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The aim of this empirical analysis is to assess the economic efficiency of Italian farms across provinces, to determine whether production efficiency is correlated with gender differences in farm ownership and the level of European agricultural subsidies received. This study uses a bootstrap-Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) approach to analyse data collected from the Farm Accountancy Data Network. The data show that male-led farms are dominant throughout Italy and are generally more efficient than female-led farms. However, northern region farms are relatively more productive than southern region farms, despite male-led farms being less dominant in the north than in the south. Further, while male-led farms were more predominant in the south, and receive the greatest share of European agricultural assistance per province, they are relatively less efficient. These results imply that refocusing entrepreneurial and financial assistance to northern region farms, with a relatively higher ratio of female-led farming operations, can promote overall Italian agricultural efficiency while also decreasing the gender gap in agricultural efficiency that exists between male-led and female-led Italian farms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study aimed at assessing how farmers' access to agricultural extension is linked to farmers' choice of extension service providers, and the crops and livestock activities engaged in at the farm level. Cross-sectional data were collected from a sample of 342 farming households. Data analyses were conducted using the descriptive statistics and Probit binary regression model. Results show that farmer access to agricultural extension depends on farmer district location, experience, group membership, use of pesticides, crop and livestock production diversity, and information source diversity. Furthermore, results show that gender, marital status, experience credit access, group membership, and livestock production diversity are the main drivers of farmers' choice of service providers for an agricultural extension at the farm level. Lastly, leading determinants of access to agriculture for individual farm enterprises include farmer location (district), gender, marital status, education, experience, land owned, access to credit, group membership, ownership of mobile phones, and market information source diversity. Differentiated targeting of agricultural extension across farmer demographic structures and production objectives is not only influenced by varying factors but also important for ensuring that extension services are responsive for food and cash generation needs of local communities. This study deepens the literature on farmer access to agricultural extension with results demonstrating differences in factors that determine farmers' choice of service providers for agricultural extension and the kind of crop and livestock activities engaged at the farm level. This research is of high value as it presents empirical results on factors associated with the provision of agricultural extension services where there are many providers and where extension services is targeting different agricultural enterprises. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The British East African Protectorate began enticing white settlement to the country in early twentieth century. This article focuses on the white settler identity and experience of a Nordic couple, Bror and Karen Blixen, in colonial East Africa in the 1910s, when they shared ownership of a coffee farm near the Ngong Hills. Baron Bror Blixen-Finecke was related to the Swedish royal family, his wife and future author Karen Blixen a member of a wealthy Danish family, whose money was used to purchase the coffee farm in 1913. This article examines how the Blixens as a Nordic couple fitted in the white settler colonial community and how they related to their African servants, farm workers and neighbours. Furthermore, it discusses the problems Bror Blixen's Swedish nationality caused to the couple during World War I, when the protectorate's Swedes were suspected of harbouring German sympathies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Land ownership has long been argued to enhance farm productivity by improving tenure security. But would this hold for female and male owners alike? The relationship between land ownership and productivity has been investigated relatively little from a gender perspective in most regions, with work on Asia being especially sparse. Even less explored are gender differences in the likelihood of landowners self-cultivating as vs. leasing out their land. This paper uses a unique household-level dataset for nine states of India to first assess gender differences in the likelihood of landowners self-cultivating or renting out their land. It then analyses differences in farm productivity between female and male owners who self-cultivate. The effect of caste disadvantage is also explored. We find that women owners are significantly less likely than male owners to self-cultivate their land. This is linked especially to family labour constraints and regional opportunities. However, among those who do self-cultivate, the annual farm productivity per hectare does not differ significantly by the gender of the owner-cultivator. This holds true with or without controlling for other factors. Caste matters, however: Scheduled Caste owner-cultivators of both genders have significantly lower productivity than upper-caste ones. