This paper looks at differences in spatial and temporal variation of rice yields in China and Brazil. We find that rice yields in China have converged over time and that rice production has become more and more homogeneous. In contrast, rice yields in Brazil have diverged over time, primarily...

"Agricultural development strategies delineate priorities for actions to enhance agricultural and overall development. They are usually put forward by individual countries based on assessments of national needs. Seldom are attempts made to identify strategic priorities for agricultural...

"In this paper, the authors analyze the potential economic impacts of avian influenza (AI) in West Africa, taking Nigeria as an example. They find that, depending on the size of the affected areas, the direct impact of the spread of AI along the two major migratory bird flyways would be the loss...

"The Ugandan coffee industry is facing some serious challenges, including low international prices in the international coffee market, aging coffee trees and declining productivity, and, more recently, the appearance of coffee-wilt disease, which have all contributed to the decline in both the...

"Agriculture plays a dominant role in nearly all the countries of East and Central Africa, and many face similar agroecological, climatic, and development challenges. As a result, significant scale economies can be made through the regionalization of research and development (R&D) using networks...

"This paper examines differences in the spatial and temporal variations of rice yields in China and Brazil. Our analysis indicates that, in China, rice yields have converged over time and rice production has become increasingly homogeneous. In contrast, rice yields in Brazil have diverged over...

"Agricultural production statistics reported at country or sub-national geopolitical scales are used in a wide range of economic analyses, and spatially explicit (geo-referenced) production data are increasingly needed to support improved approaches to the planning and implementation of...

Large gaps exist in our knowledge of the current geographic distribution and spatial patterns of performance of crops, and these gaps are unlikely to be filled. In addition, even the spatial scale of many sub-national statistical reporting units remains too coarse to capture patterns of spatial...

Recent droughts in the Horn of Africa have again raised concerns over the viability of pastoralism. Vulnerability to drought, arguably increasing on the back of climate change and population pressures, provides a compelling justification for encouraging economic diversification. It is less...

Weather shocks and natural disasters, it has been argued, represent a major threat to national and international security. Our paper contributes to the emerging micro-level strand of the literature on the link between local variations in weather shocks and conflict by focusing on a pixel-level...