Common Agricultural Policy uses a large share of its budget to support and stabilise the income of EU farmers by means of direct payments (DP). This paper assesses how much and how DP reduce the variability of farm income over time. The analysis is developed on a constant sample of 2402 Italian...

The challenge of food security in Nigeria hinges on several factors of which poor technical efficiency is key. Using a stochastic frontier framework, we estimated the technical efficiency of agricultural households in Nigeria and tested for the significance of mean technical efficiency of...

Agricultural income volatility has become a major hurdle for Irish farmers and policymakers to overcome in their drive to increase investment, production and ultimately income in the sector. This paper studies data from 927 farms in the Teagasc National Farm Survey between 2005 and 2013, the...

In the past three decades, farm families have relied on government payments and off-farm income to reduce income risk and increase total household income. Many studies have analyzed the role of government payments; however, little is known about the impact of health insurance coverage on labor...

The efficient use of inputs is indispensable in many developing countries, such as Ethiopia. This study assesses the level and determinants of technical efficiency of smallholder farmers using the true fixed effects (TFE) model. The TFE model separates inefficiency from unobserved heterogeneity....

This paper provides an ex ante assessment of the effects of the Income Stabilization Tool (IST), a new risk management tool proposed in the Common Agricultural Policy of the European Union. We investigate the effects of IST on income variability and levels as well as on income inequality in the...

Minimum tillage combined with mulching (MTM) is critical to conservation agriculture, yet its use by smallholder farmers raises challenging questions regarding adoption, diffusion and scaling at farm level. In this paper, we used probit regression and post-estimation simulations to identify the...

The gap between demand for and supply of food in Ethiopia can be reduced by improving farm productivity through the introduction of productivity-enhancing technologies. Conversely, in Ethiopia, the adoption rates of agricultural technologies remain below the expected levels. Hence, by using...

One of the basic debates in African development is whether agriculture can be the instrument for the transformation of a rural economy. A common question is whether agricultural policies can provide the impetus to move agriculture in developing economies from subsistence to commercial...