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The governmental restrictions in the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic led to social isolation, with many people spending more time at home with their pets. The relationships between pet ownership, pet attachment, and wellbeing were examined using two online surveys: one in the early stages of the pandemic (May, 2020) and the other over one year later (September, 2021). Resilience, optimism, and basic psychological need satisfaction (i.e., autonomy, competence, and relatedness) were examined as potential moderators. Study 1 had an international sample of 495 participants (70% pet owners), while study 2 had a UK sample of 243 participants (57% pet owners). Most participants reported that their pets provided emotional comfort and had a positive impact on their lives during the early stages of the pandemic. Pet ownership and pet attachment were positively associated with wellbeing in people with low levels of resilience. Conversely, people with high resilience who were pet owners or had higher pet attachment had lower wellbeing than non-pet owners and those less attached. Optimism and basic psychological need satisfaction were not significant moderators. Although some of the associations found in study 1 might have been specific to the beginning of the pandemic, other results were replicated a year later in the UK sample when social restrictions were eased (study 2). The findings from the two studies suggest that higher scores on a subscale of pet attachment, which involves the pet playing a more central role than humans in the owner's life, might be directly linked to lower resilience and wellbeing and increased loneliness. The combination of high resilience and higher levels of pet attachment or pet ownership might be unfavorable. Nonetheless, pet ownership and healthy human–animal bonds can be protective factors for people with low levels of resilience. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To describe basic husbandry (veterinary care, substrate and bedding, toys, frequency of cleaning) provided to guinea pigs (Cavia porcellus) by a sample of owners in New Zealand. Respondents were invited to complete a survey disseminated through the social media channels of animal interest and advocacy groups (3 September 2020 to 3 November 2020). Respondents who agreed to participate were asked a range of questions regarding the provision of husbandry to their oldest pet guinea pig. Descriptive statistics are reported here relating to husbandry, length of ownership, provision of substrate, bedding and toys, frequency of cleaning and veterinary care. A total of 503 responses were received, of which 329 complete responses were analysed. Of these respondents, 208/329 (63.2%) had owned guinea pigs for more than 2 years. Most owners provided a cage with a wooden base as substrate (144/321, 44.9%), bedding (308/329; 93.6%) and toys (169/329; 51.1%). Half (176/329; 53.5%) of respondents reported taking their guinea pig to a veterinarian. Just over half of the owners surveyed cleaned water (165/329; 50.1%) and food (181/329; 55.0%) bowls daily, and a third picked up droppings (109/329; 33.1%) daily. While owners provided an array of toys, and a range of bedding and substrate types to their guinea pigs, cages were cleaned out less frequently than recommended, and it was common for guinea pig cages to be cleaned out less frequently than recommended. Future research is required to provide robust and evidence-based links between husbandry and the welfare of pet guinea pigs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper maps adoption patterns and determinants of Climate-Smart Agriculture (CSA) technologies. A multivariate analysis approach that combined principal component analysis (PCA) and cluster analysis was employed and findings showed that patterns of CSA varied across household typologies. Resource endowed, experienced farmers have a high use of crop rotation and minimum tillage that require more resources while resource-constrained clusters shunned those. Double hurdle model results showed that adoption of CSA is significantly affected by distance to the tarred road, access to weather information, livestock income share and ownership of transport asset. Adoption intensity is significantly affected by the sex of household head, labour size, frequency of extension contact, credit access, access to weather forecasts, off-farm income, distance to input and output markets, number of traders and asset ownership. The study recommends policies that ensure access to credit and weather forecasts coupled with frequent access to extension services. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article assesses palm oil farmers' succession planning in the Niger Delta Region of Nigeria. A multi-stage procedure was used to select 169 farmers in Delta, Edo, Rivers and Cross River states. Data analysis presents descriptive and inferential statistics. Results further prior research showing most African farmers are male, with women excluded due to economic land inheritance practices. Medium-scale agricultural entrepreneurs operated as sole proprietors. The majority were full-time palm oil farmers, and most chose and engaged their successors. Plantation farm ownership status, farming status, level of formal education, farm size, farming experience, monthly farm income, ownership of palm processing facilities, level of motivation, notably intrinsic motivation to farm, and perceptions of succession planning affected farmers' decision to embark on succession planning. Findings are contextualised in global research literature and recommendations to guide future agriculture policymaking are offered. