Publications

The global farming conditions have gone profound mutations that steadily increased vulnerability among smallholder farmers. As consequence, rural households have set mechanisms of livelihood adaptation in order to preserve consumption requirements and secure the family living. They define livelihood through a complex system and interactions, taking place across scales that lead to emergent properties and self-regulatory mechanisms. This paper ...

Purpose: This paper aims to explore the connectivity between social media use, access to migrant networks, information asymmetry and migration intentions.Design/methodology/approach: The study was conducted using data from individuals living in Nigeria and analysed with a generalized structural equation model, which is rare for this kind of research.Findings: The authors find a dual mediating role of the social media and the migrant networks in ...

White maize in South Africa is the only staple crop produced on a widespread commercial basis for direct human consumption using genetically modified (GM) cultivars. Using a combined economic and environmental approach, we estimate the total welfare benefits attributable to GM white maize in South Africa for 2001-2018 are $694.7 million. Food security benefits attributable to GM white maize in South Africa also manifest through an average of 4.6 ...

In this paper, we search to link changes in non-farm employment and agricultural mechanization to the emergence of large-scale farming in China. Based on county-level data for the Jiangsu Province from 2002 to 2016, we use spatial panel data techniques to understand how the increase in large-scale farming in one county is explained by changes in employment and mechanization in the county itself as well as by changes in the neighboring counties. ...

The wide array of services provided by agricultural cooperatives for their members is often not considered in academic studies. Addressing this gap in the literature, our paper explores the wide array of services provided by agricultural cooperatives and how these extend beyond those they were initially intended to provide. We study the extent and characteristics of service portfolios from 511 agricultural cooperatives in the Tigray region of ...

Food choices are key in communicating religious identities and marking religious boundaries. Whereas the literature has focused on religion's impact on food habits, the effect of religion on food market exchanges remains largely unexplored. Using the Ethiopian milk market as a case study, we conduct a series of innovative experimental choice tasks with urban dairy consumers to elicit their preferences for milk seller characteristics. In the ...

How to get workplace social dialogue started at the bottom of Global Value Chains remains a difficult question. Drawing from institutional work literature, we investigate how local unions, supplier and buyer worked together to start the process of social dialogue in the anti-union context of pineapple plantations in Costa Rica. The process unfolds along four phases each involving specific sets of institutional work. The study highlights the ...

Plantation workers have seemingly little opportunities for labour agency, defined as the worker's ability to act and improve their conditions. In response to a call for a better understanding of the horizontal dimension shaping labour agency, this article questions what local factors determine the worker's ability to act by analysing the institutional constraints embedded in the national context through a mixed methods approach. A combination of ...

Using sustainable agriculture practices has various economic, social and environmental benefits. Determining the attitude of farmers toward risk is an important first step in understanding their behaviour and coping strategies to mitigate environmental risks. This paper investigates the dual impacts of some agricultural practices on agricultural yields and farmers' livelihoods considering sustainable farmland. Cross-sectional data is collected ...

The emerging large-scale production units (LSPUs) have become increasingly important in Chinese agricultural production and rural transformation due to rapid industrialization and urbanization. Based on household and plot-level data from Jiangsu and Jiangxi Provinces in China, this study provides insights into the farming systems of these LSPUs and examines how contract type, as a proxy for land tenure security, impacts on the production unit's ...