkler irrigations and intercropping (among others) are complements, suggesting the bundling of these WCPs.

Green rooftops, also known as vegetated roofs, will play a critical role in enhancing the resilience of urban areas in the face of climate change and other contemporary environmental and social challenges. To ensure the optimal design and implementation of these green technologies, it is vital to understand the public’s preferences, values, and attitudes toward the government support for green rooftops. This study employs contingent valuation methods, specifically utilizing a payment card and a choice experiment, to investigate these topics that have received inadequate exploration within the current body of literature. Our findings indicate that 45% of the public is aware of green rooftops, and the most desired features on an extensive green rooftop, ranked by importance, are: flowers, grass, trees, and walking paths. The majority (79%) of the public supports a federally proposed legislation currently under review (the Public School Green Rooftop Program) and has a mean willingness to pay of approximately $176 per household as a one-time payment. Additionally, the results show that individuals place a higher value on green rooftops that incorporate solar energy technology compared to those without. Furthermore, there is a perceived, loss of value when access to a green rooftop is limited, as opposed to having open access.

This study uses a marginal treatment effects approach and farm household rice survey data from Northern Ghana to examine the heterogeneous effects of agricultural technologies on household welfare. Results indicate significant heterogeneity in the gains from the adoption of improved rice technologies among farmers. We found significant evidence of a pattern of positive selection on unobserved gains from the adoption of agricultural technologies on rice yield and household dietary diversity scores (HDDS). Moreover, the policy-relevant treatment effects suggest that reducing the distance to sources of agricultural technologies increases rice yield and HDDS through technology adoption.

Nigeria is endowed with abundant sunshine year-round; thus, solar PV would solve the environmental problems associated with petrol-powered generators. However, it is unclear whether households are willing to transition. Thus, we analyze households’ willingness to pay (WTP) for solar PV under four scenarios: (i) WTP when a solar PV is complemented with a generator, (ii) WTP when a solar PV completely displaces a generator, (iii) WTP when a solar PV is complemented with a generator, plus a subsidy, and (iv) WTP when a solar PV completely displaces a generator, given a subsidy. We find that WTP for solar PV is higher when it can displace generators completely. Subsidy plus monthly rather than upfront payment would scale up the adoption of solar PV by about 6 per cent. Furthermore, the cost benefit analysis results show that solar PV investment is profitable. Thus, there is a need to implement policies aimed at scaling up the energy transition.

This study aims to understand how Rwandan farmers value the improved characteristics of climate services introduced to them in a choice experiment setting. Data were collected from 1,525 household heads in November 2019. A random parameters logit model was used to analyze the data. Results suggest that Rwandan farmers value forecast accuracy, dissemination through a combination of extension agents and the Participatory Integrated Climate Services for Agriculture process, and bundling with market price information. This study suggests that to improve agricultural management planning and food security of farmers through the provision of climate services, these services need to be accurate, user-tailored, and accessible.

The U.S. Agency for International Development has invested limited funds in international agricultural research through U.S. universities. We present a meta-analysis of impact case studies from this investment. The median net present value of economic impacts at purchasing power parity is PPP$8.4 billion compared to a cumulative investment of US$1.24 billion over 1978–2018. About four-fifths of these economic benefits accrued to individuals with incomes under $5.50/day and about 29% to those in extreme poverty. In addition to these limited case studies evaluating financial benefits and costs, we present several types of additional non-economic benefits.

The effects of transgenic corn use and federal biofuel policies on state-level cropping patterns in the US Corn Belt region are investigated using state-level data from 2000 to 2019. During this time, producers moved away from diverse cropping patterns and toward simpler rotational practices. Empirical evidence indicates that the intensification of corn acres planted was positively impacted by the spread of genetically modified (GM) soybeans—used as a proxy for GM corn for biofuel usage—but the effects of biotech advancements on producer planting decisions vary across states. This suggests that future policy changes affecting corn production decisions at the farm level will also be heterogeneous across states.

Although a carbon value has often been integrated in the frameworks established to guide public decision-making, benefit-cost analysis (BCA) has played no more than a minor role in the design of climate policies. It is urgently necessary to promote BCA in this area, and there is currently a unique opportunity for doing so. Major countries are designing new packages in order to meet their commitments, as illustrated by the European Green Deal, recent decisions on the part of the Biden Administration, and the creation of a Chinese national carbon market. These constructive processes must be based on BCA. BCA is absolutely necessary in order to achieve net-zero emissions by 2050 at a reasonable cost. Indeed, abatement costs across and within sectors, and across and within countries, are extremely heterogeneous, and many of the policy instruments in use (subsidies, feed-in tariffs, technical standards, etc.) overlap inefficiently. The instrumental debate between carbon pricing and other instruments is sterile if it merely remains at the level of stating principles. BCA can help on this point too, by specifying comparisons between alternatives, identifying complementarities, and selecting the most relevant combinations of instruments. Its scope should therefore range from setting benchmarks for carbon pricing to assessing, e.g., green investments or measures to enhance carbon sinks. When applied to decarbonization policies, BCA requires firstly the selection of a carbon value, in order to monetize the climate benefits of investments and policies. However, the whole assessment framework must be updated, including the time horizon, the discount rate, the cobenefits of climate mitigation actions, and the pricing of climate risks. We show that such an updated framework leads to an upward revision in the assessment of the climate benefits of mitigation actions, and that combining the valuation of damages and cost-effectiveness approaches is necessary in order to meet the needs of policy assessment. Finally, there is a need to extend analysis beyond the efficiency criterion in order to deal with other dimensions of climate policies, particularly their distributive impacts. This requires specific analyses, which should be articulated with BCA and carried out at an early stage for a better implementation of climate policies than we have seen to date.