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Rural towns worldwide are undertaking tourism programs to diversify and revitalize their economies. Despite its natural, cultural, and historical tourist potential, Jordan is not a top agritourism destination. This research examines the possibilities for agritourism in an agricultural village in Jordan that has not yet embraced it. The research investigates what motivates or discourages village farmers from engaging in agritourism and the geographical aspects of this expected agritourism venue. The research method relies on GIS analysis of the case study site to establish its suitability for agritourism development. Farmers were asked about their views and motives for engaging in Al-Baqura’s agritourism development. The GIS study revealed that Al-baqura has the geographical characteristics that identify it as a prospective agritourism destination. The economic, social, and environmental benefits of agritourism motivate the local community to support it. This study reveals that improving demand for local products, promoting cultural interchange and experience possibilities, and enhancing the region’s image, are vital to agritourism’s success. The variance analysis found no statistically significant association between participants’ economic, social, and environmental perspectives of agritourism depending on gender, education level, or farm ownership. Despite the farmers’ eagerness, the town has no agritourism initiative yet. Therefore, the government should offer aid to the local community to promote tourism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Within Norwegian agriculture, combined dairy and beef production has been identified as a major source of greenhouse gas emissions and thus targeted for significant reductions. The article examines the path dependency of the dairy and beef production system in Norway and focuses on identifying lock-ins. The authors used qualitative methods to gather information from stakeholder meetings in Trøndelag and Rogaland counties. They explored the stakeholders' responses to two different visions of agriculture in the future: the improved utilisation of outfields using Norwegian Red cattle and increasing production per animal by using feed concentrates. Six key areas of lock-in were identified: technology investment, culture, feeding strategy, policy, access to new farmland through moorland conversion, and ownership of the climate issue. The findings suggest that the current pathway in agriculture is strongly locked into production orientation through these lock-ins, making a production reduction option difficult to implement. There was also widespread belief among the stakeholders that the system of combined dairy and beef production was a climate-friendly option, suggesting that farmers are not convinced that a change in this direction is required. The authors conclude that the option of reducing production would be difficult to implement without addressing the multiple lock-in effects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Rabies is efficiently controlled through mass vaccination of dogs. In an area of South Africa where free vaccination campaigns were implemented following rabies re-emergence, the required 70% vaccination coverage was challenging to reach. Understanding the factors affecting the efficiency of mass vaccination is helpful in guiding long-term rabies control efforts. This study aimed to assess the communities' knowledge and perceptions of dogs, rabies and the related risk, and control behaviors in a rural rabies-endemic interface area. Combined with informal discussions and participative observations, we organized 18 focus group discussions with men, women, and children – stratified by dog ownership status – in three villages in the Mnisi community in the Mpumalanga Province in north-east South Africa. This community highly valued hunting dogs despite hunting of wildlife being illegal. Although people did not have a clear idea of how dogs acquire rabies, they were aware of the presence of the disease and its zoonotic nature. A dog bite was always associated with rabies risk but was also a source of conflict between dog owners and bite victims, hampering bite health care management. Dog vaccination was perceived as a means to prevent diseases from spreading to humans and other animals, not only to protect dogs from diseases but also to cure disease. Lack of awareness, misinterpretation of health promotion messages, and specific beliefs among adults seemed to hinder participation in rabies vaccination campaigns. Involving and educating staff from clinics and wildlife reserves during vaccination campaigns would tackle rumors, clarify dog bite and dog vaccination procedures, and improve the relationship among stakeholders. Further anthropological studies, focusing on people owning dogs for hunting, may provide a better understanding of rabies transmission patterns and risk factors in this community. