The positive experience with the latest rural development intervention in Northeast Brazil suggests that rapid progress can be made if community participation is enhanced and decisionmaking authority is decentralized to lower levels of government and other institutions. In Northeast Brazil,...

In Poland, present policies are aimed at promoting large, mechanized farms over smaller family farms. These policies are based on the perception that large farms offer real economies of scale. But international evidence indicates that such large, mechanized farms are generally less efficient and...

Two different methodologies are linked to determine the effects of climate change on the Western Cape farm sector in South Africa. First, it uses a general circulation model to model climate change. Second, a sectoral mathematical programming model is used to determine these effects on key...

This paper evaluates the production structure of the South African agricultural sector for the period 1970-1998, using a translog function. The results show that the production structure is best represented by production technology that is Hicks-neutral and homothetic. This information is useful...