How do farmers choose their tractor? This article claims that they often navigate a diverse landscape of prescription in which the manufacturer, the agricultural advisor, and the family are not the only legitimate sources of information, as informal networks of peers and Internet communities are also playing a crucial role in the diffusion of knowledge and practices. By exploring the access to information and knowledge about farm machinery from the perspective of the farmer in relation to diverse actors, it highlights the biographical and material dimensions of prescription relationships. The paper is the output of a collective and participatory research conducted in the Auvergne Rhône Alpes region of France, involving professional researchers and farmers: 38 interviews were conducted by researcher-farmer pair. Data were analyzed collectively. It demonstrates the presence of various relations to technical prescriptions among the interviewees (traditional, elective, informal, committed), as well as trajectories among the patterns (ruptures, juxtapositions, upgrades), by which farmers navigate from one mode to another. It concludes that if mobility among sources of information is always an option, some forms of prescriptions are more constraining than others due to the ratchet effect of following specific technical orientations.
The large number of factors involved in farmers’ decision-making and scarce resources available to implement change present a major challenge for the design of effective public policies, in particular with regard to on-farm antimicrobial use. Understanding how these factors are integrated in models across disciplines is therefore essential. We conducted a systematic review of modelling frameworks and approaches used in economic and social-psychological studies to analyse farmers’ decision-making at farm level. Following a Population–Exposure–Comparison–Outcome (PECO) strategy to determine search terms, 39 studies were selected that explicitly assessed both economic and behavioural determinants of decision making in the context of animal health and disease prevention at farm level. We find that economic approaches tend to prioritise tractable financial and policy parameters and are well suited to analysing strategic interactions and aggregate outcomes, while social-psychological approaches provide detailed insights into attitudes, norms, trust, and knowledge, yet less frequently formalise strategic interactions and aggregate system-level outcomes. However, this review shows that, despite differences in methods and analytical focus, determinants contributing to decision-making from both disciplines can all be sorted into four broad and overlapping categories: financial factors, disease perception, social interactions, and policy factors. Taken together, we find that these complementarities and blind spots highlight the limits of single-discipline approaches. Thus, building on this synthesis, we propose an integrative framework that connects determinants identified across economic and social-psychological studies. Rather than offering a predictive model, the framework aims to structure future research, guide model development, and support the design of policy interventions by explicitly accounting for the interdependence of decision drivers influencing farmers’ adoption of animal health measures.
The High Tell region in Northwestern Tunisia is considered Tunisia’s ‘water reservoir’ with its river system flowing on the northern side of the Majrada Valley plains and to the Steppes on the southern side. The lack of infrastructure and impoverished population has prompted the Tunisian state to adopt many strategies to harness its water potential as a development factor. Various development programmes and strategies have been implemented in this region from Independence to today. Initially, the Tunisian government managed the springs. Later, it adopted a conservation and restoration policy to reduce erosive dynamics. It also constructed dams on the main rivers. From the 1990s, the construction of hill dams on seasonal rivers became widespread. While significant water potential has been mobilised (mainly through the creation of hill dams), the impact of this policy on development has not achieved the planned objectives. The water never flows in its active channel below the dams. Consequently, the surfaces of many small wetlands and riparian vegetation are reduced or degraded in the plains and around rivers’ courses. In addition, irrigated areas do not receive water on a regular basis due to the irregularity of precipitation and the consequent need to feed hillside reservoirs. These water strategies adopted by the Tunisian state have never led to any real development of the mountainous lands of the High Tell region, nor have they reduced territorial inequalities.
Crop-livestock integration (CLI) has garnered increased global interest as a climate-smart, resource-efficient production strategy that might improve household welfare in fragile agro-ecologies. Notwithstanding its strategic significance, empirical data regarding the welfare implications of CLI in pastoral lowlands is still scarce. This study examines the impact of CLI participation on household economic welfare in the Asayita district of the Afar Regional State, Ethiopia. The analysis utilizes cross-sectional data from 360 households, selected using a multistage sampling technique, and employs propensity score matching (PSM) to mitigate self-selection bias and produce reliable causal estimates. Various matching methods, including nearest-neighbour, kernel, and calliper matching, were utilized to verify the consistency of results. The findings demonstrate that CLI participants experienced significantly higher annual income and consumer spending compared to non-participants, highlighting that integration enhances economic well-being and safeguards households against livelihood disruptions. The study emphasizes the significance of institutional elements, like extended contact, access to credit, and market involvement, in enhancing the welfare benefits derived from integration. The evidence illustrates the importance of advocating for integrated crop-livestock systems as a policy mechanism to enhance welfare, expedite livelihood change, and bolster resilience in drought-prone pastoral regions. The findings offer essential insights for policymakers, development organizations, and agricultural institutions seeking to formulate context-specific policies that promote sustainable rural development.
This paper examines the extent to which participation in agricultural markets has long-term effects on rural household livelihoods. While most related studies have focused on the impact on illiquid assets such as consumer durables and livestock owned by rural households, this study focuses on access to basic banking and savings devices at both the extensive and intensive margins. Drawn on the sixth and seventh waves of the Ghana Living Standard Survey and using an instrumental variables approach, the econometric analysis provides results suggesting that rural households that commercialize maize are about 8.6