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the role of black immigrants in the history of settler colonialism by demonstrating the interstitial positioning of boss boys on white owned farms in Southern Rhodesia, now Zimbabwe. Most of these individuals came as part of earlier settlers and they occupied a strategic position in the entrenchment of settler colonialism as they acted as intermediaries between the coloniser and the colonised. This article is about a black immigrant named Tom Dunuza, personal servant, driver and boss boy to Thomas Murray MacDougall, the pioneer of Triangle Sugar Estates in southeastern Zimbabwe. It makes use of archives and oral narratives of his two descendants, former and current estate workers and residents to capture memories of Tom Dunuza's role in the establishment of the lowveld sugar estates and illuminates our understanding of the complex and ambiguous position that boss boys occupied on early colonial farms. Those whom he supervised remember him as a colonial collaborator. The article demonstrates that through a racialised system of violence and paternalism, the boss boy enforced the oppression and subjugation of workers on early colonial farms. It also shows how changes in farm ownership and management from individual and direct control to corporate and indirect administration influenced the development of a positive image of Dunuza among current workers and residents as new forms of paternalism emerged. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The latest comprehensive research agenda in the I Journal of Agricultural Education and Extension i was published in 2012 (Faure, Desjeux, and Gasselin [20]), and since then there have been quite some developments in terms of biophysical, ecological, climatological, social, political and economic trends that impact farming and the transformation of agriculture and food systems at large as well as new potentially disruptive technologies. What do human and organization/management aspects of farming imply for the professional profile of advisors and development of new sorts of advisors such as "farmer coaches"? " Multifunctional Agriculture Meets Health Care: Applying the Multi-Level Transition Sciences Perspective to Care Farming in the Netherlands." " A Review of Social Science on Digital Agriculture, Smart Farming and Agriculture 4.0: New Contributions and a Future Research Agenda.". [Extracted from the article]

Purpose: This paper examines the attitudes and perceptions of Irish adolescents towards potential careers in dairy farming within the context of generational renewal for a dynamic agri-food sector. Design/methodology/approach: The lens of occupational choice theory was used to present a framework within which potential careers are considered. A questionnaire-survey was undertaken with 490 Irish adolescents (15–18 yrs). Findings: While parents have the greatest influence on the career choices of adolescents, there was a positive correlation between studying agricultural science in school and considering an agricultural related career. Adolescent's attitudes towards careers in dairy farming were subject to perceptions about gender, farm ownership, potential income and work-life balance. There was a high degree of openness to gaining work experience on dairy farms. Practical implications: With an increased interest in agricultural science in second level schools in Ireland, the findings point to opportunities to influence awareness and attitudes of adolescents and their parents about career possibilities in dairy farming and to encourage both familial and non-familiar generational renewal. Theoretical implications: The paper contributes an understanding of career choices and aspirations in adolescence to add to the growing body of literature on generational renewal in farming. Originality/value: This paper focuses specifically on dairy farming, providing more detailed information about adolescents' perceptions of dairy farming careers. The study highlights the positive relationship between studying agricultural science in school and subsequent interest in agricultural related careers. The results indicate that generation renewal in agriculture can be enhanced by giving increased attention to agriculture in school curricula. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: This study explores the use of advisory services by farm managers and its linkages with the economic, environmental and social performance of farms. Design/methodology/approach: Using cluster analysis we determined groups of farms according to their sustainability performance and explored the correlations between contacts with advisory services and a set of farm-level sustainability indicators. Findings: There exist significant differences in the number of farmers' contacts with advisory services across countries, type of farms, farmers' degree of agricultural education, utilized agricultural area, legal type of farm ownership and economic size of the farms. We identified three groups of farms that have different sustainability performance, are different in farm characteristics and relate differently to advisory services. The number of contacts with advisory services is positively related to the adoption of innovations, the number of information sources utilized and the adoption of farm risk management measures. We find no clear linear relationship between advisory services and environmental sustainability. Theoretical implications: This study derives hypotheses to analyze causalities between indicators of farm-level sustainability and advisory services. Practical implications: Results suggest the importance of taking into account the heterogeneity of farming systems for the design, targeting and evaluation of advisory services. In addition, results confirm the importance of selection of indicators that can be used in multiple sites. Originality/value: We used a harmonized indicator of advisory services and a harmonized set of farm-level sustainability indicators in nine different EU countries that could be used to evaluate the role of advisory services in the achievement of multiple objectives in different groups of farms in multiple sites. