We examine the effects of local immigration enforcement efforts on U.S. agriculture in dozens of U.S. counties from 2002–2010 by using variations in the timing of adoption of 287(g) programs, which permit local police to enforce immigration law. Difference‐in‐differences models using microdata from the American Community Survey (2005–2010 waves) and county tabulations from the Census of Agriculture (1997, 2002, and 2007) yield robust evidence that county enforcement efforts have reduced immigrant presence in adopting jurisdictions. We also find evidence that wages of farm workers, patterns of farm labor use, output choices, and farm profitability may have been affected in a manner consistent with farm labor shortages.

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The potential impacts of investing in drought tolerant maize (DTM) in 13 countries of eastern, southern and western Africa were analyzed through an innovative economic surplus analysis framework, to identify where greatest economic returns and poverty reduction may be achieved. Assuming a potential full replacement of improved varieties with DTM varieties, by 2016 there would be economic gains of US$ 907 million over all countries under conservative yield gains, or US$ 1,535 million under optimistic yield gains. Largest gains in terms of consumer and producers surplus are in Nigeria, Zimbabwe and Malawi. However, in terms of production gains and poverty reduction, the countries gaining most are Nigeria, Kenya and Malawi (in terms of production); and Zimbabwe, Malawi and Kenya (number of people out of poverty). A total of 4 million peopleboth producers and consumers-would have their poverty greatly reduced in all countries. To achieve these impacts, deployment strategies are discussed and various options are suggested, which depend on local context and state of the national seed sectors. JEL Classifications: O19; F15; B28

This article develops a framework to examine the ex ante benefits of transgenic research on drought in eight low-income countries, including the benefits to producers and consumers from farm income stabilization and the potential magnitude of private sector profits from intellectual property rights (IPRs). The framework employs country-specific agroecological-drought risk zones and considers both yield increases and yield variance reductions when estimating producer and consumer benefits from research. Benefits from yield variance reductions are shown to be an important component of aggregate drought research benefits, representing 40% of total benefits across the eight countries. Further, estimated annual benefits of US$178 million to the private sector suggest that significant incentives exist for participation in transgenic drought tolerance research.JEL classification: O34, O47, Q16

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We leverage spatial and temporal variation in the implementation of county-level 287(g) immigration enforcement policies as a quasi-experiment to measure the effects of an inward shift in the local immigrant labor supply on U.S. dairy operations. Our findings show that 287(g) policies cause production and labor expenditures per farm to decrease and labor efficiency to increase. The primary dairy operator is more likely to have off-farm income, and dairies are more likely to use select labor-saving technologies after 287(g) is implemented. Nevertheless, the number of dairies in operation, total milk production, and average dairy size in the county decline. Our findings indicate that the dairy industry became more labor efficient and technologically advanced as a result of the 287(g) program. However, total production declined. We conclude that technological gains in the dairy industry were insufficient to entirely offset the negative shock to production resulting from an inward shift in labor supply, at least in the short run. These findings are of importance for labor-intensive industries that could potentially experience an adverse labor supply shock.

Risk and liquidity constraints are major obstacles to the adoption of modern technologies in many rural African countries. Migration and remittances can help rural households overcome these constraints and increase the adoption of modern technologies. We analyse the impact of migration, remittances and government transfers on the adoption of improved seeds in rural Kenya. Using data from the World Bank, two stage least-squares estimates show that both migration and remittances positively affect the adoption of improved seeds. However, three stage least-squares estimates reveal that the adoption of new technologies is more related to migration than remittances.

The use of mobile processing units (MPUs) for pasture poultry is growing rapidly. This study compared the economic feasibility of MPUs to two processing alternatives, traditional stationary processing on-farm plants and off-farm processing facilities. Our study combined a survey of pasture poultry farmers in Georgia, Louisiana, and Arkansas with the published research. Our findings suggest that MPUs and traditional on-farm processing alternatives have a lower processing cost, but that they require a higher initial investment than the off-farm option. In addition, off-farm processing at the United States Department of Agriculture-inspected facility allows selling products for a higher price. We therefore expect, on average, a higher per-bird profit than with the other two options. However, the excess processing capacity of the MPU can make this option the most profitable.