Agricultural Production Risk Research Articles

Sustainable Management of Environmental Risks in Agricultural Production: Ensuring the Right to Food

Abstract The current research is about the sustainable management of environmental risks in agricultural production to ensure the right to food. In a globalized world, agricultural production is determined by external economic, environmental, social, legal, and political factors, as well as internal factors depending on each State’s conditions. Environmental risk factors, particularly, the growing climate change and its negative effects or the occurrence of a global pandemic, restrict agricultural industry development and create uncertainty in guaranteeing people’s right to food. Agricultural production is the first right to food material guarantee. Ensuring agricultural production is ensuring people’s right to food, their food security or at least the minimum necessary to avoid hunger. The aim is to systematize environmental risks sustainable management concepts and characteristics applied in agricultural production to guarantee the right to food. The environmental risk’s sustainable management entails an efficient use of financial and economic resources in agricultural production to prevent or reduce the environmental risk identified impact. The research establishes some general points of environmental risks sustainable management in agricultural production to guarantee the right to adequate food. The following research methods and techniques were selected: the theoretical-legal and document analysis.

Yields variability as a determinant of production risk in agriculture

Agricultural activity is exposed to a number of adverse external factors known as production risks, which affect the quantity and value of production. One of the measures of production risk assessment in crops production is yields variability. The aim of the study is to determine the scope of the variability of the yields of selected agricultural crops on the basis of various sources of data covering the years 2015–2019. The study uses aggregated official statistics data compiled by Statistics Poland, published in the Statistical Yearbook of Agriculture, and individual data from the Polish Farm Accountancy Data Network (FADN), which takes into account commercial farms. The analysis of the differences in crops variability determined on the basis of different sources of information was carried out using basic statistical parameters: the arithmetic mean, standard deviation and the coefficient of variation. The research shows that the variability of yields in Poland depends not only on the type of crops, but also on the location of the production. Moreover, it indicates a greater stability of crops production among commercial farms when compared with farms in general. The comparison of the values of the coefficient of variation calculated from individual data with the values calculated on the basis of the average yields indicates fundamental differences which should be taken into account when applying the variation coefficient to assess production risk and, consequently, to optimise insurance tools.

Impacts of compound hot–dry extremes on US soybean yields

Abstract. The US agriculture system supplies more than one-third of globally traded soybean, and with 90 % of US soybean produced under rainfed agriculture, soybean trade is particularly sensitive to weather and climate variability. Average growing season climate conditions can explain about one-third of US soybean yield variability. Additionally, crops can be sensitive to specific short-term weather extremes, occurring in isolation or compounding at key moments throughout crop development. Here, we identify the dominant within-season climate drivers that can explain soybean yield variability in the US, and we explore the synergistic effects between drivers that can lead to severe impacts. The study combines weather data from reanalysis and satellite-informed root zone soil moisture fields with subnational crop yields using statistical methods that account for interaction effects. On average, our models can explain about two-thirds of the year-to-year yield variability (70 % for all years and 60 % for out-of-sample predictions). The largest negative influence on soybean yields is driven by high temperature and low soil moisture during the summer crop reproductive period. Moreover, due to synergistic effects, heat is considerably more damaging to soybean crops during dry conditions and is less problematic during wet conditions. Compounding and interacting hot and dry (hot–dry) summer conditions (defined by the 95th and 5th percentiles of temperature and soil moisture respectively) reduce yields by 2 standard deviations. This sensitivity is 4 and 3 times larger than the sensitivity to hot or dry conditions alone respectively. Other relevant drivers of negative yield responses are lower temperatures early and late in the season, excessive precipitation in the early season, and dry conditions in the late season. We note that the sensitivity to the identified drivers varies across the spatial domain. Higher latitudes, and thus colder regions, are positively affected by high temperatures during the summer period. On the other hand, warmer southeastern regions are positively affected by low temperatures during the late season. Historic trends in identified drivers indicate that US soybean production has generally benefited from recent shifts in weather except for increasing rainfall in the early season. Overall, warming conditions have reduced the risk of frost in the early and late seasons and have potentially allowed for earlier sowing dates. More importantly, summers have been getting cooler and wetter over the eastern US. Nevertheless, despite these positive changes, we show that the frequency of compound hot–dry summer events has remained unchanged over the 1946–2016 period. In the longer term, climate models project substantially warmer summers for the continental US, although uncertainty remains as to whether this will be accompanied by drier conditions. This highlights a critical element to explore in future studies focused on US agricultural production risk under climate change.

