Risk and agricultural systems in northern Côte d'Ivoire.

Farming systems research is a multi-disciplinary holistic approach to solve the problems of small farms. Small and marginal farmers are the core of the Indian rural economy constituting 0·80 of the total farming community but possessing only 0·36 of the total operational land. The declining trend of per capita land availability poses a serious challenge to the sustainability and profitability of farming. Under such conditions, it is appropriate to integrate land-based enterprises such as dairy, fishery, poultry, duckery, apiary, field and horticultural cropping within the farm, with the objective of generating adequate income and employment for these small and marginal farmers under a set of farm constraints and varying levels of resource availability and opportunity. The integration of different farm enterprises can be achieved with the help of a linear programming model. For the current review, integrated farming systems models were developed, by way of illustration, for the marginal, small, medium and large farms of eastern India using linear programming. Risk analyses were carried out for different levels of income and enterprise combinations. The fishery enterprise was shown to be less risk-prone whereas the crop enterprise involved greater risk. In general, the degree of risk increased with the increasing level of income. With increase in farm income and risk level, the resource use efficiency increased. Medium and large farms proved to be more profitable than small and marginal farms with higher level of resource use efficiency and return per Indian rupee (Rs) invested. Among the different enterprises of integrated farming systems, a chain of interaction and resource flow was observed. In order to make farming profitable and improve resource use efficiency at the farm level, the synergy among interacting components of farming systems should be exploited. In the process of technology generation, transfer and other developmental efforts at the farm level (contrary to the discipline and commodity-based approaches which have a tendency to be piecemeal and in isolation), it is desirable to place a whole-farm scenario before the farmers to enhance their farm income, thereby motivating them towards more efficient and sustainable farming.

https://www.cambridge.org/core/services/aop-cambridge-core/content/view/S0021859608007995

Farming systems methodology for efficient resource management at the farm level: a review from an Indian perspective

The increased demand for energy and other resources in global markets, particularly arising from the rapidly developing economies of China and India, has resulted in considerable turbulence in resource prices, and most obviously that of oil. The recent magnitude of change, both positive and negative, in resource prices and their macroeconomic implications is of considerable contemporary importance for both resource importing and exporting economies. For a resource exporting economy, such as that of Australia, the resource price boom had a number of beneficial effects: increased government taxation revenues, increased employment and higher wages in the resource and resource related sectors, increased spending in the domestic economy and buoyant economic growth, increased resource exports to the booming economies of China and India and a stronger domestic currency with beneficial effects upon inflation. On the other hand these developments are likely to have adverse effects on the non resource sector that is subject to more competition for limited resources, a stronger exchange rate results in a loss of international competitiveness and reduced exports, a loss of employment in the non resource sector which is likely to be more labour intensive, and an eventual slow down in the overall economy. These positive and negative effects, and the overall impact of a resource price boom, will fundamentally require closer analysis of the structure of the economy under scrutiny. In this context the policy response by government is likely to be crucial in producing overall positive effects. The objective of this paper is to provide an analytical framework that can be utilised for a resource exporting economy for this purpose. This paper develops a dynamic macroeconomic model for a resource producing and exporting economy, with the objective of capturing key macroeconomic outcomes arising from an increase in the price of the resource. The adjustment process in the model emphasises a spending (or wealth) effect, an income effect, a revenue effect, a current account effect and an exchange rate effect from

http://www.ensani.ir/storage/Files/20101129075107-p0586300010051-3ZR6YS.pdf

Resource Price Turbulence and Macroeconomic Adjustment for a Resource Exporter

Land-use (farm) planning is a highly complex and dynamic process. A land-use plan can be optimal at one point in time, but its currency can change quickly due to the dynamic nature of the variables driving the land-use decision-making process. These include external drivers such as weather and produce markets, that also interact with the biophysical interactions and management activities of crop production. The active environment of an annual farm planning process can be envisioned as being cone-like. At the beginning of the sowing year, the number of options open to the manager is huge, although uncertainty is high due to the inability to foresee future weather and market conditions. As the production year reveals itself, the uncertainties around weather and markets become more certain, as does the impact of weather and management activities on future production levels. This restricts the number of alternative management options available to the farm manager. Moreover, every decision made, such as crop type sown in a paddock, will constrains the range of management activities possible in that paddock for the rest of the growing season. This research has developed a prototype Land-use Decision Support System (LUDSS) to aid farm managers in their tactical farm management decision making. The prototype applies an innovative approach that mimics the way in which a farm manager and/or consultant would search for optimal solutions at a whole-farm level. This model captured the range of possible management activities available to the manager and the impact that both external (to the farm) and internal drivers have on crop production and the environment. It also captured the risk and uncertainty found in the decision space. The developed prototype is based on a Multiple Objective Decision-making (MODM) á Posteriori approach incorporating an Exhaustive Search method. The objective set used for the model is: maximising profit and minimising environmental impact. Pareto optimisation theory was chosen as the method to select the optimal solution and a Monte Carlo simulator is integrated into the prototype to incorporate the dynamic nature of the farm decision making process. The prototype has a user-

Developing collaborative planning support tools for optimised farming in Western Australia: a methodology.

https://ro.uow.edu.au/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1774&context=commpapers

Resource price turbulence and macroeconomic adjustment for a resource exporter: a conceptual framework for policy analysis

An application of Target MOTAD Model to crop production in Zambia: Gwembe Valley as a case study

The paper is an extension to another paper recently published in this same journal by Harvie (1990a). In that paper he developed a simple model to try to identify the possible macroeconomic adjustment processes arising in an economy experiencing a temporary period of oil production, under alternative wage adjustment assumptions, namely nominal and real wage rigidity. Certain assumptions were made regarding the characteristics of actual oil production, the permanent revenues generated from that oil production, and the net exports/imports of oil. The role of the price of oil, and possible changes in that price, was essentially ignored, which was equivalent there to setting it to a value of zero. Hence Harvie (1990a) was effectively concerned with analysing the economic effects arising from the production of oil alone.



Here we attempt to overcome this deficiency by incorporating the price of oil, as well as changes in that price, in conjunction with the production of oil, the objective being to identify the contribution which the price of oil, and changes in it, make to the adjustment process itself.



As in Harvie (1990a), the emphasis in this paper is not given to a mathematical derivation and analysis of the model's dynamics of adjustment or its comparative statics. But rather to the derivation of simulation results from the model, for a specific assumed case, using a numerical algorithm program, conducive to the type of theoretical framework utilized here.



The results presented suggest that although the adjustment profiles of the macroeconomic variables of interest, for either wage adjustment assumption, remain fundamentally the same, the magnitude of these adjustments is increased. Hence, to derive a more accurate picture of the dimensions of adjustment of these macroeconomic variables, it is essential to include the price of oil as well as changes in that price.

Phiri T. Maleka

Papers

An application of Target MOTAD Model to crop production in Zambia: Gwembe Valley as a case study

Oil production, oil prices, and macroeconomic adjustment under different wage assumptions