Agricultural Economics - In Press
How do green finance, digital technology, trade openness, and climate change interact to shape food production in Sub-Saharan Africa?Original Paper
Abdul Salami Bah, Yongqiang Wang, Yuchun Zhu, Mohamed Saffa Massaquoi, Nomore Nkhoma
The promotion of sustainable food productivity through innovative technologies remains a central priority in economic development, attracting increasing attention from scholars, policymakers, and industry stakeholders. With the continuing rise in global food demand, resource-efficient solutions are essential to ensuring long-term agricultural growth and stability in food production. This study examines the impact of green finance, agricultural innovation, digital technology, trade openness, and climate change on food production in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). Using the Method of Moments Quantile Regression (MMQR) and the Generalised Method of Moments (GMM), it analyses a balanced panel dataset covering 46 SSA countries from 2001 to 2023. The findings highlight the positive influence of green finance, agricultural innovation, and digital technology in enhancing food production, particularly in lower production sectors, suggesting important bidirectional policy implications. Trade openness is found to promote agricultural growth but exhibits diminishing effects at higher levels of productivity, indicating the relevance of a unidirectional policy focus. In contrast, climate change has a negative effect on food production. The study also identifies key mediation pathways, including green finance stimulating research and development, digital technology improving agricultural credit and farmers’ education, and trade openness attracting foreign direct investment. These results emphasise the importance of integrated policy frameworks that combine financial support, technological advancement, and trade openness to promote sustainable agricultural growth and strengthen food security across SSA.
Subsidies and farming: A microempirical analysis of financial allocation to promote agricultural productionOriginal Paper
Congxian He, Lulu Yu, Huwei Wen
The continuous and stable development of agriculture is closely related to the national economy, and its inherent vulnerability characteristics determine the necessity of fiscal support. On the basis of data from the China Family Panel Studies (CFPS) from 2012--2022, this study conducts an empirical analysis to examine the influence of fiscal allocation on agricultural production, including rural households’ enthusiasm for growing grain and their productive income. The results indicate that agricultural public expenditure significantly promotes agricultural production by constructing ordered probit (Oprobit) and ordinary least squares (OLS) fixed effect models, and the conclusions remain robust under different robustness tests. Mechanistic tests indicate that agricultural public expenditure promotes agricultural production by improving agricultural technical levels, enhancing production services and expanding the agricultural scale. Heterogeneity analysis further reveals that agricultural public expenditure has a more significant incentive effect on agricultural production in core grain production bases, grain supply demand equilibrium zones, emerging and senior rural households, and formally educated rural households. The research suggested that the government should continuously increase financial input in agriculture and implement differentiated policies for different types of rural households. It offers empirical insights for exploring ways to achieve the “dual goals” of food security and poverty alleviation.
An Assessment of Climate Risks on the Stability of Biomass Supply and Biofuel ProductionOriginal Paper
Chih-Chun Kung, Kaige Ma, Juan Li
Global warming has shifted regional temperature and precipitation, and Taiwan's agricultural activity and cropping patterns have been significantly impacted, resulting in potential deviations from planned biofuel production and emission reduction. This study accommodates the latest IPCC projections to revisit the market equilibrium of agricultural and biofuel production under climate risk. It also examines the overall effect of climate change on Taiwan's biofuel production. We employ a two-stage stochastic programming model to simulate the potential cropland transfer and associated optimal biofuel development under alternative Representative Concentration Pathways (RCPs). The results show that Taiwan's biofuel production could reach 447–596 million liters, depending on the level of climate impacts and emission prices. In addition, depending on the climate impacts and market operations, total input use is generally between 2.79 to 4.72 million tons, and the higher the gasoline price, the sooner the producer will exhaust its production capacity. While Taiwan could sustain biofuel production when gasoline and emission prices are high, a substantial land-use change would occur. Approximately 74,500–81,900 hectares of aside land will switch back into production, and an additional 12,550–12,900 hectares of currently abandoned cropland will be converted for future use. However, the increase in cropland supply may not result in biofuel expansion due to the small emission offset capability. Thus, the biofuel industry does not heavily rely on the maintenance of high emission prices as other renewable energy sources.
