This study aims to present information on the existing Louisiana agritourism industry and create a descriptive profile of agritourism operators, addressing specifically what motivates people to engage in agritourism. A subsequent focus of the study is to document marketing approaches used in promoting agritourism operations and concerns and limitations faced by Louisiana agritourism operators. These will be achieved through the following objectives: 1. Use a survey instrument to collect information on the demographics of farmers interested and/or engaged in agritourism, farm characteristics, types of activities offered in the agritourism operations, as well as motivators for engaging in agritourism. 2. Analyze ways of promotion of agritourism operations and farmers perceptions of these advertising methods. 3. Identify key issues farmers face in the operation of the agritourism business. 4. Use principal component analysis to determine the nature of motivation for operating an agritourism business. The outcomes of the study would help increase understanding of current processes in agritourism that are taking place in Louisiana. Determination of the nature of motivation that lies behind operating agritourism enterprises, which is currently not fully known, may provide a better understanding of both financial and nonfinancial goals with the association to different farm characteristics. Identification of marketing approaches used by farmers to promote agritourism operations may improve the understanding of underlying processes and lead to the creation of learning materials to help farmers improve their marketing campaigns. Identification of potential constraints that agritourism operators face may lead to policy implications.

Consumption patterns, credit, and labor supply are determinants of human welfare, and also indicators of a country's economic progress, poverty, and inequalities. In this study, I review many of the stylized facts regarding consumption behaviors, credit, and the decision to engage in off-farm labor supply. I also put the life cycle model into an empirical model and perform testing. This is done in a three-essay format with a focus on the country of Uganda. In the first essay, I test whether farm households consumption behavior is consistent with an optimization process predicted by economic theory. In essay II, I evaluate the impact of borrowing constraints on farm households consumption behavior when consumers or producers do not have access to financial services due to market imperfections. In essay III, I investigate the determinants of off-farm participation and labor supply (hours) of farm households in Uganda. Farm household off-farm labor is perceived as an important strategy to cope with credit constraints and an instrument to improve livelihoods and food security, especially in Uganda, and generally in Sub-Saharan Africa. I use data based on the farm household survey conducted in East Africa by the World Bank as part of the Living Standards Measurement Study-Integrated Surveys on Agriculture (LSMS-ISA) project. I use three years of survey data from 2009/2010, 2010/2011, and 2011/2012, covering the district of Kampala and 72 (58 rural and 14 urban) Enumeration Areas (EAs) in the five regions of the country. In Essay I, I find that the Euler equation of consumption is rejected and that the life cycle model of inter-temporal optimization does not characterize consumption behavior in Uganda. In Essay II, I estimate the Euler equation when borrowing constraints do not have an impact on consumption behavior using the inter-temporal optimization framework. I found that the life cycle model without borrowing constraint restrictions is rejected. In Essay III, I look at the decision to engage in off-farm work and labor supply hours using a double hurdle model. I find that heads of households who completed a secondary level of education and above engage more in off-farm work at the prevailing market wage. The reservation wage at which an educated head of a farm household in Uganda is willing to work seems to match ongoing and established market wage in the informal sector. Thus, if the head of household chose to work on the farm and not off-farm, it was because his or her marginal product of labor on-farm is greater than the wage rate prevailing off-farm. However, 39.5 percent of the heads of households with no formal education remained engaged in agriculture compared to those with some education regardless of the level attained. Twenty five percent of heads of households with education above the secondary level remain in the non-agriculture sector; and if they decide to join off-farm wage earners, they are likely to supply more hours of work off the farm regardless of gender. The major policy implications from the findings of this dissertation are that a suitable model, which characterizes consumption behavior in developing countries, could improve welfare in Uganda. Credit constraints do affect consumption behavior and policies focusing on restructuring land titling will help farm households penetrate financial markets and have access to credit. Moreover, credit and decisions on labor supply are key policy tools that policymakers in Uganda should focus on in poverty analyses and welfare to increase the average lifetime income and the investment in agriculture.

