The concept of origin-linked product is familiar to Vietnamese urban consumers: in a survey conducted in 2005,Vietnamese urban consumers were able to quote 265 Vietnamese origin- linked products, mainly fresh ones (fruits and vegetables). These products are valued for their sanitary quality and...

The investment decisions of small-scale farmers in developing countries are conditioned by their financial environment. Binding credit market constraints and incomplete insurance can reduce investment in activities with high expected profits. We conducted several experiments in northern Ghana in...

We partnered with a micro-lender in Mali to randomize credit offers at the village level. Then, in no-loan control villages, we gave cash grants to randomly selected households. These grants led to higher agricultural investments and profits, thus showing that liquidity constraints bind with...

This paper provides estimates of the economic impact of initial adoption of genetically modified (GM) cotton and of its potential impacts beyond the few countries where it is currently common. Use is made of the latest version of the GTAP database and model. Our results suggest that by following...

Four West African nations have demanded the WTO’s Doha Development Agenda include a Cotton Initiative that involves two issues: cutting cotton subsidies and tariffs, and assisting farm productivity growth in Africa. This paper provides estimates of the potential economic impacts of (a)...

In the fresh produce long distance international trade, market intermediaries are still a key actor while modern retailers have little backward integrated into the import activity. Difficulty to negotiate a price at the FOB level, three or four weeks before fresh produce are consumed, leads...

Rising consumer interest for ethical and/or responsible products and the growing interweaving of social and environmental issues question the ability of scientific methods to correctly assess social impacts. To this day however, no consensus has yet been reached on relevant indicators to assess...

Sustainability standards are flooding global agricultural markets. Standards however, are not recent: standards for the exchange of grain and tropical products emerged in the 19th century. The objective of this article is to analyze, in a historical perspective, the implications of the...

Ideas and values of "sustainable development" are transfered from the international to the national level in policy-making processes and give way to a recomposition of rural development policies : we study that policy transfert. In Mali and Madagascar, sustainable development policies are quite...