Using the longitudinal data on one rice village in the Philippines that were collected from recurrent household surveys in the past three decades, changes in agricultural productivity and production structure corresponding to the development and diffusion of modern high-yielding varieties of rice were fully documented. The micro village history shows how quickly the potential of new rice technology was exploited within about a decade and half since the release of IR8, the first modern rice variety from the International Rice Research Institute, and was exhausted thereafter.

This paper summarizes and extends the results of seven-country projects conducted in Ghana, Uganda, Malawi, Sumatra (Indonesia), Vietnam, Nepal, and Japan on the land tenure institutions and the management of forest, agroforest, and cropland. It is found that traditional or customary land tenure institutions possess no built-in mechanisms to prevent deforestation. They have evolved, however, from communal ownership to individualized ownership so as to provide proper incentives to induce commercial tree planting and the management of tree fields (or agroforestry). It is also found that common property system is efficient for the management of forests producing minor products such as firewood, whereas more individualized system is more efficient for the management of timber forests.

This research analyzes the evolution of rice supply responsiveness in the U.S. for the past three and a half decades using an implicit revenue function approach. Detailed government program provisions were incorporated into supply function estimates for each of four different periods. Although conventional wisdom maintains that the rice supply response is inelastic, the results of this research indicate that the supply curve has not only shifted outward but flattened, becoming more price-responsive in conjunction with lower market prices, over time. Accordingly, a demand shock may result in less fluctuation in market prices, implying that world market prices are becoming more stable over time and that exporters have to face more competition.