Marketing and production contracts covered 39% of the value of U.S. agricultural production in 2008, up from 36% in 2001, and a substantial increase over 28% in 1991 and 11% in 1969. However, aggregate contract use has stabilized in recent years and no longer suggests a strong trend. Contracts between farmers and their buyers are reached prior to harvest (or before the completion stage for livestock) and govern the terms under which products are transferred from the farm. Contracts are far more likely to be used on large farms than on small farms. Production contracts are used widely in livestock production, while marketing contracts are important to the production of many crops. Charts and tables. This is a print on demand report.
Wracked by poverty, famine, and drought, Africa is typically represented as agriculturally stagnant, backward, and crisis-prone. Living Under Contract, however, highlights the dynamic, changing character of sub-Saharan agrarian systems by focusing on contract farming. A relatively new and increasingly widespread way of organizing peasant agriculture, contract farming promotes production of a wide variety of crops--from flowers to cocoa, from fresh vegetables to rice--under contract to agribusinesses, exporters, and processers. The proliferation of African growers producing under contract is in fact part of broader changes in the global agro-food system. In this examination of agricultural restructuring and its effect upon various African societies, editors Peter Little and Michael Watts bring together anthropologists, economists, geographers, political scientists, and sociologists to explore the origins, forms, and consequences of contract production in several African countries, particularly Kenya, the Gambia, Zimbabwe, and the Ivory Coast. Documenting how contract production links farmers, agribusiness, and the state, the contributors examine problematic aspects of this method of agrarian reform. Their case studies, based on long-term field work and analysis on the village and household level, chart the complex effects of contract production on the organization of work and the labor process, rural inequality, gender relations, labor markets, local accumulation strategies, and regional development. Living Under Contract reveals that contract farming represents a distinctive form in which African growers are incorporated into national and world markets. Contract production, which has been a central feature of the agricultural landscape in the advanced capitalist states, is an emerging strategy for "capturing peasants" and for confronting the agrarian question in the late twentieth century.
This Handbook offers an up-to-date collection of research on agricultural economics. Drawing together scholarship from experts at the top of their profession and from around the world, this collection provides new insights into the area of agricultural economics. The Routledge Handbook of Agricultural Economics explores a broad variety of topics including welfare economics, econometrics, agribusiness, and consumer economics. This wide range reflects the way in which agricultural economics encompasses a large sector of any economy, and the chapters present both an introduction to the subjects as well as the methodology, statistical background, and operations research techniques needed to solve practical economic problems. In addition, food economics is given a special focus in the Handbook due to the recent emphasis on health and feeding the world population a quality diet. Furthermore, through examining these diverse topics, the authors seek to provide some indication of the direction of research in these areas and where future research endeavors may be productive. Acting as a comprehensive, up-to-date, and definitive work of reference, this Handbook will be of use to researchers, faculty, and graduate students looking to deepen their understanding of agricultural economics, agribusiness, and applied economics, and the interrelationship of those areas.
In its second volume, this book aims to link the academic research with development in the real world and provide a historical and institutional background that can enrich more formal research. The first section will include an assessment of the evolution and the state of the nascent second-generation biofuel as well as a perspective on the evolution of corn ethanol and sugarcane ethanol in Brazil. It will also include a historical and institutional background on the biofuel industry in Brazil that has global lessons, and later, provide a technical overview of major analytical tools used to assess the economic, land use and greenhouse gas implications of biofuel policies at a regional and global level. Additionally, the book analyzes the various drivers for land use change both at a micro-economic level and at a macro-economic level. It presents studies that apply regional and global economic models to examine the effects of biofuel policies in the US, EU and Brazil on regional and global land use, on food and fuel prices and greenhouse gas emissions. These papers illustrate the use of partial and general equilibrium modeling approaches to simulate the effects of various biofuel policies, and includes studies showing the effects of risk aversion, time preferences and liquidity constraints on farmers decision to grow energy crops for biofuel production. By presenting the tools of lifecycle analysis for assessing the direct greenhouse gas intensity of biofuels, this handbook investigates the types of indirect or market mediated effects that can offset or strengthen these direct effects. It will include tools to assess the direct and indirect effects of biofuel production on greenhouse gas emissions in the US and Brazil, and ultimately provide a comprehensive background to understand the state of biofuel in the present and how to analyze their implication.