[No abstract available] / Land and Food Systems, Faculty of / Graduate

This dissertation analyzes price transmission, market power and vertical relationships at the processing and retailing levels for the fluid milk market in the New England area. The New England fluid milk market is particularly interesting due to its prior minimum farm price policies. This study contributes to previous market power and market conduct literature in three ways. First, it incorporates time series properties to test for asymmetry in price transmission by employing an error correction model and a revised version of the Engle-Granger cointegration test. Second, it proposes a method based on previous tax rate analysis research to test for market power without requiring detailed cost data. Third, it utilizes a natural experiment of minimum price policies to simulate retail price responses to changes in marginal cost so that different vertical relationship models can be evaluated and ranked. Most previous asymmetric price transmission research is based on the Houck model, which might produce spurious regressions when price series are nonstationary. This dissertation exploits the time series properties by employing an error correction model. Furthermore, the revised version of the standard Engle-Granger cointegration test (Enders and Siklos, 2001) was employed to improve the efficiency of cointegration testing and accomodate asymmetry in convergence to long run equilibrium. Asymmetry in price transmission is suggestive of market power. New empirical industrial organization models have been widely used to estimate market power, but they require input price data. This study tests the market power hypothesis by estimating a reduced form model and analyzing the extent to which farm prices are transferred to retail prices. Since only farm and retail prices are available, the market power hypothesis can only be tested for the combined processing and retailing markets. It is unclear how market power is distributed between the two market levels due to lack of wholesale milk price data. The Northeast Interstate Dairy Compact provides a natural experiment to observe changes in marginal costs. Through simulations of retail price responses to marginal cost changes, this study ranked different vertical relationship models according to their fit to the observed data. The results show that farm and retail prices are cointegrated and provide empirical evidence for asymmetry in farm to retail price transmission. Under some reasonable assumptions on processing and marketing costs, the minimum price policy, which was intended to protect farmers from market power of larger processors, actually increases market power exercised by processors and retailers. Finally, retailers are found to exercise more market power than processors.

Traceability systems are increasingly implemented in food supply chains to mitigate food safety hazards and to improve information management and logistics. While traceability systems are largely voluntary and driven by consumer demand in the United States (US), in the European Union (EU) they are enforced by regulations and were implemented to restore consumer trust in the food supply. Traceability systems establish the path of information on food origins, attributes, and production and processing technologies from farm to fork, thus increasing transparency in the food chain. As the consumption of pre-prepared foods increases around the world, new types of food safety hazards may arise. Previously independent food supply chains may now come together in facilities producing multi-ingredient, pre-prepared food products. Implementing traceability in multi-ingredient food chains may mitigate food safety risks. This research presents three essays, two theoretical and one empirical, analyzing the economics of traceability adoption in food supply chains and at the farm. The first essay investigates under what conditions voluntary or mandatory traceability systems are preferred in single ingredient supply chains. The second addresses the conditions for full, partial or no traceability in multi-ingredient food chains. Finally, the third essay analyzes what has influenced traceability adoption at the farm level in the Portuguese pear industry. An overall aim of this research is to examine how network effects impact the levels of traceability flowing along single- and multi-ingredient food supply chains. This dissertation contributes to the economics of traceability in food supply chains showing that mandatory traceability may be inevitable if there are large public benefits from traceability, liability rules are not perfectly imposed, and monitoring and enforcement is effective. Full traceability is feasible in multi-ingredient supply chains. However partial traceability is perhaps a more realistic scenario as it may result in considerable savings for firms along the food chain. Producer organization, retailer, and farm characteristics clearly influence the decision to adopt traceability. Finally, network effects have a positive impact on the levels of traceability but a negative impact on the value of premiums.

The impact of public forestry projects on regional economic development is an important concern of decision makers. A shortcut estimation function to calculate input-output (I-O) multipliers in the absence of I-O models is proposed in this study to measure such regional economic impact. The I-O multiplier quantifies the relationship between an initial investment and the subsequent increase in the total production of an economy resulting from the interdependency among the industries in that economy. The shortcut function employs only two variables: the internal purchase ratio and the intraregional sale ratio, both of which can be estimated easily from secondary data. The derivation of this function is based on certain properties of the real roots (eigenvalues) of I-O matrices. The shortcut function is validated by comparing the actual multipliers obtained from existing I-O models and their estimated values calculated by the function. The empirical test shows a close agreement between actual and estimated I-O multipliers. The shortcut function is then applied to measure the I-O multiplier effects of harvesting activities related to different timber supply policies in Massachusetts. An estimated I-O multiplier indicates that every one dollar invested in timber harvesting would add 2.454 dollars to the total production of the state. Because of its cost-efficiency, the shortcut method can be used frequently in regional economic impact assessment. The lack of reliable data on imports and exports may introduce a biased estimation of these I-O multipliers. Under further assumptions, the shortcut method can also calculate income and employment multipliers if additional information on wage and labor productivity are available.

