" Hungarian home gardens are small-scale farms managed by farm households using traditional management practices and family labor. They generate private benefits for farmers by enhancing diet quality and providing food when costs of transacting in local markets are high. Home gardens also...

"Agricultural biodiversity is an environmental resource. Much of the agricultural biodiversity remaining in situ today is found on the semi-subsistence farms of poorer countries and the small-scale farms or home gardens of more industrialized nations. The traditional small farms of Hungary are...

This synthesis revisits the “maize success story” in Sub-Saharan Africa, drawing selectively from an extensive published literature about maize seed technical change and related policies. The review focuses on the countries of Kenya, Zimbabwe, Zambia, and Malawi, where maize is most...

"A vast literature has accumulated since crop varieties with transgenic resistance to insects and herbicide tolerance were released to farmers in 1996 and 1997. A comparatively minor segment of this literature consists of studies conducted by agricultural economists to measure the farm-level...

In contrast to a perception that ex situ collections of germplasm are rarely used, this empirical case study reveals large quantities of germplasm samples distributed by the U.S. National Germplasm System to many types of scientific institutions located in numerous countries around the world....

"This paper investigates the effects of wheat genetic diversity and land degradation on risk and agricultural productivity in less favored production environments of a developing agricultural economy. Drawing production data from household survey conducted in the highlands of Ethiopia, we...

"On farm conservation of crop diversity poses obvious policy challenges in terms of the design of appropriate incentive mechanisms and possible trade-offs between conservation and productivity. This paper compares factors explaining the inter-specific diversity (diversity among species) and...

"A typical private good is defined by its excludability and rivalry characteristics. Information embodied in a technology might not generate rivalry among its users. By contrast, excludability is certainly a characteristic of this kind of information and its delivery can generate incentives for...

"Changing perceptions of resource ownership have altered international exchange of genetic resources. After summarizing the role of genebanks and issues related to property regimes, this paper presents an empirical study of one of the largest national genebanks, the U.S. National Germplasm...

"Local farming communities throughout the world face productivity constraints, environmental concerns, and diverse nutritional needs. Developing countries address these challenges in a number of ways. One way is public research that produces genetically modified (GM) crops and recognize...