Journal: American Journal of Agricultural Economics

Abbreviation

Am. J. Agric. Econ.

Publisher

Wiley

Journal Volumes

ISSN

0002-9092
1467-8276

Description

Filters

2022 - 20254
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Publications 1 - 4 of 4
  • Farmer behavior toward herbicide‐free agriculture and conservation tillage
    Item type: Journal Article
    Garcia, Viviana; Möhring, Niklas; Wang, Yanbing; et al. (2025)
    American Journal of Agricultural Economics
    Balancing conflicting policy goals is a key challenge in the transition to sustainable agricultural systems. An important example is herbicide use reduction potentially conflicting with conservation tillage—which often strongly relies on herbicide use. We investigate the joint uptake of two agri-environmental schemes, conservation tillage and herbicide-free agriculture systems. To this end, we use a combination of detailed survey data on farmer behavior, environmental and agronomic data, and census data on the complete population of all farmers from Switzerland. Findings based on a multinomial logit and fixed effects multinomial logit indicate that, conditional on observable factors, the systems are not complementary, but joint adoption occurs for 35% of farmers. Behavioral factors explain 26% of joint adoption behavior, emphasizing the role of risk taking, openness to innovation, and biodiversity valuations in farmers' decisions. Our analysis provides broader implications for assessing and navigating conflicting sustainability goals in agriculture globally.
  • Productivity dispersion and persistence in European agriculture
    Item type: Journal Article
    Wimmer, Stefan; Finger, Robert (2025)
    American Journal of Agricultural Economics
    Improving and maintaining agricultural productivity, which is pivotal to deliver private and public goods, is challenged by increasingly uncertain market and environmental conditions. Understanding differences in productivity among farms and its persistence over time helps assess the vulnerability of agricultural production to these external shocks. In this paper, we study productivity dispersion for European agriculture, assess the importance of different productivity components such as technical efficiency and environmental components, and investigate the persistence of productivity and its components over time. We measure total factor productivity based on a stochastic production frontier model applied to accountancy data from more than 100,000 farms and 26 European countries over the period 2004–2018 (N = 740,256). The results reveal a substantial dispersion in total factor productivity, even within the individual countries and farm types. Environmental factors play important roles in explaining these differences. Productivity persistence is high overall, but varies across farm types; for example, it is lowest for granivore farms and higher for mixed farms. We find that productivity persistence is slightly increasing over time, pointing toward improvements in the resilience of European farming systems during the considered period.
  • Farm‐level responses to weather trends: A structural model
    Item type: Journal Article
    Wimmer, Stefan; Stetter, Christian; Schmitt, Jonas; et al. (2024)
    American Journal of Agricultural Economics
    Assessing the effects of weather and climate on agricultural production is crucial for designing policies related to climate change adaptation and mitigation. A large body of literature has identified the detrimental effects of climate change on crop yields worldwide, and farm-level adaptation has been shown to mitigate the adverse effects on agricultural production. In this study, we employ a structural model to examine farm production responses to ongoing weather trends. We investigate how farmers adjust output and input decisions by estimating a system of output supply and input demand functions, controlling for nonrandom crop selection. Using panel data with 14,796 observations reflecting 1638 German crop farms (1996–2019), we find that both the expected and realized weather determine farmers' production decisions. In the event of a drought, the supply of most considered crops and the demand for fertilizer decrease. The drought shock has also lasting effects on farmers' production decisions, with a reduced supply of protein crops and an increased level of root crops production in subsequent years. These findings highlight the need to account for farm-level production responses when assessing weather and climate impacts.
  • Comparing effectiveness and return on investment of action- and results-based agri-environmental payments in Switzerland
    Item type: Journal Article
    Wüpper, David Johannes; Huber, Robert (2022)
    American Journal of Agricultural Economics
    Agri-environmental schemes are an important policy tool to foster agricultural sustainability. We assess the effectiveness and return on investment of two different schemes designed to encourage biodiversity conservation in Switzerland: payments for actions and payments for results. Empirically, we exploit a major policy reform that created a natural experiment by abruptly and unevenly increasing both payments across farmers. Using difference in differences, we estimate the effect of the policy reform on farmers for whom only the action- or the results-based payments increased, as well as on those for whom both increased, compared to farmers for whom neither increased. Our findings are fourfold: First, higher payments increased the biodiversity conservation area. A payment raise by 1% increased conservation areas on average by 0.6% in the action based, and by 1% in the results-based scheme. Second, the combination of both schemes increased average effectiveness but also windfall gains. Third, using a benefit transfer approach, we estimate a positive return of investment for all payment increases. Finally, the estimated return on investment for the results-based payments is higher than for the action-based payments.
Publications 1 - 4 of 4