Flood hazards and agricultural production risks management practices in flood-prone areas of Punjab, Pakistan.

Climate induced disasters, more specifically floods, have caused severe damage to the agriculture sector in Pakistan. These climatic risks have constrained the farming community to adopt risk management strategies to overcome such climate change risks. This research work attempted to examine the association of risk management tools with farmers' perception of risk, risk averse attitude, and various socioeconomic factors. The study has employed the sample data of 398 farmers from two high-risk flood-prone districts of Punjab, Pakistan. The multivariate probit model was used in this study to investigate the association of dependent and independent variables. The findings of the study indicated that small farmers consider heavy rains and floods severe risks to their agricultural production and are more risk averse than large farmers. Estimates of a multivariate probit model interpreted as age of farmer (0.036), heavy rains risk perception (0.597), and landholding size (0.114) were positively related with the risk management tool of depletion of assets. Farmers' education (0.056), off-farm income (3.47), age (0.018), and risk averse attitude of farmer (0.687) were positive, whereas experience of farming (-0.037) was negatively linked with reduction of consumption. Furthermore, experience of farming (0.005), risk averse attitude (0.493), heavy rains (0.481), and flood risk perception (0.536) were positively related with diversification adoption. The flood-prone farming community is more vulnerable to these climatic risks and rely on traditional strategies for risk management. There is a need to adopt crop diversification based on developing research capacity for innovative crop varieties having resistance to floods and climate change affects. Some significant policy measures, such as a more resilient scenario of climate change and floods, need to stimulate activities of enterprise diversification, opportunities of diversifying employment, and strengthening activities of off-farm employment for the sound livelihood of flood-prone farmers and to minimize severe affects of climatic risks.

The Impact of Cost-of-Production Insurance on Input Expense of Fruit Growing in Ecologically Vulnerable Areas: Evidence from Shaanxi Province of China

Planting fruit trees in ecologically vulnerable areas is an effective approach to achieving the goal of ecological protection and improving farmers’ livelihoods. However, in ecologically vulnerable areas, farmers still face agricultural production risks such as natural disasters, diseases, and pests. In order to help fruit growers avoid these risks and ensure the sustainability of their livelihoods, the Chinese government has launched cost-of-production (COP) insurance in these areas. Although previous studies have shown that the purchase of revenue- or yield-based crop insurance will change insured farmers’ input expense of chemicals in agricultural production, the existing literature lacksa discussion on how COP insurance affects the input expense of chemicals in fruit growing. Here, we address the existing research gap from both theoretical and empirical aspects by conducting surveys in 1051 households of fruit growers in the Shaanxi province of China. Theoretical deduction reveals that the COP insurance on input expenditure of chemicals can have an increasing effect. Using the 2SLS model and empirical analysis, we found that the insured fruit growers spent more on using chemical fertilizers and pesticides compared to non-insured fruit growers. These findings demonstrate that the COP insurance’s positive marginal incentive to apply more input expense of chemicals in production dominates the negative moral hazard effect.

The role of the Internet of Things as direction for the development of agriculture 4.0 for rural areas

The article discusses trends and opportunities for the development of the digitalization of agriculture. The potential of the Internet of Things (IoT) for agriculture is innovative. The rationale for this is the creation of cloud platform solutions determines the grounds for this research. Particular attention is paid to quantitative and qualitative trends in the development of the Internet of Things in agricultural production. The article analyses the benefits of the Internet of Things for agriculture and rural development. The industrial Internet of Things helps to improve the competitiveness, efficiency and safety of agricultural production. IoT platforms and mobile apps allow to control and track production along the entire value chain. They also help to make decisions with a high level of risk in agricultural production. Significant amount of the information available in the agriculture is not fully utilized. Digitalization of agriculture improves efficiency and productivity in the industry. The Internet of Things in agriculture is a promising direction of technological breakthrough for a rational resource-saving agriculture 4.0.

