Dietary habits of Chinese people have transformed drastically over recent years due to rapid economic and income growth, urbanization, and globalization. In response, farmers motivated to enhance their incomes should shift their product mixes to meet these new preferences. If, however, the government prioritizes self-sufficiency for staple foods, farmers' choices will diverge from the income-enhancing outcome. This study thus examines farmer's crop choice rationality in Chinese agriculture via estimation of a stochastic frontier output distance function. The estimated results for allocative efficiencies offer unambiguous evidence that grains excessively are produced relative to vegetables and fruits, a tendency that was particularly noticeable during the time of the Producer Subsidy Program. This program also had a distorting effect on farmers' abilities to make technically efficient choices. These findings lend strong support to the assertion that China's policy goal of grain self-sufficiency is to the detriment of agricultural production in terms of technical and allocative efficiencies.

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Corporate social responsibility (CSR) is playing an increasingly important role in developing countries like Indonesia, where the palm oil industry, in particular, has caused public concern over its possible impacts on the environment. A land reallocation program called NES has been initiated by the Indonesian government with the aim of harmonizing the benefits of palm oil production between the palm oil processing companies and small-scale farmers. This is of particular interest as the CSR activities of the companies could provide an indicator of their attitudes toward a socially acceptable management style. This research aims to find empirical evidence to identify the driving forces behind the CSR activities carried out by palm oil companies in Indonesia. The results of the regression analysis performed on data from a questionnaire survey of large-scale palm oil companies concluded that not only the size of the company but also the performance of the NES scheme and the perception of relationships with local communities are major driving forces that stimulate participation in CSR activities.

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The objective of this study is to evaluate the potential impact of implementation of current land reform policy in Nepal. Using SAM framework, we study the impact of alternative policies of land reform on GDP, households' income, production of different sectors, government revenues, savings, foreign exchange and employment. We found that redistributive reform increases income of poor households and reduces inequality. Productivity augmenting reform has more impact on economy as it increases productivity of all sectors including income of all households keeping inequality unchanged. Furthermore, implementing both reforms simultaneously produce more impact by gaining both equity and efficiency.

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In rural areas of the Ethiopian highlands, tree planting on communal land has been increasing because of active implementation of various sustainable land management projects. Tree planting requires negotiation or coordination among the users of communal land because it may exclude other activities, namely grazing of livestock. This study empirically shows that the transaction costs to reach agreement among land users deter the expansion of tree planting.In other words, tree-planting projects tend to be placed in communities with lower transaction costs. The result implies that tree planting will expand if public policy is directed toward coordinating diversified opinions among community members.

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The purpose of this study is to contribute to the understanding of changing farm sizes under cultural farmland inheritance and transactions, in the context of succession decision. Results show that farmland inheritance strategies, involving the sharing of farmland amongst children, will not change from their parents and this will decrease farm sizes for the following farming households. In the past, farmers could enlarge farm sizes by purchasing farmland, but that shall become more difficult for future generations because of changing economic conditions. Farm training and providing suitable technology for small scale farms of the future is therefore required.

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This paper presents a case study of the business management styles of Australian rice farms using a questionnaire survey of member farms of the "Environmental Champions Program." Specifically, we highlight the competitiveness of Australian farm business management styles as a point of comparison with Japanese farm management. A focus on rice farms enables a comprehensive analysis of farm business management styles, including the capabilities and attitudes of farmers; farm innovation; farm business strategies; and production, marketing, and financial management.

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This research was conducted to explore households' overall perception of risk in pig farming and its relations to households' socioeconomic factors in Vietnam. The results reveal that meat price, epidemic diseases, and production cost are perceived as the most important sources of risk in pig farming. Supports from the government are associated with households' perception of less risk in information, market access and feed quality. Therefore, the government could have an important role to play in encouraging the growth of the pig farming sector by, for example, supporting households in contract farming, establishing information channels, and management market systems.

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This study attempts to analyze long-run and short-run relationships between domestic and international grain prices; and judge whether there was a significant causality relationship between them. The results indicate that international grain prices have a positive effect on the domestic prices, and international prices increased the domestic prices during and after the 2007-2008 grain price-crisis. For causality, in short-run term, for rice in Nicaragua and Tunisia, for wheat in Georgia, Pakistan and Armenia, international prices significantly affected domestic prices; in the long-run, for rice in Dominican, Nicaragua and Tunisia, for wheat in Armenia, Georgia, Mauritania and Pakistan, and for maize in Chad, Guatemala and Nicaragua, domestic prices may be influenced by international prices.

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This paper simulates urbanization under two different water management systems: i) the water parallel pricing system and ii) the water pricing system. The purpose is to discover which water management system is better for agricultural production and household welfare. The main conclusion is that the water pricing system is better than the water parallel system because it will increase the welfare, income and consumption of both urban and rural households. However, under the water pricing system, more water will be reallocated from agricultural sectors to the industrial and service sectors, especially to households; therefore, agricultural outputs will suffer greater losses.

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Wonogiri in Central Java, Indonesia, is an erosion-prone reservoir area. Though cultivation of mountainside slope is an important income source, it is the largest cause of rapid sedimentation in a downstream reservoir. In addition, it may not be a sustainable way of agriculture due to soil loss. For both sustainable regional economy and sustainable use of the reservoir, countermeasures for the upland crop field are being recommended. This research considered preferable development strategies, using estimated input-output data. Comparison of development scenarios implies that promotion of rice sector may be a preferable strategy.

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This paper has analysed data on WWOOF in Japan, and shown how WWOOF activities in Japan have the potential to and are facilitating new social development. This new social development is fourfold. First, in opportunities for new organic food produce markets. Second, that it is social development with a nationwide reach. Third, that it constitutes bottom-up social development, thereby requiring no cost to or dependence on government. Forth, that it constitutes reciprocated voluntary support between disparate groups of people, including that between rural and urban populations of all age groups, involving no monetary exchange.

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This study is aimed to evaluate community empowerment program known as PNPM Mandiri in terms of block grant allocations whether they are proven to impact poverty reduction in Indonesia. It is documented that economic and agriculture allocation play significant role in alleviating poverty as they are deemed as economical investment for rural entities. Another result suggested that transportation, economic, together with agricultural sector have particular relationship as grouped as economic capital that they could not be separated each other which, one treated to be increase, subsequently other sector will tend to increase as well. However, the notion of human capital personified into social, health, and education budget do not show significantly different due to particular reasons comprising elite dominance, poor healthcare delivery, and unequal expenditure of education distribution within family, respectively. The findings is fruitful in order to project more efficient budget allocation either to diversify variety of PNPM program to fasten and optimize poverty eradication

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The objective of this study is to understand the development of organic farmers' cooperatives in East China by exploring the introduction of an organic agriculture specialized farmers' cooperative in Jurong City, Jiangsu Province. This case study indicates that, with strong leadership and well-organized management, small farmers in China are able to become involved in organic farming. Deficiencies in sales capabilities and management personnel seem to be the primary difficulties currently faced by these small farmers. In addition, focus should also be placed on quality control during the expansion of organic farming in China.

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