This book answers the questions: What is happening to American agriculture, and why? Steven C. Blank uses portfolio theory to analyze both macro- and microeconomic data that paints a clear picture of the trends in agriculture, and explains why these trends are consistent with market evolution and global economic development. He clarifies agriculture's specific role in economic development with a focus on the current and future globalizing commodity markets.The book features empirical research that demonstrates the link between farm-level investment decisions and regional and national economic trends. It shows how the dynamic environment of industrialization and globalization of agriculture is part of a continuing development that is driven by technological innovation. This all points to a future with a very different agricultural production sector and some extremely important policy choices that will face the entire country.
Commodity Risk Management goes beyond just an introductory treatment of derivative securities, dealing with more advanced topics and approaching the subject matter from a unique perspective. At its core lies the concept that commodity risk management decisions require an in-depth understanding of speculative strategies, and vice versa. The book offers readers a unified treatment of important concepts and techniques that are useful in applying derivative securities in the management of risk in commodity markets. While some of these techniques are well known and fairly common, Poitras offers applications to specific situations and links to speculative trading strategies - extensions of the material that not only are hard to come by, but helpful to both the academic and the practitioner. The book is divided into three parts. The first part deals with the general framework for commodity risk management, the second part focuses on the use of derivative security contracts in commodity risk management, and the third part deals with applications to three specific situations. As a textbook, this book is designed to appeal to classes at a senior undergraduate/MBA/MA levelof training in Finance, financial economics, actuarial science, management science, agriculturaleconomics and accounting. There will also be interest for the book as: a monograph for research libraries, a handbook for individuals working in the commodity risk management industry, and a guidebook for those in the general public interested in topics like farm risk management or the assessment of hedging practices of publicly-traded commodity producers.
Encyclopedia of Agriculture and Food Systems, Second Edition, Five Volume Set addresses important issues by examining topics of global agriculture and food systems that are key to understanding the challenges we face. Questions it addresses include: Will we be able to produce enough food to meet the increasing dietary needs and wants of the additional two billion people expected to inhabit our planet by 2050? Will we be able to meet the need for so much more food while simultaneously reducing adverse environmental effects of today’s agriculture practices? Will we be able to produce the additional food using less land and water than we use now? These are among the most important challenges that face our planet in the coming decades. The broad themes of food systems and people, agriculture and the environment, the science of agriculture, agricultural products, and agricultural production systems are covered in more than 200 separate chapters of this work. The book provides information that serves as the foundation for discussion of the food and environment challenges of the world. An international group of highly respected authors addresses these issues from a global perspective and provides the background, references, and linkages for further exploration of each of topics of this comprehensive work. Addresses important challenges of sustainability and efficiency from a global perspective. Takes a detailed look at the important issues affecting the agricultural and food industries today. Full colour throughout.
Winner, American Sociological Association Section on Environment and Technology Allan Schnaiberg Outstanding Publication Award The world currently faces several severe social and environmental crises, including economic under-development, widespread poverty and hunger, lack of safe drinking water for one-sixth of the world’s population, deforestation, rapidly increasing levels of pollution and waste, dramatic declines in soil fertility and biodiversity, and global warming. Inequality, Democracy, and the Environment sheds light on the structural causes of these and other social and environmental crises, highlighting in particular the key role that elite-controlled organizations, institutions, and networks play in creating these crises. Liam Downey focuses on four topics—globalization, agriculture, mining, and U.S. energy and military policy—to show how organizational and institutional inequality and elite-controlled organizational networks produce environmental degradation and social harm. He focuses on key institutions like the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, the U.S. Military and the World Trade Organization to show how specific policies are conceived and enacted in order to further elite goals. Ultimately, Downey lays out a path for environmental social scientists and environmentalists to better understand and help solve the world’s myriad social and environmental crises. Inequality, Democracy and the Environment presents a passionate exposé of the true role inequality, undemocratic institutions and organizational power play in harming people and the environment.
