Suchergebnisse

A unique aspect of agricultural production as a biological process is that it is basically conditioned by natural environments. Agricultural technology is so developed as to be efficient in the given environmental conditions in addition to being consistent with relative factor and product prices. In consequence, there is a tendency for agricultural technology to become location-specific, and its direct transfer is limited within a small area of similar environmental conditions.

This study challenges the traditional image of peasants in developing economies as always passive to market forces. In this study of marketing upland crops in Indonesia the authors demonstrate active peasant participation and entrepreneurship in commercial and industrial activities. The peasant marketing system not only works as an effective bridge between farm producers and consumers but also produces significant employment and income in the rural sector. The Indonesian case suggests a genuine possibility of rural-based economic development in the third world.

The story of agricultural policy in Northeast Asia over the past 50 years illustrates the dramatic changes that can occur in distortions to agricultural incentives faced by producers and consumers at different stages of economic development. In this study of Japan, the Republic of Korea (the southern part of the peninsula, hereafter referred to as Korea) and the island of Taiwan, China (hereafter referred to as Taiwan), the authors estimate the degree of distortions for key agricultural products as well as for the agricultural sector as a whole over a period when these economies transitioned from low- or middle- to high-income status the beginning of the so-called East Asian economic miracle of dramatic industrial development. The three economies in terms of the nature of their economies, including their resource endowments that determined the course of their modern economic growth and development. The evolution of agricultural policies in the three economies is then reviewed before discussing how to measure distortions to agricultural incentives using the methodology from Anderson et al. (2008), the focus of which is on nominal and relative rates of assistance. Implications of empirical findings for policy reforms in the three economies are discussed in the final section, where the authors also identify lessons for later-developing economies experiencing similar structural transformations in the course of their economic growth. Statistical observations are found to be consistent with the hypothesis that the success of rapid industrialization that advanced these economies to the middle-income stage resulted in declines in agriculture's comparative advantage associated with the growing income disparity between farmers and employees in non-agricultural sectors.

The authors explore the conditions under which a certain contract is preferred to others, through an intensive survey of an upland village in West Java. Despite an obvious difficulty in enforcing the terms of a share contract in a highly complex intercropping system, no significant difference in allocative efficiency was found between share tenancy and other forms of land tenure. (DÜI-Sen)