Thesis (M.Inst.Agrar.)(Agricultural Economics)--University of Pretoria, 2006. / Includes summary. Includes bibliographical references. Available on the Internet via the World Wide Web.

abstract: The global demand and trade for fruits and vegetables is increasing at national and international levels. The fresh fruits and vegetables supply chain are highly vulnerable to contamination and can be easily spoiled due to their perishable nature. Due to increases in fresh fruit and vegetable trade shipment volume between countries, the fresh food supply chain area is the highly susceptible and frequently prone to food contamination. The inability of firms in the fresh food business to have a good supply chain visibility and tracking system is one of the prominent reasons for food safety failure. Therefore, in order to avoid food safety risk and to supply safe food to consumers, the firms need to have an efficient traceability system in their supply chain. Most of the research in the food supply chain area suggests the implementation of a highly efficient tracking system called RFID (Radio frequency identification) technology to firms in the food industry. The medium scale firms in the fresh food supply chain business are skeptical about implementing the RFID technology equipped traceability system due to its high cost of investment and low margins on fresh food sales. This research developed two methods to measure the probability of food safety risk in food supply chain. These methods use the information gain from RFID traceability systems as a tool to measure the amount of risk in the fresh food supply chain. The stochastic optimization model is applied in this study to determine the risk premium by investing in RFID technology over the electronic barcode traceability system. The results show that there is a reduction in buyer (Type II error) and seller risk (Type I error) for RFID technology employed traceability system compared to electronic barcode system. It is found from stochastic optimization results that there is a positive risk premium by investing in RFID traceability system over the current systems and suggests the implementation of RFID traceability system for complex medium scale fresh produce imports to reduce the food safety risks. This research encourages the food industries and government agencies to evaluate alternatives to update supply chain system with RFID technology. / Dissertation/Thesis / M.S. Agribusiness 2011

Master of Agribusiness / Department of Agricultural Economics / Mykel Taylor / Choosing a viable long-run crop investment can be risky and time consuming for farmers. The high establishment costs and risk for perennial tree crops like cherries require producers to conduct careful analysis prior to investing. Farmers must not only look to prices today but to the long term price trends that are likely affect the investment profitability. This thesis is an investment analysis on planting twenty-five acres of Sweetheart cherries in Washington State. The purpose is to calculate the total net present value over the commercially productive life of the cherry trees. Prices received by growers for sweet cherry production can fluctuate. Sweet cherries are also susceptible to yield volatility. Therefore, a sensitivity analysis was calculated that shows the changes in price and yield and its effect on net present value. Sweet cherry production for fresh market is also labor intensive. Changes in labor supply and minimum wage can affect a farmers profit margins. This thesis evaluates the risk of a wage shock to the total net present value of the investment. The net present value calculated was found to be positive, making planting Sweetheart cherries a viable option for Hillslide Orchards. The internal rate of return was favorable at 12.30% return. Yield risk was relatively low in this model showing positive net present values at 60% over base yield and still positive at 40% below base yields. The price risk was found to be slightly higher with negative net present values below $1.00 or 20% below the base price. It is important to note that this model represents planting a block of Sweetheart cherries within an existing operation. There are additional costs that would be incurred for other farm operations, not modeled here that could decrease the overall profitability under alternative planting scenarios.

Master of Agribusiness / Department of Agricultural Economics / Allen M. Featherstone / The landscape of the United States seed industry has changed substantially over the last 100 years. In the mid-1930s, there were 115 active seed corn companies marketing seed in the United States. By the 1980s, there were 303 hybrid seed corn companies and in 2016 there were 140 active hybrid seed corn companies in the United States. As the seed industry continues to evolve, so will the logistics and methods of which seed is sold to farm customers. The purpose of this thesis is to analyze and determine if a seed business expansion provides a positive net present value and rate of return for the management based on the capital costs of the investment and estimated income opportunities. Based on historical information of the existing business and the new market territory opportunities, a ten year projected cash flow was estimated to provide a basis for the net present value and internal rate of return analysis. Sensitivity analysis was applied to different variables in the cash flow model to identify variables of risk and the impact on the projected cash flow and net present value analysis. The projected cash flow model and net present value analysis provides management a basis for the decision to expand their existing business. The conclusion of the net present value and internal rate of return analysis was that the expansion of the seed business was profitable under most sensitivity scenarios. Recommendations were made for additional research that could be performed to maximize and diversify the business’s product offerings and net income.

