Farmers in the high plateau region of Algeria are
assumed to exhibit risk averse behavior, particularly, due
to highly variable weather conditions inducing income
instability over time. This in turn directly affects their
production behavior. The Eastern High Plateau (Setif) is
not a homogeneous region. In the El-Eulma daira, for
example, three different agroecological zones have been
identified on the basis of climate, topography and soil
quality. In addition, two distinct agricultural sectors
(private and socialist) coexist side by side in each of
the agroecological zones. This study constitutes an
attempt to measure farmers' risk attitudes in three
communes (El-Eulma, Oum Ladjoul and Beni Fouda) which are
representative of the three agroecological zones of the
El-Eulma daira. Farmers' risk attitudes were measured
through the experimental approach developed by Binswanger
in India. The technique used consisted of presenting the
subjects, i.e. the farmers, with a set of alternative
prospects involving real money.
Based on the derived risk aversion coefficients, a
series of tests was run to determine if farmers' risk
attitudes are dependent on the zone and/or the sector.
The effect of socioeconomic characteristics (age,
schooling, number of working children, etc.) on partial
risk aversion was analyzed.
Finally, the derived risk aversion coefficients were
used in a risk programming model (MOTAD) to determine
optimal farming plans for private as well as socialist
sector farmers.
The experiment results indicate that regardless of
the zone and the sector, farmers unanimously exhibit risk
averse attitudes. At low payoff level, the distribution
of risk preferences is more spread. A narrower
distribution occurs at higher payoff levels (e.g. 200 DA
scale). There was no evidence of significant difference
among sites and between sectors. Also socioeconomic
attributes correlate poorly with the estimated partial
risk aversion coefficients.
In the socialist sector major discrepancies between
the risk programming model solutions and actual activity
levels occured. They were expected because of the
specific structure of this sector. The inclusion of
government cropping pattern recommendations in the
constraint matrix indicates that government interventions
have a different effect on socialist farmers' welfare of
the three zones. / Graduation date: 1986
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:ORGSU/oai:ir.library.oregonstate.edu:1957/26743 |
| Date | 18 October 1985 |
| Creators | Belaid, Abderrezak |
| Contributors | Miller, Stanley F. |
| Source Sets | Oregon State University |
| Language | en_US |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis/Dissertation |
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