Pesticide handling is a critical component of many food supply chains yet labor markets for pesticide handlers are little studied. This study uses data from the U.S. national survey to show that relative to other farmworkers, pesticide handlers get paid 15% more. To understand this premium, matching techniques are used to identify workers who are observationally equivalent in every way except pesticide handling. Using these methods, approximately half of the wage premium can be related back to observable characteristics, including crop type, geographic location, legal work authorization, education, experience, and other personal characteristics.

This paper contributes to the literature on the determinants of environmental standards by studying the role of income inequality and freedom of the press. Given that evidence of the environmental Kuznets curve has only been found for some countries, it is thus crucial to investigate whether other factors besides income per capita levels may be affecting countries' decisions to pass environmentally-friendly legislation. We investigate the effects that inequality and freedom of the press have on environmental stringency for a sample of OECD and BRIICS countries and a global sample of 82 countries using data over the period 1994–2015. We hypothesize that the more unequal a society is, and the greater the oppression of the press is, the less stringent environmental policies are. The results partially confirm our hypothesis. In particular, lack of press freedom is negatively correlated with environmental stringency, whereas inequality shows a non-linear effect only for non-high-income countries.

Rural households in Ethiopia suffer from the scarcity of grazing land and water. This article examines the economic impact of time spent looking for water and grazing lands for livestock on crop farming labor and crop output based on a nonseparable farm household model. We estimated a general Cobb-Douglas production function using 518 farmers in Ethiopia. Our results confirm a negative relationship between labor input to crop farming and resource scarcity. On average, a 1% reduction in the time spent looking for water, grazing, and straw led to an increase in food production by 0.16%, 0.28% and 0.33%, respectively.

Although adoption of agricultural innovations has been extensively examined in the literature, its impact on indicators of farm production and household welfare measures remains ambiguous in the context of sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). This study contributes to the literature by conducting a meta-regression analysis on 92 studies published between 2001 and 2015 in the SSA region. Overall, empirical results from the meta-analysis suggest that adoption of agricultural innovations has a positive and significant effect on indicators of farm production and household welfare measures. However, the magnitude of the impact is relatively small, which also suggests a weak relationship.

In many parts of the U.S., beef cattle production is a large sector of the agricultural economy, yet few of the cattle are stockered; instead the production is focused on cow-calf operations only. Restricting their Operation to only the first phase of beef production may be limiting the cattle owners’ profit potential. This paper examines the opportunities for Operators to earn additional profit from stockering cattle. Using a representative risk-averse producer, a decision set with seven possible marketing strategies is evaluated for the optimal decision in a Bayesian framework which allows for price and production risk. We find that in many instances retaining the cattle for stockering is a superior decision when done in conjunction with specific hedging strategies utilizing options and futures contracts.

We determine the production risk effects and welfare implications of single-trait Bt corn adoption in the Philippines. We use a stochastic production function estimation approach that allows for examining the skewness effects of Bt within a damage abatement specification. Our results indicate that Bt corn has a statistically significant yield increasing, risk-increasing (i.e., variance-increasing) and downside risk-reducing (i.e., skewness-increasing) effects. Based on risk premium, certainty equivalent, and loss probability welfare measures, Bt corn farmers in the Philippines are better-off (in absolute terms) relative to non-Bt farmers given Bt corn's dominant yield increasing effect and downside risk-reducing effect.

No-till acreage has increased in recent years, but many farmers alternate no-till with other tillage practices, limiting public and private benefits from sustained no-till adoption. Revealed preference data are used in an ordered logit regression analysis to determine the effect of soil characteristics, climate, regions, farm characteristics, and producer demographics on producers’ choices to use continuous tillage, alternate no-till systems with tillage systems, or continuously use no-till. The model provides insight into the characteristics and conditions that are conducive to each tillage regime. The attributes found to significantly affect continuous no-till use are erodibility classification, drainage, farm size, and climate.

We examine the economic tradeoff between the costs of pre-event preparedness and post-event response to the potential introduction of an infectious animal disease. In a simplified case study setting, we examine the conditions for optimality of an enhanced pre-event detection system considering various characteristics of a potential infectious cattle disease outbreak, costs of program implementation, severity of the disease outbreak, and relative effectiveness of postevent response actions. We show that the decision to invest in pre-event preparedness activities depends on such factors as probability of disease introduction, disease spread rate, relative costs, ancillary benefits, and effectiveness of mitigation strategies.

The biofuels era brought about changes to the energy and agricultural sectors. For example, the decrease in natural gas prices has led to a weakening of the relationship between fertilizer and gas prices. The other change has been an increase in the demand for fertilizers, which has strengthened the price relationship between these two products. Econometric evidence from this work indicates that after 2008 the relationship between fertilizers and corn prices increased. In addition, results from our work indicate the presence of market power in the ammonia fertilizer sector.

Restrictions on the hyperbolic trigonometric (HT) transformation are imposed to guarantee that a probability density function is obtained from maximum likelihood estimation. Performance of the restricted HT transformation using data generated from normal, beta, gamma, logistic, log-normal, Pareto, Weibull, order statistic, and bimodal populations is investigated via sampling experiments. Results suggest that the restricted HT transformation is sufficiently flexible to compete with the actual population distributions in most cases. Application of the restricted HT transformation is illustrated by characterizing uncertain net income per acre for community-supported agriculture farms in the northeastern United States.

The Conservation Reserve Program (CRP) takes cropland out of production for 10 years, reducing grain supplies available to elevators. Results suggest that the program has negatively impacted elevator merchandising margins, but that elevators adjusted rather quickly to CRP changes, making most of the adjustment within 1 year. The reduction in margins reflects an element of pressure on agribusinesses that has not been measured in previous studies.