I explore the hypothesis that women's land rights and participation in collective action are determinants of women's welfare, efficiency and intrahousehold bargaining power in Brazil. The first chapter utilizes data collected in 1999 on household and community gender relations on agrarian reform settlements in six states. The focus of the essay is the gender division of decision-making within dual-headed beneficiary households. Descriptive and regression analysis indicate that women's land rights and their membership in the Landless Rural Worker's Movement (MST) are associated with greater than average rates of joint decision-making and women's autonomous decision-making in the household. The second chapter compares children's school enrollment and attainment rates among dual-headed and lone parent families on agrarian reform land encampments and land settlements, using two datasets collected in 1999. Children of all ages on land settlements are more likely to be in school than children on land encampments, but teenage girls on land settlements are more likely to be in school than boys, and also attain more in school. There is evidence that the combined effects of household membership in the MST and in producer's organizations predict a greater likelihood of school enrollment and a higher rate of attainment for children in all households. Children are predicted to progress more rapidly through school than the norm in lone mother households in which mothers have land rights and are members of the MST. The third chapter contributes a comparison of men's and women's owner-operated farms, utilizing data collected in 1999. Descriptive analysis shows that female-owned and operated farms are less likely to have access to productive inputs and to belong to commercial farmers' associations. Regression analysis indicates that men's membership in commercial farmers' organizations predicts a 30 percent increase in the value of crop yields, but there is no membership premium predicted for female farmers. However, when controlling for other factors, female farm management is associated with a 48 percent increase in the value of crop yields per hectare.

Like many other SSA countries, Somalia's exports performed poorly in the world market especially in the last two decades and lost some of its market shares during these period. Gulaid (1980), noted that Somalia lost some of its banana export market shares in the Italian market due to strong competition. This meager performance of the Somalian exports in the world market raises many practical and intellectual questions that require exploration and explanations. In answering these and other questions, this study focusses on analyzing the behavior and performances of the Somalian exports in the world market. In short, this study pursues two major objectives in order to shed some light on these questions. The first major objective is that of the analysis of the growth and pattern of the Somalian exports. A theme running throughout this study is the need for disaggregating Somalian exports, in order to make a more meaningful assessment of the behavior and performance of the Somalian exports at the commodity group level. Our results indicated that the exports from the private sector wd not only the higher growth rate but also were more stable than the exports from the public sector. The second objective is the overall analysis of the behavior and performances of the Somalian exports in the world market. In the process a trade model is constructed to provide a meaningful framework for this analysis. The results showed again that the exports from the private sector outperformed than those of the public sector. The final objective of this study is the analysis of the impact of the SAPs adopted by the Somali government during the 1980s on its exports and trade balance, with a particular emphasis on the impact of devaluations. Our analysis showed that Somalia's exports responded differently to these devaluations. Particularly, our results demonstrated that the exports from the public sector responded exceedingly well in contrast with those from the private sector. In the main, the devaluations had the desired consequences on Somalia's exports and trade balance.

Abstract not available

Policies for peasant grain production and marketing and their results are inextricably linked to those for peasant class transformation. Nicaraguan state intervention in peasant grain production during the first five years of the Nicaraguan revolution is analyzed using class-based peasant categories. Grain policies and results are derived, first, from the pre-revolutionary historical and class basis of peasant grain production, and second, from the FSLN's changing policies and goals for both peasant transformation and grain production and marketing. Strengths and weaknesses within each component of the peasant grain program and response by members of each peasant category to state policy are evaluated, as are new state initiatives in 1984. It is concluded that Nicaraguan state intervention, via massive increases in peasant access to resources, contributed to national self-sufficiency in beans, some improvements in the economic conditions of poor and medium peasants, and the voluntary collectivization of a small but important segment of the peasantry. The problems of peasant grain production and marketing could not be overcome in their entirety, resulting in a deficit in marketed corn. Contributing factors included external and internal political, economic, and military pressures, as well as inadequate policy formulation on the part of the state. Distinct grain responses by peasant category imply that the peasantry cannot be treated as a homogeneous unit. The state is likely to achieve improved results once class has been taken into account. The dissertation argues that revolutionary transition confronts one of its most difficult problems in the tensions between peasant class transformation and macroeconomic goals. These problems are most likely to be resolved by a pragmatic, long-run policy of persuasion and example--as has been the case so far in Nicaragua.