Source apportionment and crop bioaccumulation of perfluoroalkyl acids and novel alternatives in an industrial-intensive region with fluorochemical production, China: Health implications for human exposure

Due to their great environmental hazards, the widely used legacy perfluoroalkyl acids (PFAAs) are gradually restricted, and novel alternatives are being developed and applied. For efficient control of emerging environmental risks in agricultural production, we systematically studied the source apportionment in field soils and bioaccumulation characteristics in multiple crops of 12 PFAAs and five novel alternatives in an industrial-intensive region of China, followed by human exposure estimation and health risk assessment. Compared with perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA) and perfluorooctane sulfonate (PFOS), shorter-chained PFAAs and novel alternatives have become the dominant components in local soils and crops, indicating their wide application. A positive matrix factorization (PMF) model coupled with multivariate analysis identified fluoropolymer manufacturing and textile treatment as the principal sources. The bioaccumulation factors (BAFs) of individual PFAAs and alternatives in crops decreased with increasing carbon chain lengths. As a novel alternative of PFOA, hexafluoropropylene oxide dimer acid (GenX) exhibited much higher BAFs; for the alternative of PFOS, 6:2 chlorinated polyfluorinated ether sulfonic acid (6:2 Cl-PFESA) showed lower BAFs. The bioaccumulation capacities of PFAAs and alternatives were also associated with soil organic matter and crop species. Through crop consumption, short-chained PFAAs and novel alternatives might pose emerging human health threats.

Analysis of Rainfall and Temperature Changes and Variability over Glen Farm, South Africa

In the agricultural domain, decision-making is greatly guided by agricultural meteorology, which is the science that applies knowledge of weather and climate to qualitative and quantitative improvement in agricultural efficiency. The study area is challenged with increasing multifaceted agricultural production risks and complex agricultural ecosystems, which require analysis and understanding of local rainfall and temperature patterns. Digital technologies, such as the automatic weather station, play a pivotal role to monitor the physical environment, successively. This study engaged on a thorough analysis and interpretation of long-term rainfall and temperature data. The results would enable farmers and other users to comprehend valuable knowledge for improved productivity. The objectives of this paper were to analyse long-term climate data for Glen automatic weather station. To determine decadal climate patterns and trends, determine seasonal shifts, climate variability and climate change and quantify the frequency of the occurrence of weather extremes and develop suitable adaptation strategies relating to agronomic, phenological and physiological data necessary for crop modelling, operational evaluation and statistical analysis. The applied methods entailed Microsoft Excel and INSTAT Plus statistical software, which used to detect the interactions of environmental factors and suitable agricultural productivity. Understanding of rainfall and temperature patterns is required for agricultural management decisions, on planting date selection, crop suitability, livestock adaptation, ecosystem conservation. Agro meteorological knowledge derived from meteorological parameters, temperature, rainfall, wind and weather extremes, and may enhance agricultural productivity. Analysis of long-term and decadal trends in the time series indorse a sequence of alternately increasing and decreasing in mean annual rainfall and air temperature in Glen Farm.

Linking Farmers’ Risk Attitudes, Livelihood Diversification and Adoption of Climate Smart Agriculture in the Nyando Basin of Western Kenya

Climate smart agriculture (CSA) is an innovation meant to reduce the risks in agricultural production especially among smallholder farmers. Some of the factors that influence its adoption are farmers’ risk attitude and household livelihood diversification. This study sought to determine how risk attitude and livelihood diversification influence the adoption of CSA in the Nyando basin. The study utilized primary data gathered from 122 households in the region and employed multivariate probit (MVP), ordered probit (OP) and descriptive statistics in data analysis using Stata 14.0. The results indicated that farmers’ risk attitudes had a significant negative influence on the adoption of terraces, ridges and bunds and influenced the intensity of adoption of these CSA technologies. Household livelihood diversification significantly and negatively influenced adoption of stress tolerant livestock but not the intensity of adoption of given CSA technologies. . The government and potential donors should intensify education on CSA technologies that reduce risk in farming and how they mitigate against the effects of climate change so that more farmers can embrace them.

