The rice industry in New South Wales, Australia, has benefited from the international flow of germplasm, as have other industries. The aim in this paper is to identify those international flows, and to value their contributions to the industry. Analysis is made of the origins and pedigrees of...

Estimates of factors influencing Cameroon's exports of cocoa, coffee and cotton are derived in a system of equations using the Engle-Granger and Johansen co-integration and error-correction representation procedures. Two co-integrating vectors involving cocoa and coffee exports as endogenous...

Technical efficiency of wheat farms in eastern England is measured through the estimation of a stochastic frontier production function using panel data for the 1993-1997 crop years. Variations in the technical efficiency index across production units are explained through a number of managerial...

Using a linear-programming model of farming systems in northern Malawi, the conditions under which peasant farmhousehold models may need to allow for embedded risk are investigated. Tactical, sequential responses to uncertainty are found to be more important to labour-scarce households with...

Information on supply price elasticities has been acknowledged as being very important for decision makers at the macro and micro levels. This paper presents an empirical investigation of vegetable growers' responses to prices in Oman. It develops a single supply response function incorporating...

Dynamic and static weed control decision rules are derived analytically and compared. The dynamic rule leads to increased farm profits and greater control of weeds and weed seeds than the static rule, while total herbicide use is unchanged. The magnitude of the differences is estimated for...

Paterson's curse and related weeds (Echiurn spp.) were introduced as garden flowers before 1850 and have spread to over 30 million ha in southern Australia. Four hundred successful releases of crown weevil (M. larvatus) populations specifically targeting Echiurn spp. were made in the 1993-2000...

Maize (Zea mays L.) is the most important cereal crop in the hills of Nepal, where the grain is used for human consumption and the stover for animal fodder. Maize farms are small, and population pressure necessitates the intensification of existing farming systems. Maize research directed at...

Conventional methods were used to assess the benefits and costs of an unconventional project whose purpose was to test whether participatory crop improvement can encourage Mexican farmers to continue growing maize landraces by enhancing their current use value. Findings suggest that farmers as a...

Measuring soil quality is extremely difficult, yet it has clear economic importance. In particular, there is a great deal of empirical interest in the dynamics of soil quality evolution when land managers respond to policies and other incentives. Yet current methodologies for measuring changes...