China has embarked on a major program to modernise agricultural and agribusiness structures with far reaching implications for rural development, international competitiveness / trade and food safety. There are, however, few studies that examine in detail how the modernisation program has...

This paper investigates the effects of network based individual social capital on the access of rural households to services. In the context of development economics, an innovative data collection approach is used to determine network based social capital. The approach originates from the field...

This study develops and uses a programming model for farm-level resource use and output supply response to estimate the effects of agricultural land tax in South Africa: A case study of Free State, a region of extremely large commercial farms that gained their size and economic heft during the...

This article analyses determinants for 2001 farmland rental prices from 4376 farms in Germany. We derive our regression equation from a spatial reaction function to allow for spatial transmission of rental prices. Results from a general spatial model show that a € 1 per hectare higher rental...

Soil quality has important implications for sustainable agricultural development and food self-sufficiency in many developing countries. A decrease in soil nutrient stocks, one of the components of soil quality, necessitates more inputs and greater management skills in order to compensate for...

The paper analyses the 1996 EU food aid reform and addresses the question of its impact on improving EU food aid allocation in terms of reaching those countries which are most vulnerable to food insecurity. Using a two-stage regression model the analysis finds that EU food aid in kind is...

The purpose of this paper is to examine politically sensitive food safety problems from the viewpoint of political economy. The model was built in order to clarify the behaviors of consumers and politicians, employing the prospect theory and the median voter theorem. Major findings and policy...

The braconid larval parasitoid Cotesia flavipes Cameron was introduced from Asia into East and Southern African region starting in 1993 to control the invasive exotic maize stemborer Chilo partellus (Swinhoe) (Lepidoptera: Crambidae). A quasi-experiment was constructed using farmers that applied...