The Optimal Parameters of Agricultural Insurance of Products in The Ukraine

The article deals with the complex indicative forecasting of agricultural insurance parameters, which have approximate empirical dependences of variables and provide approximation of actuarial calculations of the franchise, in order to optimize the rates of insurance compensation for losses in agricultural production. The tools for minimizing the risks of agricultural production are substantiated. The typology of instruments for regulating the risks of agricultural production by transferring their risk distribution in the institutional environment and market infrastructure is studied. It is proved that vertical integration has a positive effect of compensation for losses of agricultural production, taking into account alternative diversification combinations with actual variables and the occurrence of a certain insurance event. Multicriteria optimization of the parameters of partial distribution of risks of agricultural production, which simultaneously provide the maximum possible value of the expected return with a minimum value of the risk of the portfolio of assets of agricultural enterprises, is fulfilled. The utility function for accidental consequences in agricultural insurance is substantiated, as it guarantees the effective indicator of income at variable values of uncertainty. Approximate empirical dependences of variables are determined, which provide approximation of actuarial calculations of the franchise, in order to optimize the rates of insurance indemnity in agricultural production. Models of indicative forecasting of optimal parameters of agricultural insurance on the market of agricultural products of Ukraine on insurance payments and insurance premiums, which have a decreasing function, have been developed; insured sum and franchise have dynamic fluctuations.

Managing farm-centric risks in agricultural production at the flood-prone locations of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Pakistan

The agriculture sector in Pakistan is confronted with massive floods and other climate-induced disasters. Resultantly, the farmers are compelled to adopt several risk-management activities to cope with these risks. Therefore, the study aims to explore the risk management tools and their association with farmers’ risk perception, risk-averse attitude, and other socio-economic factors. We collected data from 200 respondents from two districts in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. The study employed a multivariate probit model to investigate the association among dependent variables (risk management tools) and explanatory variables. Findings indicated that floods and heavy rains were not the sources of risk for most of the large farmers. The majority of small farmers were risk-averse. The multivariate probit model results exposed that farmers' age, their risk perception about the heavy rains, and the size of landholding were positively associated with the adoption of assets depletion as a risk management tool. Farmers’ age, education, off-farm income, and farmers’ risk-averse attitude were positive, while the farming experience was negatively associated with consumption reduction. Moreover, farming experience, risk perception about the floods and heavy rains, and risk-averse attitude are positively associated with the adoption of diversification. Farmers in the study area were vulnerable, and they were relying on traditional tools of risk management. Hence, the government is suggested extending agricultural credit and crop insurance facilities to these farmers.

Risk pooling cooperative games in contract farming

AbstractContract farming can be an effective measure to deal with agricultural production risks. This study provides a two‐stage stochastic programming model to analyze farmers’ cooperation in the context of contract farming under uncertainty. It provides a fair cost allocation policy for a coalition of farmers using a stochastic linear duality approach. A fair cost allocation implies that no subset of farmers has an incentive to leave the coalition. Thus, a fair allocation policy ensures the stability of a coalition. Meanwhile, the risk pooling game is shown to have population monotonicity, which means that, every time a coalition adds a new member, each farmer within the coalition will incur a smaller cost. Hence, the population monotonicity gives an incentive for coalition expansion. Our results not only provide a simple way to design fair cost allocation policies for collaboration strategies in contract farming, but also play an important role in the sustainable development of farmers’ coalitions.

Factors Affecting Crop Insurance Holding Intention of Farmers in Nepal

Natural disasters such as droughts, floods, hurricanes, landslides, erratic rainfall, earthquakes, and many other climate change-related problems often affect agricultural production and farm income in Nepal. Agriculture's vulnerability to such disasters is exacerbated by epidemics and man-made disasters such as arson, spurious seed sales, fertilizers and pesticides, market crashes, etc. Such factors have exposed the higher risk to agri-business. Crop insurance is one of the main means and methods for reducing agricultural production risks. While crop insurance is one of the main risk management methods, even larger segments of farmers are outside the insurance program of the government. This may be due to many reasons such as awareness level, risk attitude, accessibility to insurance service of farmers, prevailing production risk, premium level, expected indemnity value, claim settlement process and many others. Several studies show that these factors have direct relation with the farmers' intention of holding insurance scheme. This study aims at analysing the effect of factors related to crop insurance holding intention of farmers. Data was collected from a sample of 109 farmers. Results indicated relation of risk attitude, expected indemnity & claim settlement, accessibility to insurance, awareness level. Insurance awareness has the highest relationship with the crop insurance holding intention. Similarly, insurance awareness, expected indemnity and claim settlement and risk attitude showed positive significant impact with crop insurance holding intention. Production risk and premium level and accessibility of insurance had no influence. This result implies that if awareness level of insurance is increased on farmers, their motivation toward insurance scheme can be increased. Therefore, it can be concluded that insurance program will not be successful until and unless it is supported with awareness building program and making the implementation process simpler and easy.