Esta dissertação tem como objetivo analisar a eficiência técnica dos estabelecimentos agropecuários do Brasil e de suas regiões, utilizando como base os dados do Censo Agropecuário 2006. Mais especificamente, esta dissertação procura comparar as eficiências técnicas dos estabelecimentos rurais familiares em relação aos de caráter patronal, considerando-se as diferenças regionais no país. Para tanto, estimaram-se, sob diferentes hipóteses, fronteiras estocásticas de produção e, simultaneamente, modelos de efeitos de ineficiência. Com isso, foi possível mensurar as eficiências técnicas dos estabelecimentos rurais, bem como analisar as influências de fatores relacionados ao ambiente produtivo, permitindo a indicação de políticas públicas voltadas ao aperfeiçoamento do desempenho dos produtores. Nas estimações empíricas, observou-se menor eficiência técnica para os estabelecimentos familiares. Em termos regionais, destacou-se, no que concerne à eficiência técnica dos estabelecimentos patronais, a região Sul do país, a qual também apresentou, ao lado do Centro-Oeste, os índices mais elevados para os estabelecimentos familiares, em média. Quanto à influência do ambiente produtivo, obteve-se que a educação formal e o acesso a crédito sobressaem como importantes fatores para a eficiência técnica da agropecuária brasileira. / This dissertation aims to analyze the technical efficiency of farms in Brazil and its regions, based on the data from the 2006 Census of Agriculture. More specifically, this dissertation seeks to compare the technical efficiency of farm households in relation to business farms, considering the regional differences in the country. To do so, one simultaneously estimated, under different assumptions, stochastic production frontiers and inefficiency effects models. Thus, it was possible to measure the technical efficiency of farms, as well as analyze the influence of factors related to the production environment, allowing the indication of public policies aimed at improving the performance of producers. In the empirical estimation, it was observed, as expected, lower technical efficiency for farm households. In regional terms, with respect to the technical efficiency of business farms, the South region of Brazil stood out, also presenting, along with the Midwest region, the highest efficiency rates for farm household, on average. Regarding the influence of production environment, it was found that formal education and access to credit are noteworthy as important factors for the technical efficiency of Brazilian agriculture.

abstract: This work explores the underlying dynamics of democracies in the context of underdevelopment, arguing that when society has not attained a substantial degree of economic independence from the state, it undermines democratic quality and stability. Economic underdevelopment and political oppression are mutually reinforcing, and both are rooted in the structure of the agriculture sector, the distribution of land, and the rural societies that emerge around this order. These systems produce persistent power imbalances that militate toward their continuance, encourage dependency, and foster the development of neopatrimonialism and corruption in the government, thereby weakening key pillars of democracy such as accountability and representativeness. Through historical analysis of a single case study, this dissertation demonstrates that while this is partly a result of actor choices at key points in time, it is highly influenced by structural constraints embedded in earlier time periods. I find that Ghana’s historical development from the colonial era to present day closely follows this trajectory. / Dissertation/Thesis / Doctoral Dissertation Political Science 2019

abstract: Payments for ecosystem services (PES) are transactions between landholders and the beneficiaries of the services their land provides. PES schemes are growing worldwide with annual transactions over ten billion dollars (Salzman et al., 2018). Much can be learned from looking at oldest and best funded PES schemes on working agricultural land. Initiated in 1985, the USDA’s Conservation Reserve Program (CRP) is the oldest private conservation PES program in the United States. CRP incentivizes farmers to put their land into conservation through an annual payment. In Iowa, CRP has been a source of extra income and a way for farmers to buffer the fluctuating costs of cash crops, such as corn and soy. The dominance of agriculture in Iowa poses many challenges for water quality. A potential solution to the problem, implemented through CRP, is the use of conservation practices to mitigate the negative effects of agricultural run-off. This dissertation considers three aspects of the problem: 1. the relationship between changes in land cover due to CRP enrollment and changes in water quality, controlling for a range of factors known to have an effect on the filtering role of different land covers; 2. the inter-annual variability in water quality measures and enrollment in different CRP conservation practices to examine the cost-effectiveness of specific conservation practices in mitigating lake sedimentation and eutrophication; 3. discrete choice models to identify what characteristics drive the enrollment by farmers into specific conservation practices. Results indicate that land cover and CRP have different impacts on different indicators of lake water quality. In addition, conservation practices that were cost-effective for one water quality variable tended to be cost-effective for the other water quality variables. Farmers are making decisions to enroll in CRP based on the opportunity cost of the land. Therefore, it is necessary to alter financial incentives to promote productive land being putting into CRP through continuous sign-up. The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) needs a more effective way to calculate the payment level for practices in order to be competitive with the predicted value of major crops. / Dissertation/Thesis / Doctoral Dissertation Biology 2019