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This correction notice is for an article titled "Study on financial assessment of rice production causing false smut disease of different varieties at farm level in Kushtia district." The authors of the article are Mahmud, H., Rahman, M. S., Akter, Mst. F., Umara, U., & Hossain, I. The correction involves changes to the sampling design in the Materials and methods section, specifically in the categorization of farm families based on land ownership. The correction also includes a spelling correction for "Kustia," which should be "Kushtia." The article was published in the Archives of Phytopathology and Plant Protection, Volume 56, Number 12, pages 919–941. [Extracted from the article]

While women own 25% of the acres rented out for farming, little has been done in terms of federal policy that focuses on these women. In this policy analysis, we detail how (1) lack of data on these women landowners and (2) the invisibility of these women to federal natural resource and agricultural agency staff contribute to women nonoperating landowners (WNOLs) not being on the federal policy radar. We discuss how the persistence of these factors continues to marginalize WNOLs in federal agricultural policy, despite the mandate of U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) agencies to be serving underserved populations such as WNOLs. Our study findings clearly illustrate a critical point: federal agricultural/conservation agencies are not fulfilling their mandate to reach WNOLs. Using data from USDA Production Regions in the United States, we detail how WNOLs are marginalized and provide specific policy recommendations to allow for intentional inclusion of these women. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: Despite the benefits of early planning for business succession, and plan implementation, many owners/managers fail to act expeditiously. Factors such as a reluctance to accept ageing, a concern over the risks involved and inappropriate objectives may be causative. This research moves towards explaining this reluctance and, consequently, suggesting ways to reduce the problem.Design/approach/methodology: Using the literature outlining the variables associated with succession, a hypothesis using the Theory of Planned Behaviour (TPB) is developed to explain the differences between planned and actual asset transfer (using a structural equation model of the TPB). Data to explore the problem and test the model were obtained from a postal survey of 2300 New Zealand farms (36% response).Findings: The results show manager attitudes related to their personality and objectives are the main causes of reluctance. The financial benefits from successful succession also need determining to provide incentives.Practical applications: Support systems are required to modify farmer attitudes and consequently reduce the reluctance.Originality/value: This work presents one of the first attempts to quantify and systems model (using the TPB) the succession process in a rural setting, and provides clear conclusions on reducing succession reluctance.Theoretical implications: Farming is controlled by humans reinforcing that farm studies must include the personal aspects of the decision-makers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article analyses the property rights that Chinese peasants have under the present Household Responsibility System (HRS) using Antony M. Honoré’s work on ownership, especially his analysis of eleven standard incidents of the full liberal concept of ownership. It confirms Honoré’s insight that these standard incidents can be divided among two or more persons, and thus there are different types of property rights which are variants and alternatives to the liberal type of property rights. This article also confirms that the Chinese land system is a real alternative to the full liberal concept of ownership. The current Chinese land system is alleged to be “unclear and insecure” because it is not the kind of private ownership that neoliberals champion. In the tradition of the “bundle of rights” theory, it is helpful to use Honoré’s concept of ownership, rather than Harold Demsetz’s type of property rights, to understand the current Chinese system. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