Agricultural Productive Service System Based on the Block Chain and Edge Computing

With the rapid development of the service sector in economic growth, productive service industry has become a growing field of people’s attention. Agricultural productive services are a supporting point to promote the development of modern agriculture, and at the same time, they also point out the direction for promoting the transformation of the agricultural development mode, which has very important strategic significance. In order to analyze and improve the rural productive service system and solve the “three rural” issues, this article designs an agricultural productive service analysis framework from the perspective of farmers, statistics of the investment in agricultural productive services in a certain region from 2015 to 2019, the expenditure of agricultural productive services in agriculture, forestry, fishery, and animal husbandry, and per capita wage income and operating income of farmers in the area under agricultural productive services, and in the process of agricultural production, farmers need agricultural productive services from the perspective of the whole process, land preparation, seeding, pest control, fertilization, and harvesting risks. The data in this experiment are stored in a distributed manner through the block chain, and the data are stored in the corresponding part in the chronological order; the data are transmitted to the edge server of the experimental network in the way of point-to-point transmission, and then edge computing technology is used to calculate and analyze the data collected in the experiment. The final result shows that, in this region, the input of the main agricultural producer service industry is growing very fast, the scale of productive services is expanding, and more and more attention is paid to the producer services in the process of agricultural production, but the internal composition of agricultural producer services is unbalanced. With the continuous improvement of the scale of agricultural productive services, the per capita income of farmers and the per capita income of management are also increasing year by year. When the scale of agricultural productive services reaches 0.09 in 2019, the per capita wage income of farmers has reached 3900 yuan, and the per capita income of farmers has reached 3750 yuan. And in the perspective of various risks in agricultural production, the higher the risk coefficient, the stronger the risk preference of farmers and the higher the risk investment in agricultural production services.

Foreign experience of agricultural insurance and prospects of its adaptation in Ukraine

In the articles of the considered process of agrarian insurance in foreign countries. The essence of the concept of “agricultural insurance” and “agricultural insurance risk" is revealed. The history of development of agricultural insurance in the international market of insurance services is studied. There are several well-known national agricultural insurance systems and their characteristics. The national systems and participants of agrarian insurance in the countries of the world, namely: the United States of America, Canada, Spain, Portugal, Italy, Austria, France, Germany, Latvia and Poland are singled out. It is proved that in most countries of the world the importance of insurance of risks of agricultural production as an irreplaceable financial and economic lever of development of agriculture and economy of the countries is described. The most important measures that are provided and mandatory for the participants of the above-mentioned foreign national agricultural insurance systems are highlighted. Models of agricultural insurance in different countries are characterized by certain features: the state is an active participant in the agricultural insurance system; insurance is overwhelmingly voluntary; state policy in the field of insurance is characterized by structure and transparency; the state subsidizes both agricultural producers and insurance companies; Appropriate state institutions and appropriate levers of financial influence are created for the development and implementation of state policy in the field of agricultural insurance. Based on the experience of foreign countries, three main operating systems of agricultural insurance protection have been identified: the system of catastrophic coverage, the system of state administration of agricultural insurance programs, the system of cooperation between the state and insurance companies. It is noted that there is also an inefficient system of “state insurance company”, which sells agricultural insurance services. The main normative acts regulating the insurance process in Ukraine are described. It was proposed to introduce a new program of state support for agricultural insurance, which would clearly define: the subjects of the market of insurance of agricultural products with state support, insurance contracts, insurance rules, the mechanism for providing state support to farmers; information support of state support of agricultural insurance.

