Dissertations / Theses on the topic 'Agricultural household mode'

Le salariat agricole a toujours été invisible, socialement et politiquement. Pourtant, bien que son poids se soit réduit au XXe siècle, son rôle reste encore important dans l'agriculture familiale française. Sa place se renforce et sa nature se modifie : le travail saisonnier se développe. Dans un contexte d'exacerbation de la concurrence, la compréhension des déterminants de ces mutations et de leurs implications est au centre d'un double enjeu : social et de compétitivité. Selon nous, la distinction faite en économie agricole entre famille et salariat est insuffisante pour saisir ces évolutions et leurs impacts sur la performance des exploitations. Nous analysons, théoriquement puis économétriquement, les déterminants de la demande de travail des exploitations familiales en distinguant les salariés permanents des saisonniers. Nous montrons qu'une telle distinction permet de mieux comprendre le comportement des exploitants, de révéler des phénomènes de substitution entre les deux types de salariés et d'expliciter les mécanismes sous-jacents à ces phénomènes. Nous étudions, de plus, le lien entre la main-d’œuvre des exploitations et leur performance. En estimant une fonction de production, nous montrons que les trois types de travail sont inégalement productifs et que la composition de la main-d’œuvre influence la productivité des exploitations. Enfin, par l'analyse qualitative d'un contrat saisonnier particulier et de la flexibilité du travail qu'il offre, nous montrons que les formes d'emploi en agriculture sont plus complexes que la dichotomie permanents-saisonniers et qu'elles invitent à revenir sur le dualisme des formes de flexibilité du travail de la littérature
Wage labor in agriculture has always been characterized by some invisibility, whether it is in the social or political field. Although its importance has been reduced throughout the 20th century, it still plays an important role in family farming in France. This role has developed and its very nature changes as seasonal work increases. At a time of increasing competition, understanding these evolutions, their determinants and consequences therefore becomes a double issue of study : a social one and one of competitivity. It is our opinion that the classical dichotomy between family work and wage labor is insufficient when highlighting evolutions in the workforce and its impact in terms of the performance of farms. The factors of family farming labor demand are analysed, theoretically and econometrically, by differentiating permanent workers from seasonal ones. Such a distinction gives a better understanding of the farmers' behaviour, shows the substitution phenomena between these two types of workers, and gives the reasons for such a substitution. The link between workforce composition and farm performance is also studied. By estimating a production function, we show that the three types of workers are unequally productive and that workforce composition affects farm productivity. Lastly, the qualitative study of a specific seasonal contract and that of the type of labor flexibility such a contract offers, sheds light on how jobs in agriculture are much more complex than the strict division between permanent and seasonal workers. Indeed, they call for a questioning of the dual aspect of labor flexibility generally used in the economic literature

Land-clearing fires set by settlers in the Brazilian Amazon give rise to large scale wildfires that threaten mature forests, agricultural plantations, and settlement areas. Our purpose is to examine labor devoted to fire prevention (firebreak establishment) and burning for crop production for subsistence smallholders in the Tapajós National Forest in Pará, Brazil. Both the decision to engage in each activity and the scale of the activity are examined. A household model addressing decision-making under risk is estimated using survey data from 220 households. We find economic variables such as the opportunity cost of household time, market conditions, and the hiring wage to be important predictors of both decisions (often these are more important than household or demographic considerations), as is household reliance on standing forest resources for non-timber products. We also find that the involvement of NGOs and the government plays an important role in encouraging fire prevention behavior. Our results provide support for programs that emphasize economic parameters and for considering smallholder productivity in policies that target accidental fire prevention or reduction in burning activity.
Master of Science

