Wiley: Agricultural Economics: Table of Contents

Gamification as an Approach To Enhance Comprehension in Risk Elicitation: Experimental Evidence From Smallholder Farmers

Selina Bruns, Daniel Hermann, Oliver Musshoff — Thu, 04 Jun 2026 10:55:17 -0700

ABSTRACT

Understanding risk attitudes is critical for agricultural development, as risk is ubiquitous in the lives of smallholder farmers. Accurate elicitation of risk attitudes is essential to analyze patterns and biases in decision-making. Ensuring comprehension and attention in risk elicitation tasks is particularly important, as inattentiveness generates noise rather than reliable results. Achieving this remains challenging, especially among smallholder farmers in the Global South, since many sophisticated risk elicitation methods require numerical skills that rural populations often lack due to limited education. To contribute to addressing this problem, we isolate the effects of illustration and gamification in risk elicitation tasks-two elements that may increase attention and engagement, potentially producing lower inconsistencies and more reliable results. We empirically test the Wheel-task, an elicitation method designed to be easy to understand and engaging, to motivate participation. The task follows a wheel-of-fortune model, where a spin determines the payout, while participants can always choose between spinning the wheel and a safe payout. We compare the Wheel-task results to the well-established Holt and Laury task (HL-task) in its original form, as well as with probabilities illustrated using the wheel. We collected the data among smallholder coffee farmers from rural Colombia and Peru and in a pilot phase among smallholder farmers from rural Cambodia. We find low levels of comprehension across all three tasks. More specifically, we find no substantial difference in comprehension or levels of risk aversion when illustrating the probabilities in the HL-task using a wheel. However, gamification affects levels of risk aversion, although these effects appear to be culturally dependent.

Land Consolidation, Tenure Documentation, and Land Rental Markets: Evidence from rural Vietnam

Kim Lan Nguyen — Tue, 02 Jun 2026 23:51:03 -0700

ABSTRACT

Land fragmentation is widely recognized as a constraint on smallholder agriculture, raising production costs, limiting mechanization, and reducing efficiency. Land consolidation programs have been introduced in many countries to address this problem, yet their economic effects depend not only on plot reconfiguration but also on institutional implementation and land market functioning. This paper examines the impacts of Vietnam's state-led land consolidation program using six waves of household panel data (2008–2018) from two provinces where consolidation was implemented. Impacts are estimated with two-way fixed effects and a staggered difference-in-differences approach that accounts for heterogeneous adoption timing. The results show that the consolidation program substantially reduced land fragmentation: the number of plots per household fell by roughly three plots, average plot size increased by about 66 percent, and the distance between plots and homesteads declined by approximately 23 percent. At the same time, administrative delays in reissuing land-use-right certificates temporarily reduced the share of titled and collateral-eligible land. While households’ overall access to credit is not adversely affected, land rental markets are significantly disrupted, with both rent-in and rent-out declining. Such reductions in land transactions may impede efficient land reallocation and operational scale adjustment, thereby delaying investment and productivity gains from improved land structure. Overall, the findings highlight the importance of institutional implementation and complementary market functioning for realizing the benefits of land consolidation in Vietnam and other smallholder economies.

From Meat to Plant‐Based Products? The Enduring Impact of BSE on Beef Consumption

Jader Velásquez, Shon Ferguson — Tue, 02 Jun 2026 02:03:50 -0700

ABSTRACT

This study reassesses the impact of the historical BSE outbreak on EU diets, showing that consumption patterns shifted persistently even after policy actions eliminated the food safety risk. Utilizing advanced difference-in-differences techniques on 1980–2020 data, we demonstrate that while beef consumption exhibited a transient U-shaped recovery relative to other meats, it declined sharply compared to plant-based products, with average reductions of 79%, 29%, and 28% for pulses, cereals, and vegetable oils, respectively. This highlights a structural dietary change, overlooked by previous analyses focused on meat substitution. Results are robust to sensitivity analyses. Understanding the primary drivers behind the structural shift in EU consumer diets over recent decades is crucial for future research investigating the reduction in red meat consumption driven by environmental and health concerns in high-income countries.

Farmland Liquidity Under a Tightened Ownership Regime: Urban–Rural Heterogeneity in South Korea

Jiseon Choi, Gwangseok Chae — Tue, 02 Jun 2026 02:02:47 -0700

ABSTRACT

In real estate markets featuring substantial search friction and strong seller loss aversion, external shocks that shift buyer valuations are largely reflected in liquidity fluctuations, while price adjustments tend to be rigid. This study examines market liquidity shifts following the tightening of South Korean farmland ownership regulations, utilizing the 2021 Farmland Act amendment and nationwide parcel-level transaction data (2013−2023). We estimate the relationships between land liquidity, policy change, and key macro variables (i.e. interest rates) using a monthly county fixed-effects model. We find that the amendment is significantly associated with a 10%−11% reduction in nationwide market liquidity, as measured by the turnover rate. This negative relationship is geographically heterogeneous, being more pronounced in rural areas while statistically insignificant in investment-driven urban areas. Furthermore, our decomposition analysis reveals that the post-enforcement drop in observed market liquidity is mostly associated with rising interest rates. The role of interest rates is more dominant in urbanized areas than rural ones, reflecting the higher concentration of investment-driven buyers and substantial capital requirements for land acquisition in these regions. Our findings demonstrate that the market response to ownership regulation is strongly mediated by local market conditions, highlighting the challenges of enforcing stringent policies in areas with high investment potential.

