This paper presents an empirical analysis of the impact of climate change on agriculture in a typical developing country. The economic implications of climate change are estimated by using both a farm productivity and a Ricardian framework.

In a mixed farming system in which farmyard manure (FYM) is considered an important multipurpose renewable resource that can be used to enhance soil organic matter, provide additional income and supply household energy, soil fertility depletion could take place within the perspective of the household allocation pattern of FYM. This paper estimates a system of FYM allocation regressions to examine the role of returns to FYM and farmers’ impatience on the propensity to allocate FYM to different uses.

Using the land tenure system in Ethiopia, where all land is state-owned and only farm households have usufruct rights, as a case study, we assessed the links between land owners’ tenure insecurity, associated behavioral factors, and contract length. In this paper, we analyze these links with survey data of rural households in the Amhara National Regional State of Ethiopia.

The new fertilizer subsidies in sub-Saharan Africa are intended to increase agricultural production and ensure development of a fertilizer market. Fertilizer adoption requires complementary inputs, such as investment in soil and water conservation (SWC), for efficient and optimal nutrient uptake, and many fertilizer subsidy programs implicitly assume that fertilizer subsidies crowd in such investments.

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to investigate whether community-based wildlife conservation can potentially be added in rural farmers’ investment portfolio to diversify and consequently reduce agricultural risk.

Design/methodology/approach – The correlation coefficient is computed from national data on the rates of return on agricultural production and wildlife conservation, to find out whether wildlife conservation is a feasible hedge asset.