Traditionally, the Common Agricultural Policy has used minimum intervention prices and coupled payments to support farmers in Europe.  These highly trade-distorting instruments have received much criticism.  Following the Uruguay Round, a major reform process started in the EU.  In 2003, the EU decoupled farm support by introducing Single Farm Payments.  However, economic theory has shown that such payments may lead to increases in farm output because of the existence of market imperfections or risk.  This thesis explores the issue of farm support for the case of crops farm households in France.  It develops and applies a stochastic dynamic farm household model for a representative crops farm household.  The farm household faces occasionally binding debt constraints and investment adjustment costs.  The model is specified and parameterized to a sample of French crops farms using Farm Accountancy Data Network (FADN) data observed between 1996 and 2003.  Simulations with various policy scenarios show the extent to which farm support and especially decoupled payments affect the farm household’s decisions.  First, the thesis examines the impact of CAP reforms on farm behaviour.  Then, the thesis compares the impacts of different farm payments, i.e. Single Farm Payments, farm payments coupled to production and Counter-cyclical Payments, to explore the link between investment and farm payment.  Further, the thesis highlights that the degree of decoupling of farm payments depends on the farm household’s access to credit.  Although Single Farm Payments may potentially affect output decisions, given the relatively low impacts found in the thesis, it is reasonable to consider that the Single Farm Payment is effectively decoupled in this French FADN sample of arable crops farms.  The introduction of decoupled direct payments in the EU appears to be an efficient step towards reducing trade distortions.

La commercialisation des produits vivriers doit rester au centre des préoccupations des autorités politiques dans la mesure où elle explique en grande partie les faibles niveaux de production vivrière en Afrique au Sud du Sahara. La pertinence de cette hypothèse réside dans le fait que la commercialisation constitue un facteur déterminant dans le développement de la production agricole, d’autant que la plupart des économies africaines repose sur l’agriculture. Les marchés agricoles ont été le plus souvent organisés dans les pays africains en faveur des cultures d’exportation et la priorité continue de leur être accordée. Les performances agricoles insuffisantes enregistrées pendant ces dernières décennies en Afrique au Sud du Sahara et plus particulièrement en République centrafricaine, nous amène à nous demander s’il n’y a pas de divergence entre les objectifs de l’Etat, qui cherche avant tout à maximiser ses recettes fiscales (prélèvement sur les exportations), et ceux des paysans, qui cherchent plutôt à satisfaire d’autres besoins (consommation, revenu, …). Si tel est le cas, l’analyse des comportements des ménages agricoles face aux contraintes de production et de commercialisation devient une nécessité avant la mise en place de toute action de politique économique visant à promouvoir le secteur agricole. A défaut de pouvoir étudier un modèle de comportement agricole et/ou de surplus commercialisable, faute de données micro-économiques, nous avons appréhendé les réactions des paysans par rapport aux signaux du marché (prix …) et par rapport à d’autres variables pouvant affecter la production en utilisant le modèle d’offre de Nerlove avec un mécanisme à correction d’erreur. Les résultats des estimations économétriques de l’offre de vivriers et de celle du coton tendent à confirmer l’hypothèse d’ajustement graduel des producteurs et à mettre en lumière le rôle important joué par les prix dans la production agricole. Dans tous les cas, la politique d’administration de prix entreprise par l’Etat centrafricain ne semble pas avoir eu un effet significatif sur l’offre des vivriers comme dans le cas du coton faute de structure de commercialisation appropriée. De plus, le comportement des paysans paraît beaucoup plus flexible dans le processus d’ajustement quand il s’agit de culture de rente
The commercialization of food products remains the main concern of political authorities in so far as it explains in large part the weak levels of food output in Sub Saharan Africa. The relevance of this hypothesis resides in the fact that commercialization constitutes a determining factor in the development of agricultural production, the more so as the majority of African economies depend on agriculture. Agricultural markets have most often been established in African countries in favor of export goods and these countries are still giving them a priority status. The insufficient agricultural performances recorded during the recent decades in Sub-Saharan Africa, and specially in the Central Africa Republic, leads us to ask if there doesn’t exist a divergence between the objectives of the government, which seeks above all to maximise its fiscal receipts (increase in exports), and those of the farmers who prefer satisfying other needs (consumption, income). If this is the case, the analysis if the behavior of agricultural household, confronted by production and commercialization constraints, becomes necessary before the implantation of any economic policy decisions aimed at the promotion of agricultural sector. For want of being able to study a model of agricultural household behavior and/or of marketable surplus, due to a lack of the micro-economic data, we estimated the farmers’ reactions, as regards market signals (price) and as regards other variables which could exercise an effect on agricultural production, by using the Nerlove supply model, incorporating an error correction mechanism. The results of the econometric estimation for the supply of food crops and cotton tend to confirm the hypothesis of gradual adjustment by the producers and to highlight the important role payed by prices in agricultural production. In all cases, the price administration policy undertaken by the Cantral Africa government does not seem to have a significate effect on the supply of food products as it did in the case of cotton, due to the adoption of an appropriate commercialization structures. Moreover, the farmers’ behavior should appear a great deal more flexible in the adjustment process when it is a matter of export foods