A Targeting Bonus for More Effective Agri‐Environmental Policy

Matteo Zavalloni, Katherine Simpson, Nick Hanley — Thu, 28 May 2026 11:10:36 -0700

ABSTRACT

Despite significant policy interventions and conservation initiatives, incentives for the conservation of biodiversity have been criticised for being ecologically ineffective and economically inefficient. This paper examines a novel approach to improve the ecological and economic performance of such incentives. Specifically, we analyse the ecological and economic effectiveness of a targeting bonus which establishes a two-part subsidy for changes to land management when the ecological benefits of such changes vary spatially. Using a spatially explicit mathematical programming model applied to an empirical case study in the UK, we show that a targeting bonus has the potential to enhance efficiency, with the magnitude of gains depending on the strength of the spatial correlation between opportunity costs and ecological benefits, as well as the size of the budget and the definition of the targeting zone. We find that the targeting bonus offers major advantages when the most ecologically beneficial land parcels are positively correlated with highest opportunity costs for farmers; and that the additional benefits of the targeting bonus relative to a no-bonus subsidy scheme eventually decline as the share of the bonus is increased.

Production Gaps Among Farmers With Disabilities Are Associated With Limited Technology

Francis Tsiboe, Edward Martey, Jacob Asravor — Sat, 09 May 2026 03:03:12 -0700

ABSTRACT

In sub-Saharan Africa, agriculture is vital; however, the systematic exclusion of persons with disabilities from farming hinders sustainable development and social equity. Although several studies have analyzed productivity differentials across various dimensions of social exclusion, empirical evidence on technology access, farming efficiency, and productivity gaps among farmers with disabilities remains limited. This study addresses this gap by evaluating disparities in crop production between farmers with and without disabilities in Ghana, with a particular focus on differences in technology endowment and production efficiency. Utilizing the meta-stochastic frontier analysis coupled with statistical matching techniques on nationally representative farm-level data from the 2012/13 and 2016/17 agricultural seasons, we find negligible differences in technical efficiency between the two groups (less than 0.5%). However, the productive capacity of the technology sets employed by farmers with disabilities is approximately 11%-point lower than that of their counterparts without disability, resulting in a 9.5%-point shortfall in crop production. This production shortfall is primarily driven by reduced per-hectare use of critical inputs such as planting materials, labor, fertilizer, and agro-chemicals. These findings highlight a significant disability-associated technology access gap that reflects broader structural inequalities. Addressing these disparities is essential for promoting equitable agricultural development while harnessing the full potential of all farmers in Ghana.

Assessing Basis Risk in Margin Insurance for Beef Cattle Farming in Brazil

Beatriz Salandin Dal Pozzo, Vitor Augusto Ozaki — Sat, 09 May 2026 02:58:45 -0700

ABSTRACT

Price volatility in agricultural markets directly affects the financial viability of rural producers, particularly in sectors characterized by narrow profit margins and long production cycles, such as beef cattle production. Futures contracts and agricultural insurance are commonly used to mitigate this risk; however, both instruments are exposed to basis risk, which arises from the divergences between futures and spot prices. This article has two objectives: to estimate the basis risk of futures contracts for fed cattle, feeder cattle, and corn, and to assess the basis risk associated with designing a gross margin insurance product adapted to the Brazilian context. The results show that basis risk for fed cattle and corn contracts was lower in São Paulo (7.51% and 4.85%, respectively) than in Mato Grosso do Sul (11.34% and 5.79%). Using state-level prices as a proxy for feeder cattle futures reduced basis risk in both states, although the São Paulo proxy exhibited higher relative basis risk. The basis risk of the gross margin insurance product was estimated at 31.23% in São Paulo and 32.39% in Mato Grosso do Sul. These findings indicate that incorporating regional price differentials into margin insurance valuation is an effective policy strategy to reduce basis risk, allowing insured margins to better reflect local market conditions without introducing new futures contracts.

Heterogeneous Effects of Weather Shocks and Crop Diversification on Household Food Security. A Gender Dimension

Sat, 09 May 2026 02:55:55 -0700

ABSTRACT

About one-quarter of the global population, that is, approximately 1.8 billion people, with 90% in low- and middle-income countries, face substantial weather-related risks. This paper studies how weather shocks are associated with crop diversification and household food security in Nigeria, with a focus on gendered plot management. We merge historical climate data with the World Bank's Living Standards Measurement Study—Integrated Surveys on Agriculture (LSMS-ISA) to construct rainfall anomaly (z-score) and temperature extreme (Killing Degree Days, KDD) measures, household crop diversification, and household food security indicators. Using a Two-Way Fixed Effects (TWFE) model, we find that both rainfall shocks and extreme temperatures are negatively associated with household dietary diversity, but the relationship is mixed for other food security outcomes. Crop diversification is positively associated with food security under high temperature exposure, but the relationship is mixed under rainfall anomalies. The gender composition of household plot managers does not show a statistically robust moderating role in the aggregate; however, gender differences emerge at certain thresholds of weather exposure. The results highlight the heterogeneity in the crop diversification—food security relationship across weather dimensions.

Issue Information

Sat, 09 May 2026 02:52:41 -0700

Agricultural Economics, Volume 57, Issue 4, July 2026.