Optimization of Agricultural Logistics: A Systematic Review of Modelling Techniques and Economic PotentialsReview
Nikolas Bublik, Sebastian Hess
Agricultural logistics face unique challenges such as seasonal demand fluctuations, perishability, and geographic dispersion. The paper systematically analyzes 63 peer-reviewed articles from 2013 to 2025, focusing on key optimization techniques, including Multi-Criteria Decision-Making (MCDM), Vehicle Routing Problems (VRP), and Path Planning Problems (PPP). The findings highlight how logistics optimization can reduce operational costs, improve resource utilization, and enhance supply chain resilience. Additionally, the study identifies gaps in inbound logistics research and emphasizes the need for further integration of digital technologies. Future research should focus on comprehensive, technology-driven solutions to improve adaptability and transparency in agricultural supply chains. Key findings reveal that optimized logistics models can lead to cost reductions of up to 58%, emissions savings of over 60%, and significant improvements in delivery time, field efficiency, and customer satisfaction.
Evaluation of the environmental commitment of all large and medium-sized Spanish wineries based on objective information from their websitesCase Study
Asunción Agulló-Torres, Francisco_J. Del_Campo-Gomis, David_B. López-Lluch., Irene Arias-Navarro
In the contemporary era, organisations have embraced the internet as a platform through which they disseminate information about their economic activities and their corporate social responsibility, including their environmental responsibility. Consequently, the extent to which an organisation's actions are visible on its website can be taken as an indicator of its commitment to environmental issues. This article proposes a model for evaluating the environmental commitment of agri-food companies through the visibility of objective information on their environmental actions on their websites. This information is presented in a table consisting of 33 items, the combination of which with a predetermined weight gives an index called the Environmental Commitment Web Index (ECWI). The model was applied in 2018 and 2024 to a sample of large and medium-sized Spanish wineries. The results indicated that 94.2% in 2018 and 81.4% in 2024 exhibited a 'very poor' environmental commitment, although there was an improvement between these years, by doubling their average value of the ECWI in 2024. We conclude that continued efforts should be made to communicate activities in favour of the environment on their websites.
Impact of digital economy on agricultural land use in Sub-Saharan African countries
Zhaohui Qin, Gaddis Manana Elia, Mihasina Harinaivo Andrianarimanana, Tiavina Andriamahenina Nasolomampionona, Tarir Duok Gai Dhornor, Winnie Kudzai mazheti
Digital economy (DE) is now unavoidable in all human activities. However, how it is accelerating the development of agriculture, particularly innovation in agricultural land use (ALU) is not well established yet. This study used a moderated mediation model of panel data analysis, and investigates how the digital economy influences ALU in 07 Sub-Saharan African (SSA) countries between 2006 and 2022. The result shows that the DE has a positive and significant contribution to ALU. Moreover, analysis shows that higher government power leads to a rise in ALU, which underlines the relevance of productive agricultural policies. Furthermore, government effectiveness (GE) and water productivity (WP) strengthen this positive impact of ALU. Meanwhile, patents (PA) and water conservation activities undermine the right to fresh water. This work illustrates how modern land management and agricultural practices could evolve due to forces emanating from both within the technology-driven DE and its transformation and inside it on the driver level. This will generate harmonized policies on technology governance and resource management, allowing the DE to boost sustainable agricultural development in SSA. This will, in turn, provide coherent policies on technology governance and resource management that enable the DE to work for sustainable agricultural development within SSA.
What drives post-acquisition farm growth? Empirical evidence from UkraineOriginal Paper
Igor Ostapchuk, Taras Gagalyuk
This study addresses the limited research on mergers and acquisitions in primary agriculture by examining how large corporate agroholdings achieve profitable post-acquisition growth in the farms they acquire. Using the system GMM method, we analyze farm-level data from 648 Ukrainian farms acquired by agroholdings between 2005 and 2016. Our findings indicate that agroholdings facilitate post-acquisition growth and performance improvements through a range of integration strategies. Specifically, they leverage horizontally integrated structures to: (a) consolidate land resources to realize economies of scale; (b) reallocate farm resources toward more profitable production lines; and (c) intensify production on acquired farms. These results support key concepts in firm growth theory, including the independence of growth rates from firm size (Gibrat’s law) and the existence of Penrosean limits to growth.