Publications

Changes in global food prices have affected EU producers and consumers and have triggered policy reactions through the EU’s political process. In particular, the EU and member states responded by social policies to protect their consumers, attempts to regulate ‘speculation’ on agricultural commodities, revisions of sustainability requirements for biofuels, international development and food aid, and changes in the EU’s Common Agricultural Policy ...

Improvement of the biosecurity status and decreasing the disease incidence have been associated with improvement of key technical parameters which may produce economic benefits to the farmer. However, a link between the costs of biosecurity implementation and the benefits acquired is lacking. The aim of this study is to estimate the benefits of implementing biosecurity measures after assessment in farrowing-to-finishing pig farms of the ...

The martingale hypothesis for futures prices is investigated using a nonparametric approach where it is assumed that the expected futures returns depend nonparametrically) on a linear combination of predictors. We first collapse the predictors into a single-index variable where the weights are identified up to scale, using the average derivative estimator proposed by Stoker (1986). We then use the Nadaraya-Watson kernel estimator to calculate ...

Direct payments to producers were decoupled since the June 2003 reform of the European Common Agricultural Policy (CAP). Farmers get a single farm payment by activating payment entitlements with eligible area. In Flanders the single farm payment is calculated according the historical model (based on individual entitlements in the reference period 2000–2002). Nowadays the European Commission wants to fine tune the modernized CAP, well known as ...

We propose to use two futures contracts in hedging an agricultural commodity commitment to solve either the standard delta hedge or the roll-over issue. Most current literature on dual-hedge strategies is based on a structured model to reduce roll-over risk and is somehow difficult to apply for agricultural futures contracts. Instead, we propose to apply a regression based model and a naive rules of thumb for dual-hedges which are applicable for ...

Although general economic theory predicts that liberalization has positive effects for agricultural market integration of developing countries, there is on ongoing scientific debate on whether market liberalization policies do yield the expected positive outcomes in developing economies. Arguments used to contradict the theoretical findings are that bottlenecks in infrastructure, poor legislation and public order situations, unpreparedness to ...

Farmers use different information to predict future returns upon which they base current decisions. In designing information systems, knowledge about the information set used by farmers is relevant to have insight into the necessary information that should be made available for farmers. Using quasirational forecasting regression analysis to represent producer price expectation formation, the usefulness of disseminating real time information ...

Agriculture has always been multifunctional in the sense that it has always provided yellow (social care and cohesion), green (environmental and landscape services) and blue services (water management and flood control). The modernization of agriculture, however, has put pressure on this which endangers the ecological sustainability of farming. Moreover, as rural areas are changing from ‘productive’ to ‘consumptive’ areas, people living in rural ...