This dissertation focuses on the economics of household water access in developing countries. The first paper explores whether improvements in water technology enable changes in household time allocation and, thereby, productivity gains. To do so, it exploits differences in timing of shared water tap construction across Kyrgyz villages. Households in villages that received the drinking water infrastructure are more likely to have water close to their homes. This reduced the time intensity of home production activities impacted by water. Village-level incidence of acute intestinal infections fell amongst children. Although adults show no signs of health improvements, they do benefit from reductions in the time spent caring for sick children. Individuals reallocate time savings to additional leisure and market labor, primarily work on the household farm, and the returns to the additional farm labor approximately equal the hourly farm wage. Time intensive water collection can be a source of gender inequality in households lacking water infrastructure. The second paper uses a natural experiment to investigate culture as a source of gender inequality and its role in determining gender roles for activities, such as water collection. Using exogenous variation in district-level cultural composition due to events in Kyrgyzstan during Soviet rule, I estimate the persistence of differences in gender equality between traditional sedentary farming cultures and nomadic herding cultures. Results indicate that Soviet institutions increased educational attainment in both cultures. Other cultural differences - such as gender of household water collector and perceptions of domestic violence - persist. One impediment to the construction of water infrastructure is insecure land tenure or property rights. The third paper explores whether alleviating this impediment through a program providing land titles in rural Peru is associated with improvements in water access. Utilizing the phased in timing, I exploit the differences in project implementation timing between households that held property titles prior to the project and those that did not. Results indicate that land titling is associated with increases in water access. Supporting evidence suggests that either the government or a utility might be responsible for the improvements.

abstract: The main purpose of this dissertation is to examine the effects of migration and household capitals on agricultural and energy transitions in the setting of rapidly changing socioeconomic and environmental conditions of Chitwan, Nepal. The environmental aspects of agricultural and energy transitions are also discussed to weave the changes in the livelihoods of rural households into the discourse of sustainable development, especially in the context of underdeveloped countries. The data used for the analysis is the Chitwan Valley Family Study which has been collected since 1996 at the individual and household level with the focuses on agriculture and family. The results from first difference model and multilevel logistic regression model using discrete-time event history approach deliver a couple of important messages for the future plans for local and national development. Most of all, migration plays an important role in the livelihoods of rural households in Chitwan. It might not have a direct impact, but the findings indicate that social and financial remittances from migration interact with how a household utilizes their current capitals under a given context for the future. Particularly, available labor in a household, prior investment in agriculture, exposure to modern life style, and what other people do, all these factors moderate the association between migration and the transitions. The implications of these results on sustainable development for the future of Chitwan and Nepal in the coming years are discussed afterwards. / Dissertation/Thesis / Doctoral Dissertation Sociology 2014

abstract: ABSTRACT Intermediating between farmers and development projects, farmers’ organizations (FOs) have the potential to improve rural market access and promote equitable growth by reducing transaction costs, strengthening producer bargaining power, and enabling collective action. Capacity building of FOs is a cornerstone of rural development policies and programs, such as the United Nations World Food Programme’s Purchase for Progress (P4P) project, which partnered with 830 FOs representing 1.7 million farmers from 2008 through 2014. Despite significant donor investment, a unifying framework defining the concept and measurement of capacity building has eluded development practitioners. The core challenge originates from the paradigm shift away from top-down development toward participatory capacity building. Motivated by the practical difficulties encountered in ceding control to beneficiaries to enable their empowerment and self-determination, this study seeks to clarify conceptualizations of FO capacity and FO capacity building, to refine monitoring and evaluation of capacity building initiatives, and to develop and validate indicators and indices of organizational maturity and capacity. Drawing on a critical review of the capacity building literature, this study develops an integrated, multi-level, capacity building framework and elaborates different levels of FO participation at each stage of the capacity building process. Through this lens, the research analyzes 11 organizational capacity assessment (OCA) tools and methodologies, and constructs 33 indicators of functional organizational capital to address OCA content gaps in conflict resolution, member participation, adaptive capacity, and the drivers of organizational change and collective action. The research further proposes methodological changes for increasing member participation in OCA to reduce reporting bias, to build knowledge and planning capacities, and to engender empowerment. The indicators developed are tested on primary data gathered from P4P (treatment) and non-P4P (control) FOs in Ghana and Malawi. Results show that P4P has positively impacted the organizational capacity of participating groups, although there are regional differences. The statistical analysis validates most of the indicators and indices developed from this study’s participatory capacity building framework. Overall, this research contributes to the understanding of what FO capacity building means and how to measure it. / Dissertation/Thesis / Doctoral Dissertation Sustainability 2016