A life geography approach is used to analyze the production of social science knowledge regarding Mexican-origin child agricultural workers in south Texas during the early 1940s. The protagonist in this article, Amber Arthun Warburton, worked for the U.S. Children's Bureau during the early 1940s and authored one of many reports analyzing conditions of children in U.S. agriculture. She was the first social scientist to report on labor relations in the Lower Rio Grande Valley of Texas, with particular attention to working and educational conditions of Mexican-origin children. Two aspects of Warburton's unpublished work--her analysis of child labor in terms of Marx's reserve army of labor and her description of living conditions through fieldwork--are examined here. The experience of Amber Warburton suggests how educated women, facing discrimination in academia, navigated personal and bureaucratic challenges while generating social knowledge, offering comparison to experiences of female geographers working outside academia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article will focus on what can be called plantation literature in South African: that is, writing which has as its spatial focus sugar farms or plantations, defined as single units of agricultural production that raise crops for local consumption and export, largely situated on the KwaZulu-Natal coastal belt. The term ‘plantation’ is more commonly used in the Atlantic world but, in common with the sugar plantations in South Africa linked to the Indian Ocean, the communities of such farms in the nineteenth century were characterized by the existence of two sets of people: a wealthy elite of plantation owners and a large, poor population of plantation workers. The descendants of such labourers – in South Africa comprising Indian indentured workers from the subcontinent – together with descendants of ‘passenger’ Indians, have survived to tell the tales of their forefathers and, by extension, their own. The literature that has emerged from this theme,‘plantation literature’, engages with issues of memory, suffering, identity and bearing witness to the past.The 150th anniversary of the arrival of the first indentured Indian labourers in South Africa in 2010 saw a spike in the number of works written by South African Indian writers, with the ‘sugar texts’ prominent among them.A few will be discussed in this article. In particular the work of Aziz Hassim’sRevenge of Kali(2009. Johannesburg: STE Publishers), Rubendra Govender’sSugar Cane Boy(2008. Reservoir Hills: Bambata Publishing), Neelan Govender’sGirrmit Tales(2008. Durban: Rebel Rabble) and Tholsi Mudly’sA Tribute to our Forefathers(2011. Wandsbeck: Reach Publishers) will be studied as examples of engagement with plantation literature by selected South African Indian writers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A model for predicting dominant height growth and site index ofPseudotsuga menziesii(Mirb.) Franco in Spain was constructed. Data from stem analysis of 117 site trees were used. Four dynamic equations using the algebraic difference approach (ADA) and its generalisation (GADA), which have provided good results in previous studies, were evaluated. The model parameters were estimated with the base‑age‑invariant method of dummy variables, which considers both global (common to all sites) and local parameters (specific to each site). A GADA equation based on the Bertalanffy–Richards base model yielded the best results. The model provides polymorphic curves with multiple asymptotes. A base age of 20 years is proposed to reference site index. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The application of the hierarchy of control (HOC) is a well-established approach to hazard reduction in industrial workplaces. However, it has not been generally applied in farm workplaces. The objective was to determine current practices of farmers in the context of a modified HOC, and the effect of these practices on farm injury outcomes. A self-reported mail survey of 1196 Saskatchewan farm operations was conducted in 2013. Selected survey questions were used as proxy measures of the farm owner-operator’s practices relevant to each of the six steps of increasing importance in a modified HOC: (1) hazard identification; (2) risk assessment; (3) personal protection; (4) administrative controls; (5) engineering controls; and (6) elimination of the hazard. Analysis used basic descriptive statistics and logistic regression to examine associations of interest. When four of the six HOC steps were adhered to, there was a significant protective effect: odds ratio (OR) = 0.32 (95% confidence interval [CI]: 0.14–0.74) for any injury and OR = 0.27 (95% CI: 0.07–0.99) for serious injury in the overall study population. For farm owner-operators utilizing four of the six steps in the modified HOC, there was a significant protective effect for any injury (OR = 0.30, 95% CI: 0.11–0.83). Although there is a considerable absence of use of elements of the HOC among farm operators, for farmers who adhere to these steps, there is a significant reduction in their risk for injury. Prevention strategies that embrace the practice of these principles may be effective in the control of farm workplace injury. