This paper presents an analysis of agricultural contracts using a transaction costs approach. We contend that in a context of modern agriculture, with well defined property rights, agricultural contracts must balance costs and benefits, aligning tenant and landlord incentives towards a similar objective. The study debates the potential effects of tenancy status and duration of contracts, over soil conservation and input use.

The Office de la Haute Vallée du Fleuve Niger (OHVN) zone in southern Mali is a small but important agricultural production region. Against a background of environmental degradation including decades of declining rainfall, soil erosion, and human pressure on forest resources, numerous farming communities stand out through the use of improved soil and water management practices that have improved agricultural and environmental conditions. Field surveys conducted in 1998-2001 indicated that environmental and agricultural conditions have improved in the past decade.

The migration of young people from rural areas is common in all agricultural regions of Russia, and Altai Krai, located in southwestern Siberia, is no exception. Out-migration, aversion to working in agriculture and the aging of farmers and farm managers are serious problems that raise questions about who will work in agriculture in the future. This paper aims to investigate factors that affect the decisions of agricultural students from Altai Krai to out-migrate or to return to their rural parental municipalities after finishing their university studies.

Property regimes shape the social relations, in particular, social settings, and represent an important element for external intervention and sustainable rural development. The introduction recalls common aspects and specific conceptualisations of property analysis in the field of economics, sociology and social anthropology and summarises main academic discourses about property rights in order to develop a differentiated understanding of property. In Section 1, general trends in property relations characterising modern rural societies are outlined.

Presentation Overview:Convey key OECD findings about agriculture in Brazil and China; Identify the key results of policy reform; Present implications for the future.

Presented to USDA Economists Group, Washington, DC, March 11, 2009
Discusses land use conflicts between agriculture, conservation, development and energy.

Sustainable land management requires that water and matter (nutrients and base cations) are efficiently recycled within ecosystems so that irreversible losses of matter from topsoils are minimised. Matter losses are connected to water flow. The division of water into evapotranspiration that is loss-free, and seepage to groundwater or surface water flow that both carry material losses, is decisive in determining total losses of dissolved matter in a given catchment. Investigations of areal matter losses confirmed the instrumental role of vegetation cover.

Since 2004, we have witnessed an increased demand in the acquisition of agricultural property, both by individual farmers and entities not previously associated with agriculture. A significant increase in the transaction prices of agricultural real estate in recent years has been caused by the impact of limited agricultural land supply and external factors related to the functioning of Polish agriculture in the economy of the European Community. The value of agricultural real estate is affected by many factors that are taken into account when determining the value of real estate.

This 2011 report provides an economic overview of the Canadian agriculture and agri-food system.It is meant to be a multi-purpose reference document to provide:an introduction to the agriculture and agri-food system; a snapshot of structural changes that are occurring throughout the system in response to various factors; and background data and information to inform public discussions on challenges and opportunities facing the Canadian agriculture and agri-food system.

The unequal distribution of agricultural land is often cited as a source of inefficiency in agriculture. Previous cross-country studies of agricultural productivity differences, though, have not considered land inequality. This article addresses this issue by using cross-country data on inequality in operational holdings of agricultural land from Deininger and Squire (1998) . In an estimation of an agricultural production function, the Gini coefficient for land holdings is found to have a significant negative relationship with productivity.

In many European mountain regions, natural forest regrowth on abandoned agricultural land and the related consequences for the environment are issues of increasing concern. We developed a spatial statistical model based on multiple geophysical and socio-economic variables to investigate the pattern of natural forest regrowth in the Swiss mountain area between the 1980s and 1990s. Results show that forest regrowth occurred primarily in areas with low temperature sum, intermediate steepness and soil stoniness as well as close to forest edges and relatively close to roads.