Dans le but de faire face aux défis interdépendants en termes d’épuisement des ressources énergétiques, de dégradation environnementale et des préoccupations de santé publique dans le contexte chinois en réponse au développement durable, nous nous concentrons sur l'étude des politiques en matière d’énergie, d’environnement et de santé en Chine. Dans le chapitre 1, nous donnons un aperçu des politiques chinoises en matière d’énergie, d’environnement et de santé au cours des 20 dernières années afin de connaître les orientations politiques futures auxquelles le gouvernement n'a pas donné une attention suffisante. Dans les trois chapitres suivants, nous proposons une série d'études empiriques afin de tirer quelques implications politiques utiles. Dans le chapitre 2, nous étudions l'impact de l'urbanisation, de l'adaptation de la structure industrielle, du prix de l'énergie et de l'exportation sur les intensités énergétiques agrégés et désagrégés des provinces. Dans le chapitre 3, nous étudions les facteurs qui expliquent la transition énergétique vers des combustibles propres des ménages ruraux. Dans le chapitre 4, nous examinons les effets conjoints des risques environnementaux, du revenu individuel, des politiques de santé sur l'état de santé des adultes chinois. En particulier, nos résultats empiriques suggèrent d’intégrer le développement urbain dans la stratégie d'économies d'énergie; de considérer des substitutions/complémentarités complexes parmi les sources d'énergie et entre l'énergie et l’alimentation pour les ménages ruraux; d’aligner les politiques environnementales, énergétiques et alimentaires avec les politiques de santé
With the purpose of coping with the intertwined challenges of energy depletion, environmental degradation and public health concerns in the Chinese-specific context in response to sustainable development, we focus on investigating China’s energy, environment and health policies. In chapter 1, we provide an overview of China’s energy, environment and health policies over the past 20 years in order to know about the future policy directions to which the government has not given a sufficient attention. In the following three chapters, we provide a series of empirical studies so as to derive some useful policy implications. In chapter 2, we investigate the impact of urbanization, industrial structure adjustment, energy price and export on provincial aggregate and disaggregate energy intensities. In chapter 3, we study the factors explaining the switches from dirty to clean fuel sources in rural households. In chapter 4, we examine the joint effects of environmental hazards, individual income and health policies on the health status of Chinese adults. Our empirical findings particularly suggest integrating urban development into the strategy of energy saving; considering the complex substitutions/complementarities among energy sources and between energy and food for rural households; aligning the environment, energy and food policies with health policies

La crise alimentaire de 2008 a suscité un regain d'intérêt pour les questions agricoles et de sécurité alimentaire dans les pays en développement. Partant du constat que près de 27% de la population d'Afrique Sub-saharienne souffre de malnutrition, cette thèse a pour objectif de contribuer à une meilleure compréhension des causes complexes de l'insécurité alimentaire. Le premier chapitre étudie les mécanismes de transmission des variations du prix mondial du riz aux prix domestiques dans trois pays ouest-africain: le Sénégal, le Tchad et le Mali. Les résultats indiquent que le prix du riz importé à Dakar et le prix du riz local à Bamako répondent de façon asymétrique aux variations du prix mondial. Le chapitre 2 teste la présence d'obstacles aux échanges agricoles entre pays d'Afrique de l'Ouest et du Centre. Il ressort de l'analyse que le passage des frontières est coûteux. Toutefois, le coût associé au passage de la frontière est plus faible entre pays membre d'une même union économique et monétaire. Le chapitre 3 a pour objectif le renforcement des systèmes d'alertes précoces des crises alimentaires existants au Sahel. Il montre qu'il est possible d'anticiper les crises de prix avec six mois d'avance en analysant les mouvements passés des prix des céréales. Enfin, le chapitre 4 s'intéresse à la vulnérabilité des ménages face aux chocs pluviométriques. Il révèle que les ménages ruraux au Burkina Faso n'ont pas la capacité d'assurer ou d'absorber ces chocs climatiques.