АНАЛІЗ І ОЦІНКА ЕФЕКТИВНОСТІ ВИКОРИСТАННЯ РЕСУРСНОГО ПОТЕНЦІАЛУ АГРАРНИХ ПІДПРИЄМСТВ

Анотація. На основі дослідження стану розвитку аграрних підприємств та їхнього ресурсного потенціалу розкрито проблеми і фактори, що впливають на ефективність використання ресурсного потенціалу: неефективне використання земель сільськогосподарського призначення, диспропорції у структурі активів, дефіцит власних обігових коштів, незбалансованість чистого обігового капіталу і фінансових потреб, особливо в малому і середньому бізнесі; незначна частка коштів державної підтримки для потужного інноваційного розвитку, порушення структури капіталу, високі ризики аграрного виробництва, у тому числі з природно-кліматичних причин. Запропоновано методичний підхід до аналізу й оцінки ефективності ресурсного потенціалу аграрних підприємств, заснований на методі математичного моделювання DEA, який передбачає індексну оцінку ефективності використання фінансових ресурсів за факторами і критеріями відстані точки від еталонної межі виробничого потенціалу. Обґрунтовано доцільність здійснення технічної оцінки ефективності використання ресурсного потенціалу аграрних підприємств у поєднанні з іншими підходами (порівняльним, комбінованим), що надає можливість здійснити вибір рішень щодо нарощування обсягу виробництва або зменшення витрат ресурсів. На основі результатів апробації методичного підходу ресурсного потенціалу визначено основні детермінанти, що обмежують ефективність ресурсного потенціалу та пріоритети щодо ресурсозабезпечення і підвищення результативності діяльності аграрних підприємств: упровадження програм державної підтримки інноваційних ресурсозберігальних технологій аграрного виробництва; нарощування технічного і технологічного потенціалу шляхом залучення інвестиційних кредитів, лізингових та партнерських програмам; упровадження ефективних фінансових інструментів; відкриття прозорого та чіткого ринку землі. Ключові слова: ресурси, ефективність, ресурсний потенціал, метод моделювання DEA, технічна ефективність, аналіз, фактори, аграрні підприємства. Формул: 0; рис.: 2; табл.: 5; бібл.: 14.

Research and application of real-time monitoring and early warning thresholds for multi-temporal agricultural products information

Monitoring and early warning is an important means to effectively prevent risks in agricultural production, consumption and price. In particular, with the change of modes of national administration against the background of big data, improving the capacity to monitor agricultural products is of great significance for macroeconomic decision-making. Agricultural product information early warning thresholds are the core of agricultural product monitoring and early warning. How to appropriately determine the early warning thresholds of multi-temporal agricultural product information is a key question to realize real-time and dynamic monitoring and early warning. Based on the theory of abnormal fluctuation of agricultural product information and the research of substantive impact on the society, this paper comprehensively discussed the methods to determine the thresholds of agricultural product information fluctuation in different time dimensions. Based on the data of the National Bureau of Statistics of China (NBSC) and survey data, this paper used a variety of statistical methods to determine the early warning thresholds of the production, consumption and prices of agricultural products. Combined with Delphi expert judgment correction method, it finally determined the early warning thresholds of agricultural product information in multiple time, and carried out early warning analysis on the fluctuation of agricultural product monitoring information in 2018. The results show that: (1) the daily, weekly and monthly monitoring and early warning thresholds of agricultural products play an important early warning role in monitoring abnormal fluctuations with agricultural products; (2) the multi-temporal monitoring and early warning thresholds of agricultural product information identified by the research institute can provide effective early warning on current abnormal fluctuation of agricultural product information, provide a benchmarking standard for China's agricultural production, consumption and price monitoring and early warning at the national macro level, and further improve the application of China's agricultural product monitoring and early warning.

Simulating Small-Scale Agricultural Adaptation Decisions in Response to Drought Risk: An Empirical Agent-Based Model for Semi-Arid Kenya