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article examines why some kinds of households are positioned to take advantage of carbon offset projects that target secondary forest fallow. It does so by assessing the results of two offset projects targeting this land use in the Cabécar Indigenous Reserve, Costa Rica. For one project, it finds that a small group of male landowners have most of the land in fallow; however, the presence of this land use is subsidized by the productivity of female land in cash-crop production. In the second project, payments were targeted toward land in the area's fertile floodplain, and resulted in an exclusion of some households from the area's dominant livelihood activity: cash-crop production. These results demonstrate the difficult trade-offs involved in designing equitable and attractive offset projects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Agricultural landscape sustainability is affected by combinations of agricultural developments and various forms of urbanisation. This paper analyses how public policy, including spatial planning, has responded over time and affected these two drivers which intersect in various ways depending on the regional context and local conditions. Using data from recent Danish studies, the paper shows how a large proportion of farmers perceive their farm more as a living place than as a production place. Most of these farmers are hobby farmers with an urban income who have moved from an urban setting to the rural landscape. As such, these hobby farmers represent a form of urbanisation, usually termed ‘counter-urbanisation’, and they manage the landscape differently to full-time farmers, while they also affect demand for land and thus price levels. Furthermore, long-term and recent developments in public policy as responses to changing agricultural landscapes are analysed and discussed. With a focus on counter-urbanisation, the paper discusses how agricultural policies, environmental policies and spatial planning policies are poorly integrated and—when viewed together—fail to respond to the intersecting dynamics of agricultural developments and urbanisation. The paper proposes a collaborative landscape planning approach to ensure policy integration and to promote agricultural landscape sustainability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Australian farmers navigate their contemporary circumstances through the use of different business and legal arrangements that are shaped by the commercial realities of farming and the aspirations of farm-owning households. In posing the question ‘Family or Enterprise?’, this paper examines the extent to which various household and farm business indicators are associated with different forms of farm ownership, namely sole proprietorships, partnerships, trusts and companies. Results from a postal survey of farm enterprises in Victoria, Australia suggest that both household and enterprise factors contribute to the business structure used, although the strongest determinants appear to be those factors that are less well understood in the rural geographical and sociological literature: household composition, farmer age and farm size. Greater scrutiny of the business instruments deployed by farmers to manage family and enterprise pressures should inform expectations of the fate of family farming in advanced financialised economies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent research on land deals reports gigantic quantities of hectares seized, with relatively little regard for the solidity of the evidence or for considerations of scale other than area. This commentary questions the usefulness of aggregating data of uneven quality and transforming it into ‘facts’. Making claims on the basis of problematic evidence does not serve agrarian and human rights activists well, since it may undercut their legitimacy and make it difficult for them to identify their adversaries. Studying land tenure and corporate ownership is inherently complicated, with intractable legibility problems. Social scientists must subject their sources to critical scrutiny and understand the contexts of their production, preservation and dissemination. An accelerated process of dispossession is clearly in motion, but countering it effectively requires precise and accurate data, which are difficult to obtain. Oversimplified claims may not only undermine efforts to counter specific cases of land grabbing – and claims about land grabbing more generally – but may also divert attention from less publicized cases and from the actors behind the land grabbing. They also tend to reduce land grabbing to a quantitative problem rather than focusing on the social relations that it may or may not transform.This is a much revised and expanded version of a paper presented at the Plenary Session Roundtable on Methodologies: Identifying, Counting and Understanding, International Academic Conference on Global Land Grabbing II, organized by the Land Deals Politics Initiative (LDPI), Cornell University, 17–19 October 2012. I am grateful to Jun Borras, Andrés León, Carlos Oya, Katherine Verdery and this journal's reviewers for comments that contributed to sharpening an earlier draft. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article focuses on the social action group and non-governmental organization GRAIN, which works to support small farmers throughout Africa, Asia and Latin America who struggle for community-controlled and biodiversity-based food systems. The authors explain that GRAIN is working to gather information on the phenomenon of land grabbing and that they compiled a report titled "Seized! The 2008 land grab for food and financial security." The article discusses how land grabbing relates to food security, explores how pension funds are impacting farm ownership, and notes the development of the website www.farmlandgrab.org.