This dissertation investigates the economic behavior of families in developing settings. Utilizing uniquely rich, longitudinal survey data from Indonesia, it demonstrates the complexity of market environments facing rural households, as well as the importance of extended family networks in determining the health and well-being of young children. These essays serve as an illustration of advances in development economics that are possible when fundamental models are revisited and examined with new longitudinal data. The results of these exercises are important not only for updating economic models of behavior, but for what they reveal about the complexities of decision making, and for the effective design and evaluation of development policy around the world.

Dissertation

This study takes a spatial perspective to analyze traditional land-use and production systems in humid tropical environments, with emphasis on the agricultural dimension. The setting is the Pastaza River Basin in the Ecuadorian Amazon and the Achuar and Shiwiar indigenous groups are used to highlight the elements of these systems. This dissertation relies on land use/land cover change and agricultural change theories to analyze indigenous land use systems. The study uses empirical data to examine the linkages between decision making, the demand for land resources, and landscape change. Results suggest that the transition from nomadic-dispersed to permanent-nucleic villages leads to the implementation of a land-use zoning system that responds to changes in resource availability. This system can be represented by a concentric land-use-zones model that depicts an efficient distribution of land resources around service infrastructure such as landing strips, health centers, or schools. Overall, the demand for land resources varies with changes in household composition. At the beginning of the household’s life cycle, the demand for farmed land is relatively low because the family’s food requirements are minimal. As households grow, the demand increases and agriculture expands. As young adults leave the house for any reason, the demand for cultivated land decreases and the extent of agricultural land use contracts. In addition, the demand for land resources is associated with ecological conditions of the habitats in which production occurs and with distance to the community. Areas with good soils have smaller agricultural plots than areas with poor soils. People living in poor-soil environments manage larger fields but produce less food per unit of area than households with good soils. The probability of an area of becoming agriculture increases in sites farther away from existing cultivation fields, service infrastructure, and homes since areas closer to these features have already been used and are recuperating as fallows. Additionally, people are cultivating in areas that are relatively steeper than older agricultural fields. These findings suggest that indigenous people are expanding agriculture into areas with adverse pedologic and topographic conditions, which may be an indication of overall scarcity of land resources for food production.
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This study had two main objectives. The first objective was to determine the factors that influence rural households’ labour allocation and supply decisions for competing livelihood activities, including wetland activities. The second objective was to: develop an ecological-economic model establishing the linkages between the economic and ecological components in a wetland system and apply the model to evaluate the impacts of alternative wetland management and policy regimes on wetland functioning; and supply ecosystem services and economic well-being. To achieve the first objective an agricultural household framework was used. The reduced form labour use and supply equations for wetland products and agricultural grain, derived from optimising the agricultural household model, were estimated jointly using a seemingly unrelated regression model. The model was fitted to data collected from a survey of 143 households in a wetland system in the Limpopo basin of South Africa. Results showed that poor households, most of whom are female-headed households, have less capacity to participate in off-farm employment and rely heavily on farm and wetland activities for their livelihood. This implies that environmental protection policies that limit access to the wetland resources will deepen poverty as the poor will suffer more from deprivation of resources, which play a key role as a livelihoods safety net for the poor. This suggests that in order to enhance the sustainable management of wetlands there is need to identify and promote local level wetland management practices that allow the poor to use wetlands to enhance their economic well-being with minimum adverse effects on wetland ecological conditions instead of adopting strict wetland protection measures. In addition, there is also a need to broaden the opportunities for the poor to diversify into off-farm livelihood activities. This minimises the risks of income fluctuations associated with farm and natural resource-base livelihood sources and therefore provides the necessary positive incentives for wetland conservation and sustainable use. Better access to education is an important instrument for enhancing the poor’s ability to diversify into off-farm livelihood options. These results suggest that wetland conservation and sustainable use has to be integrated with the broader rural poverty reduction initiatives such as: improved access to education; investment in irrigation infrastructure; and improving access to markets. Results also indicate that a household’s exogenous income and wealth status (asset endowment) enhance farm production whilst reducing dependence on wetland products for livelihood. The government should pursue policy measures that reduce rural household liquidity constraints and enhance investment in productive assets (e.g. improving rural household access to credit and off-farm income opportunities) to boost farm production and enhance wetland conservation and sustainable use. To achieve the second objective the study developed a dynamic ecological-economic model. The model is based on the system dynamics framework to capture the multiple interactions and feedback effects between ecological and economic systems. The application of the model in simulating policy scenarios suggests that wetland ecosystem services (crop production and natural resource harvesting) are interlinked with trade-offs involved through their competition for labour, water and land resources. Policy scenario simulation results showed that diversifying livelihoods out of agriculture simultaneously improves economic well-being and enhances wetland conservation. Pure conservation strategies impose significant losses in the economic welfare of the local population unless supported by diversification of livelihood sources. The simulation results also show that the development of a competitive marketing system for harvested biomass products increases returns to wetland biomass products relative to that of wetland grain and it reduces conversion of wetlands to agriculture. Simulation of the predicted reduction in annual precipitation due to climate change in southern Africa showed that climate change is likely to accelerate the conversion of wetlands to agriculture, confirming the important role wetlands play in managing climate variability in smallholder agricultural systems. Government policies that support livelihood diversification into off-farm livelihood opportunities and improve the capacity of the rural poor to adapt to climate change, especially droughts, are critical for wetland conservation and sustainable use.
Thesis (PhD)--University of Pretoria, 2011.
Agricultural Economics, Extension and Rural Development
unrestricted