In Eastern Africa, increasing climate variability and changing socioeconomic conditions are exacerbating the frequency and intensity of drought disasters. Droughts pose a severe threat to food security in this region, which is characterized by a large dependency on smallholder rain-fed agriculture and a low level of technological development in the food production systems. Future drought risk will be determined by the adaptation choices made by farmers, yet few drought risk models … incorporate adaptive behavior in the estimation of drought risk. Here, we present an innovative dynamic drought risk adaptation model, ADOPT, to evaluate the factors that influence adaptation decisions and the subsequent adoption of measures, and how this affects drought risk for agricultural production. ADOPT combines socio-hydrological and agent-based modeling approaches by coupling the FAO crop model AquacropOS with a behavioral model capable of simulating different adaptive behavioral theories. In this paper, we compare the protection motivation theory, which describes bounded rationality, with a business-as-usual and an economic rational adaptive behavior. The inclusion of these scenarios serves to evaluate and compare the effect of different assumptions about adaptive behavior on the evolution of drought risk over time. Applied to a semi-arid case in Kenya, ADOPT is parameterized using field data collected from 250 households in the Kitui region and discussions with local decision-makers. The results show that estimations of drought risk and the need for emergency food aid can be improved using an agent-based approach: we show that ignoring individual household characteristics leads to an underestimation of food-aid needs. Moreover, we show that the bounded rational scenario is better able to reflect historic food security, poverty levels, and crop yields. Thus, we demonstrate that the reality of complex human adaptation decisions can best be described assuming bounded rational adaptive behavior; furthermore, an agent-based approach and the choice of adaptation theory matter when quantifying risk and estimating emergency aid needs.

Strategic perspectives of rural households development in Ukraine

The article studies the peculiarities of functioning of rural households, the substantiation of strategic scenarios for their development and the development of an effective mechanism for strengthening their role in the formation of agri-food resources of Ukraine. Taking into account the current state of the agricultural sector and real conditions of rural households existence, several alternative ways of their development are defned: individual (independent) development; integration of rural households with agricultural and processing enterprises; cooperation with other rural households and with small businesses. The analysis of the structure of agricultural production in terms of rural households that can be consumer oriented, consumer – production oriented and production oriented allows us to conclude that a long-term development of rural households will lead to a change in their commodity proposal. The results of the design analysis of the average growth rates of all three resource components showed: the average annual growth rate of labour remuneration - 24.3%; average annual growth rate of fnancial assistance - 21.5%; average annual growth rate of rural household income - 14.6%; the average annual growth rate of total revenues (resources) - 18.7%. Having used the statistical package "STATGRAPHICS",we analyzed the tendencies of decrease of incomes share of rural households from own labor and capital; as well as growth of incomes from hired labor. Having used the ARIMA model, we made a forecast until 2025, and found that the share of population incomes from rural households will decrease to 20.2%. However, the decrease in income from own labor and capital should be offset by an increase in income from remuneration of labor received in the real sector of the economy. In addition, the share of gross output of households in the total gross output of agriculture is calculated. The Brown model (exponential smoothing model) with the parameter alpha = 0.3639 was used for the forecast. According to the results of calculations, it can be concluded that in the future the share of gross agricultural output will decrease and may reach 35.7% by 2025. Today it is also obvious that production oriented rural household, in conditions of increase of marketability level and effective mechanisms for the sale of manufactured products, can be the base for the development of entrepreneurship in agricultural production. This can be created through the organization of a system of purchasing manufactured products from the population, or through the organization of a system of consumer cooperation. Based on this, we believe that the development of land mortgage lending is important to meet fnancial resources needs of small agricultural producers in Ukraine, to achieve maximum economic effect from the realization of land potential, and as a result, to reduce risks in agricultural production. The mechanism for solving this problem, to our opinion, is the creation of mortgage funds of entity at the state level or at the level of united territorial communities. Key words: rural household, incomes of rural households, family farms, rural territories, mortgage lending, cooperation.

Farmers' livelihood risks, livelihood assets and adaptation strategies in Rugao City, China

Based on accurately identifying farmers' livelihood risks, this paper investigates the effects of farmers' livelihood assets on their livelihood risks and adaptation strategies. Face-to-face interviews were conducted with farmers in Rugao City. The results show that natural risks and market risks are the main livelihood risks for farmers in agricultural production. Farmers' social, financial and human assets can mitigate their livelihood risks in agricultural production, while natural and physical assets have the opposite effects. Most farmers chose crop variety adjustment, water and fertilizer management, agricultural finance and agrotechnical support to deal with livelihood risks. Social, natural and physical assets have significant and positive effects on farmers’ adoption of adaptation strategies, while human and financial assets have relatively weak influences.