The most recent ‘land rush’ precipitated by the convergent ‘crises’ of fuel, feed and food in 2007–2008 has heightened the debate on the consequences of land investments, with widespread media coverage, policy commentary and civil society engagement. This ‘land rush’ has been accompanied by a ‘literature rush’, with a fast-growing body of reports, articles, tables and books with varied purposes, metrics and methods. Land grabbing, as it is popularly called, is now a hot political topic around the world, discussed amongst the highest circles. This is why getting the facts right is very important and having effective methodologies for doing so is crucial. Several global initiatives have been created to aggregate information on land deals, and to describe their scale, character and distribution. All have contributed to building a bigger (if not always better) picture of the phenomenon, but all have struggled with methodology. ThisJPSForum identifies a profound uncertainty about what it is that is being counted, questions the methods used to collate and aggregate ‘land grabs’, and calls for a second phase of land grab research which abandons the aim of deriving total numbers of hectares in favour of more specific, grounded and transparent methods. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper seeks to unravel the political economy of large-scale land acquisitions in post-Soviet Russia. Russia falls neither in the normal category of ‘investor’ countries, nor in the category of ‘target’ countries. Russia has large ‘land reserves’, since in the 1990s much fertile land was abandoned. We analyse how particular Russia is with regards to the common argument in favour of land acquisitions, namely that land is available, unused or even unpopulated. With rapid economic growth, capital of Russian oligarchs in search of new frontiers, and the 2002 land code allowing land sales, land began to attract investment. Land grabbing expands at a rapid pace and in some cases, it results in dispossession and little or no compensation. This paper describes different land acquisitions strategies and argues that the share-based land rights distribution during the 1990s did not provide security of land tenure to rural dwellers. Emerging rural social movements try to form countervailing powers but with limited success. Rich land owners easily escape the implementation of new laws on controlling underutilized land, while there is a danger that they enable eviction with legal measures of rural dwellers. In this sense Russia appears to be a ‘normal’ case in the land grab debate. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper critically examines theories of accumulation, dispossession and exclusion for analyzing the agrarian transformations that result from contemporary large-scale land acquisitions across the Global South. Building upon Marx's primitive accumulation, Harvey's accumulation by dispossession and Hall et al.'s Powers of Exclusion, conceptual lenses are developed through which to examine how land grabs transform property and social relationships of resource-based production. I examine the concession of 10,000 hectares by the central government of Laos to a Vietnamese corporation for extracting timber and planting rubber in the southern province of Attapeu. This acquisition has excluded farmers from land and resources that constituted their primary sources of (re)production, reconfigured rural property relations, altered the peasant relationship to land and produced new exploitative forms of wage labor. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article examines the causes of the "muddle" that characterizes economic, legal, and business regulation of agricultural land ownership and use in present-day Russia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the land ownership and occupancy of Bastaard farmers in the nineteenth century in South Africa. During this period, landholding of Bastaard farmers declined as a result of growing competition for land in the region along with the changes in the land policy in the colony. Loan farms in the region constituted the principal form of tenure in pastoral districts in the colony.

Some of the largest and most successful family farms in the United States consist of scattered parcels of land. These farms are fragmented because farmers have been enlarging their operations. Farms consisting of separated tracts appear to be increasing in number and in proportion of commercial farm operations. The inability of full-time farm operators to acquire land for expansion near their farms has resulted in a vast patchwork of noncontiguous farm operating units, and in complex patterns of travel by farmers to their scattered fields. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Rural Negroes achieved farm ownership in the southern United States after the Civil War. The number of Negro farm owners has declined substantiaIly from a peak of more than 200,000 around World War I, yet they remain significant in some areas. The small size of Negro farms, and the limited capital of their owners, will make their survival difficult. Many of these landholdings now have greater social value than economic significance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The objectives of this study are to estimate profit inefficiency of farms in the North-West Frontier Province of Pakistan using stochastic frontier and the behavioural profit functions. The derived measure of inefficiency, based on a half-normal distribution of the stochastic error term, is related to socio-economic variables; and of these, the size of holding, fragmentation of land, subsistence needs and the higher age of farmers contribute positively to inefficiency. The behavioural approach satisfies most of the assumptions of the dual profit function and the likelihood ratio test rejects the market efficiency hypothesis. It is also shown that use of manures, labour and fertilizers is below the optimum. Small farms seem to have higher productive efficiency than large farms and, therefore, small farm ownership needs to be encouraged. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim was to estimate the SDR revealed by past decisions by the Farmers Home Administration (FmHA) concerning their farm-ownership programme in New York State. These decisions involved trading off a current loan against a long stream of future farm profits. The ratio of the coefficients to these two variables in a logit equation produced the estimate of the SDR. The main finding was that a very high rate of discount was uncovered, in the range 70-73%. These high rates may be explained by 'individual risk' and the life-cycle context in which the estimates were made. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Examines the mortality rate among male farm owners and operators in New York. Inclusion of diabetes mellitus and asthma in the mortality rate; Increase of morality due to accidents; Application of retrospective cohort approach.