Economic changes such as rising açaí prices and the availability of off-farm employment are transforming the landscape of the Amazonian várzea, subject to decision-making at the farming household level. Land use change results from complex human-environment interactions which can be addressed by an agent-based model. An agent-based model is a simulation model composed of autonomous interacting entities known as agents, built from the bottom-up. Coupled with cellular automata, which forms the agents’ environment, agent-based models are becoming an important tool of land use science, complementing traditional methods of induction and deduction. The decision-making methods employed by agent-based models in recent years have included optimization, imitation, heuristics, classifier systems and genetic algorithms, among others, but multiple methods have rarely been comparatively analyzed. A modular agent-based model is designed to allow the researcher to substitute alternative decision-making methods. For a smallholder farming community in Marajó Island near Ponta de Pedras, Pará, Brazil, 21 households are simulated over a 40-year period. In three major scenarios of increasing complexity, these households first face an environment where goods sell at a constant price throughout the simulated period and there are no outside employment opportunities. This is followed by a scenario of variable prices based on empirical data. The third scenario combines variable prices with limited employment opportunities, creating multi-sited households as members emigrate. In each scenario, populations of optimizing agents and heuristic agents are analyzed in parallel. While optimizing agents allocate land cells to maximize revenue using linear programming, fast and frugal heuristic agents use decision trees to quickly pare down feasible solutions and probabilistically select between alternatives weighted by expected revenue. Using distributed computing, the model is run through several parameter sweeps and results are recorded to a cenral database. Land use trajectories and sensitivity analyses highlight the relative biases of each decision-making method and illustrate cases where alternative methods lead to significantly divergent outcomes. A hybrid approach is recommended, employing alternative decision-making methods in parallel to illustrate inefficiencies exogenous and endogenous to the decision-maker, or allowing agents to select among multiple methods to mitigate bias and best represent their real-world analogues.

This study aims at investigating household food accessibility categories (food insecure, vulnerable, marginal and food secure) of rural households in Sekhukhune district of Limpopo province. The study is based on five wards in Mamone village in the Limpopo province of South Africa. Ten households from each ward were randomly selected for the study. Structured questionnaires administered by enumerators were used to collect information from household heads. In all 50 household heads constitutes the sample size for the study. Data was collected from 20 August 2007 to 25 August 2007. Responses in the questionnaires were tabulated, coded and processed using Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) programme. Based on comprehensive food security and vulnerability analysis the study showed that over 70 per cent of the sampled households were food insecure. Lack of education, income sources, water source, and infrastructure were some of the important factors contributing to food insecurity. The government should also give special attention to policy measures that guide towards the provision of household assets. It is recommended that special attention be given to measures that will provide the necessary factors that negatively affect household food security and vulnerability.
Agriculture, Animal Health and Human Ecology
M.A. (Human Ecology)